Posted on 08/24/2006 10:28:15 PM PDT by beaversmom
● DEAR ABBY: I'm 26 and have never wanted children. Last year, however, two lines appeared on a pregnancy test, and 41 weeks later, the girl was born. I pleaded and begged my husband throughout the pregnancy to sign adoption papers with me. He refused. He is in the military and was gone most of the last seven months. We now live thousands of miles from my family, and I am miserable, stuck with a colicky baby who still doesn't sleep through the night.
I find no joy, no pleasure and no love being a mother. I can't sleep knowing I must wake up to a crying baby and the same routine of feeding, diapers, baths and bottles. I have become more and more detached from the girl and have nothing to enjoy. I can't even enjoy a cup of coffee without looking over my shoulder to see where the girl is. I don't want her to touch me, and I can barely hide my revulsion.
I am exhausted beyond belief, and my thoughts are turning darker every day. It's not the girl's fault she was born, but I can't help feeling resentment and anger toward this little person who more and more resembles a block of concrete on my feet.
We can't afford day care, and we have no friends or relatives close by. These long stretches of crying have my nerves shot and my hands itching to shake the girl until she shuts up. (I have never shaken her.) I'm scared of my feelings. What's wrong with me? Why can't I love my child? Should I put her in foster care? My husband can't stand her either, but he's adamant that we keep her. Yet I'm suffering, and so is she. She deserves a mother who loves her. — Going Crazy in San Diego
DEAR GOING CRAZY: It's not a crime not to feel maternal — not everyone is. In a case like yours, adoption might have been the better option. I can only recommend that before another day goes by, you contact the doctor who delivered your daughter, or her pediatrician, and repeat what you have told me. You may be suffering from postpartum depression, a hormonal condition that is treatable, and you may need a respite from motherhood. Once your chemistry is balanced again, visit your family for a few weeks. If you leave the baby with your husband, he may begin to see the wisdom of placing her with a family that really wants her and is willing to accept the responsibility that goes along with having a baby.
Most of us do.
When I was 23, I had to let the anger go though. It was too emotionally draining.
Hint. Hint. Right. Sheesh! I manage just fine. However, I most definitely do not excuse women who neglect and reject their children. In our time, there is no excuse for any woman who does not want children to get pregnant, let alone to then spend most of the time afterwards whining blaming the child for being born. If she doesn't want that baby, she can put the child in the care of the state until she can get her head straight, or until hubby comes home and demonstrates he loves the child. Period.
I can totally relate to this.
I think the test drive is measured in hours, not days, months and years.
My mom used to tell me she wished she had a boy instead of me. She would either smother me or let me know that I wasn't what she had wanted. When I grew up she told me it was my fault that she and my dad divorced when I was two. That I was a daddy's girl and had worked on turning them against each other. Because a two year old is so manipulative. She would got from "needing me" and acting like I was her counselor to "disowning me" and saying that her daughter was dead. The tension after a phone call or when she was around was so thick. My husband told her she was not welcome in our home until she got some mental help. A year after that we moved. Although it's not really hard to find us. We haven't heard from her in four years.
Don't you go losing sight of reality. I am not speaking to her directly or advising her directly. This is an internet forum and I am reacting to a letter in Dear Abby. The chances of that particular woman reading anything here about what I think are infinitesimally small, if not nonexistent.
I agree she should drop off the baby at the hospital to save the baby from harm.
I don't know if I'd say she is a selfish bitch. She wouldn't have written the letter in the first place if something inside her were not concerned for the girl's welfare.
She is definitely ill...mentally, emotionally, or both.
Some people would have already hurt or starved the child...so she at least gets a little credit for trying to reach out to someone.
"But it can always use more strippers"
Nice. Really....nice.
Always nice to be condescended to first thing in the morning, although I grant you may not have intended your comment that way.
I do not want or need sympathy. What I do want is for people to recognize that women are just as capable as men are of being thoroughly rotten. The little woman who murders her kids gets to be thought of as mentally ill. She gets tea and sympathy. The man who murders his kids gets hatred from society and the death penalty. The imbalance in those two tendencies in our society is flat wrong.
If anything about that letter is true (and I recognize it may be a total sham), then that woman is thinking about killing her child. Abby gave her tea and sympathy. Me...I'd prefer Abby was far more harsh, because the absolute first step is to ensure the child's safety. After that, all else can flow.
Too bad you and too many otehr folks on this thread preferred to do what is usually done when some woman whines like this: give her tea and sympathy and totally overlook the danger to the baby.
I love that song. :-)
I will concede this valid point.
Anyway, IMO, no matter how hard they try not to, all parents mess up kids in one way or another. Ask anyone, and they can tell you stories that impacted their life. Some minor. Some very traumatic. Most of use survive though and decide we aren't going to do "that" and find out later we did something else.
My mother is around your age and she also grew up knowing that her mother never wanted children--certainly not a girl with whom she competed for her husband's love. She was sent to sleepaway camp every summer beginning at age 4, and her grandmother always berated her for not being a better daughter.
It is hard to grow up in a household like that and to discover that there never will be justice or redress for the wrong that was done to you. The only way out is to release your pain and forgive. And that can be very hard indeed, and take many years to accomplish, if it's ever possible. Particularly when the parent never sees or acknowledges her cruelty.
There are definitely support groups, but they don't break down your door.
My husband was in the Navy when our first child was born. I had worked before having the baby, so I didn't know very many of the other wives (who were mostly stay-at-home-moms). One of the wives I did know better than the others was a bit older than me, had two kids and had a baby a week before I had mine.
We went out to a wife's gathering when the kids were just a few weeks old. Her baby slept and was as sweet as could be. Mine screamed the WHOLE time. He totally disrupted the party and I was an embarrassed wreck. Obviously, I was a horrible mother! The women were incredibly kind to me and very reassuring but they were almost complete strangers who I would never have called for help. They certainly wouldn't have imposed themselves on a new mom they didn't know.
My baby never slept well, never settled into a schedule. I could cope with that. But when I introduced a little formula at 6 weeks old things began to go down hill. (It was gradual, so it took until he was 6 months old before we realized that the formula was the problem.)
The child cried CONSTANTLY. I called my mom and aunts, they were full of reassurances but acknowledged that my baby was probably a little spoiled (as the pediatrician had said). So, it really WAS my fault! I had ruined my baby! I was a terrible human being and a rotten mother and I was NEVER leaving the house again because then everyone would see that I was a horrible mother!
After several months, I came to the conclusion that one of these days, one or both of us was going to die. I called my mother and begged her to send us a plane ticket. I admitted that I had lied to her for weeks (breezily assuring her that everything was fine now) and was on the verge of losing my mind.
We quickly got things sorted out. Once my mother got the full story over the phone, she was a total rock and probably saved both our lives.
I loved my son desperately. But he WAS a horribly difficult infant and I was sleep deprived, scared to death that there was something major wrong with my baby and even more worried that he was ok but that I was insane.
It is very difficult to ask for help under those circumstances. The only person I could be that honest with was my mom. I knew there was help nearby. But would they have taken my baby? Would they have locked me up? Would everyone my husband works with find out?
Thank God I could turn to my mom. Thank God. Because I really don't think I could have made myself confess to anyone else.
1. This letter was either written by the sad-sack columnist, or heavily revised by the sad-sack columnist.
2. It pushes the radical feminist agenda: motherhood is damnation.
3. I've noticed that these sob-story advice-to-whiners columns very often trash men and push the radical feminist agenda.
4. It's not worth any more of our time.
Ann Landers said it was fine to use the pill as long as you held it between your knees.
Nope, didn't mean it that way at all. Sheesh.
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