The Baby as a Friend

E., your child will need you for MANY more years! Your child will suffer if you dont remeber that. Please get help with these feelings.

Hi E.,
First good job on the ability to voice your feelings and relize them. I have three sons and i find it interesting how the mom feelings can be. My oldest two I am find with but my younest is a different story, I do not feel the same about him, I love him and he gets the same care as the other ones but our personailty clashes. For a long time these feelings I did not have bothered me, I felt like a failure of some kind. Then I relized it was not all bad just different. Society today has a good way of telling moms how they must feel and what they must do if they do not do these things theres something wrong, guess what every mom and every kid is different. Here is my advice, first make sure there is some "me" time, I am also a SAHM and I get to feeling used some how because I am always caring for or doing something someone needs, I learned the hard way how important it is to maintain an indenty beyond mom/wife. If you are feeling overwhelmed that can be the reason for your feelings toward your daughter, if you used to cuddles her and hug/kiss her and thing have just recently changed then there might be cause for concern.But if its just who you are to not hug and cuddle your daughter at all times then be ok with that. I have older kids, my oldest is 9 and I will tell you that you need to have a parent/child relationship not a friendship. Be sure that even at 9 months old that you understand your daughter needs you to be there to teach her and guide her not be her friend.What you do now will determine who she is later in life and it will make a differece in how easy or hard life will be when she is older.
I guess the best thing for you to being doing is evaluating yourself. Ask yourself many questions and answer them, write them down if you must.......for starters was your daughter planned or was she a suprize........is being a SAHM really something you want or do you feel sometimes like you want to have a job for the break and the adult contact........do you find being a mom difficult and sometimes long for the days you did not have a child to worry about and care for. Ask yourself these and be honest all anwsers are ok if you are honest with yourself and if theres something in you that you do not find confortable with try to find the reasons why you feel that way and take care of them, get to know who you are as a mom. My mom had the best words of advice for me after my first was born she said (and was very honest)you know after your sister(her oldest) was born I at times felt like i wanted to give her up........her reasons for telling me this is to get me to understand being a mom does not always come with warm fuzzy feelings, there are negative feelings to and its ok and normal to have those feelings its what you do with them that matters.Again socity makes us feel like those feelings are wrong and we are bad moms so then we have guilt on top of it all.I believe there are basics to being a mother and raising kids, first its important to not let your kids have control over you, displine them with love not anger and fear,make them feel important never break their spirit, and find ways to make them feel loved and wanted. How a parent goes about doing this is always differnet in each case. I hope this makes a little sense if you would like to cotact me feel free ____@____.com luck!

L.

You have some good responses thus far. If I were feeling the way you are then I would worry as well. It is for good reason that you are wondering. However you would not be half as good of a mom if you did not wonder about this. So you feel the way you do right now. Reassure yourself that you are a great mom and want to be a great mom otherwise you never would of asked this question. YaY for YOU>
You need to find a group of stay at home moms in the area that you can get together with. Or some friends just for you. It is really important that you have a life outside of being mom and wife/significant other. Try chruches or the neighborhood, perhaps even online. I am not sure how to go about it but you need some time being you also.
The other thing I would start to do is remind yourself of how much you love and want to take care of this wonderful little girl. How you would do anything to protect her and to keep her safe. That you are there to guide her through her life to help her as much as she needs. Just start to give her more hugs and kisses than you usually do. For no reason at all. It will help her emotional growth as well as yours. A child needs at least 7-8 hugs or more depending on age to maintain emotional health to emotionally grow they need more. It is proven fact. So give her lots of affection and you will start to find yourself open up a bit more to the emotions within you. They are there no need to worry about that. You proved that with the question. take care. Be good to you and your daughter. You are very brave to open yourself up so much to others for your daughter. Just to make sure your being all you can be. Very brave mom you are.

Do you, while playing with your daughter, get an urge to just hug and/or kiss her? I think that being there for them to discover their independance IS being a mom and friend.

My younger daughter is 11 months old. I sit in the floor and just let her do what she's going to do. She will occasionally come throw herself at me and crawl on me and just play. Letting her discover the things around her is playing and being responsible for her.

I mean, if she fell down and hurt herself, you'd be there for her to cuddle and make her feel better, right? That being the case, I think things are fine.

The same type of thing happened to me when my little boy was about 10 mths old! It is pretty normal, but you should make time for cuddling. This can be done by simply reading a short book to her at nap or bedtime when she is in the mood for cuddling. As she becomes more independant you will find yourself longing for those cuddle moments and treasuring the ones that do come. My son is now 3 yes old and if he doesn't get story and cuddle time at bed he is not happy. Another thing that helped me through that time was finding people who had kids around the same age. When you get together the kids play and you get "adult friend" time. I hadn't realized that I had cut that out of the picture and didn;t realize how much I needed it until I had made time for it! Hope this helps!

E.,
Do you ever get a chance to just spend time by yourself? I wonder if you may need it...
I am a grandmother that has learned through trial and error. I can tell you that you can only feel what you feel. Just remember... when you don't feel as attached as you think you should be is that the precious child before you is your responsibilty and everything you do needs to be for her...the rest will work itself out.
T.