What I REALLY Felt After I Had Just Given Birth

I understand this may be seen as a negative post, but I think It’s really important that I share how I really felt immediately after giving birth to my son Noah.

I thought that as soon as my new little Mandrake was placed in my arms I’d feel overwhelmed with emotion, love & joy. However, I didn’t actually feel ANY of these things.
The things I actually felt were:

Relief – that it was all over. I’d had a hard pregnancy that I hated every minute of and had 32 hours of labour!

Overwhelmed – It didn’t feel real that this baby that was on my chest was mine!

Sore – That’s an understatement really. After an episiotomy, Noah had been pulled out by Forceps and I was being stitched up for almost an hour. I felt like Edward Scissor hands had done a number on me by the end of it!

Regret – This one stayed with me for about 6 weeks. I was SO tired as I hadn’t slept in months. I also had major anxiety and baby blues and I just wanted to feel normal again

Anxious – about everything. I didn’t want visitors incase I had to feed Noah and didn’t want to wap my boob out in front of people. Later on when I went on to bottle feed, I was anxious about feeding him when I went out. Going out was a MAJOR thing for me. What if he cried and I couldn’t console him? The list goes on…(this is still a major problem that I have #newmumprobs)

Resentment towards my husband – as he was asleep on MY hospital bed as I was trying to breastfeed Noah who couldn’t latch on because of an undiagnosed tongue tie and for other reasons…

Annoyed – people only post the good things on Social Media, I know that. But it didn’t make me feel any better when all I had seen was lovely smiley baby pictures and smiley mums and status’ like ” X slept 12 hours last night!” I had a screaming baby that I didn’t know whether he was tired or hungry etc and I was majorly sleep deprived.

Obviously Noah is my entire world and I felt guilty about feeling ALL of those things. I AM blessed to have a child who is healthy, but I just couldn’t help the way that I felt. The first 6 weeks are definitely the most difficult. It was only then that I started to enjoy being a Mummy.

I wanted to write this post to make other people aware that It’s not ALL rainbows and butterflies for everyone. When people say it’s hard having a baby, you are like “duh, obviously” but little did I know just HOW hard.

If you are reading this and you are in them first 6 weeks thinking “what have I done”, it gets easier, I promise you.