BellaOnline Forums Family Moms Need support - I hate being a mom

I'm on page six of this thread and plan on reading the whole entire thing, but I wanted to stop and post first. I see myself here--versions of how I've felt.

I'm no therapist, but I think part of the problem with women who feel this way--that being a parent in the beginning can feel like you have a gray cloud following you everywhere--it's the isolation, the fact that you think you're THE only good mother who feels this way, which makes you think that perhaps you're not a good mom, when chances are that you're doing great as a mom--doubts, fears, warts and all.

Of course if you are experiencing thoughts of hurting yourself or anyone else you should seek professional help immediately.

One poster mentioned that she would yell at her child and then feel guilt. OMG, so many of us do this! I'd be willing to bet that women who wanted children for 10 years, had them, was happy to have them still have experienced saying (or yelling) something to their children that they didn't mean. Here's what you do if something unintentional slips out--you apologize. You say to the child "did you hear what I just said? What a horrible thing to say to anyone. I 'm so sorry. I didn't mean it." This teaches the child that we're all human, we all make mistakes and we all can recover. I read this in a positive discipline book and have had cause to use it from time to time.

I've also noticed another pattern in these posts. So far and I'm on page 6, no one whose youngest child is over 10 years old has this particular complaint where they globally hate being a mother. I'm starting to think that more mothers feel this way when children are young than who will openly admit it. Or it might be that parents forget how difficult it was in the beginning, how intensely all consuming it is. Posters are saying that the child eventually "grows" on you, but I have a feeling that it's also about acceptance and learning and the child growing away from you and being a little more independent that makes the difference.

When the baby is 9 months old or 3 years old or 5 years old you're still essentially a new mom with a huge learning curve in front of you. You're still fighting the idea, resisting it, resenting it. Oh and if you have a 5 year old and a 1 year old, you're still brand spanking new at parenting two kids. Even though you don't realize it and you can't see it, every day you're learning and accepting a little more and a little more and a little more until you are just like the thousands of other mothers who felt the exact same way you do and then guided their children through high school, college, etc.

I also hated being a mom. I'd say circa 2001-02 when I had a 1 year old and 3 year old was the worst year of my entire life. Breaks didn't help so much because I had to go back THERE, back home to that screaming, crying and needing place. I hated being home. I was always on call. There was never any rest.At one point I was also working two jobs while writing articles and short stories. We didn't have many people to help us.

So here's what I did, I stopped resisting (I still resist sometimes but not as much as before) and put up a white flag of surrender and threw myself into the parenting enterpise. I read parenting and self help books like water and applied the techniques to the raising of my children. I went through a rites of passage program, started to journal again, then I began to write self-help. Now I also write for a parenting magazine!

Also here's the great thing about babies--for me anyway--they become adults. My children are 8 and 10 and while I do experience the stress of being on the train afraid that I'll get stuck and won't get home in time to collect my children after school. And I still worry about school work, health and safety etc, but it's so much better now. And it's not a traumatic, dramatic 24/7 worry like when I was afraid of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

People used to tell me that I would miss them as babies, but trust me I don't. We went to Times Square in Manhattan over the holiday sans baby carriage, diapers, bottles etc. Me, my husband and our school aged kids. We had a blast. I wanted to get on my knees and Thank God in the middle of Times Square that all of that was behind me.