YOUR SECRETS FIND A HOME • YOUR JOURNEY IS PRIVATE • YOUR WORDS ARE SAFE • YOUR SECRETS FIND A HOME • YOUR JOURNEY IS PRIVATE • YOUR WORDS ARE SAFE • YOUR SECRETS FIND A HOME • YOUR JOURNEY IS PRIVATE • YOUR WORDS ARE SAFE • YOUR SECRETS FIND A HOME • YOUR JOURNEY IS PRIVATE • YOUR WORDS ARE SAFE •
The StruggleBurnout

I resent my own baby when she wakes up

Dear Delyara, My daughter is five months old. She wakes every two hours. My husband works early shifts and sleeps in another room most nights because his job involves machinery and he says he needs to be safe. That makes sense. I still hate him at three in the morning. Tonight, the baby began crying forty minutes after I finally fell asleep, and my first thought was, I do not want you. The thought was instant and horrible. I picked her up anyway, fed her, kissed her head, did everything a loving mother does while feeling anger toward a person who weighs fourteen pounds and has no other way to ask for me. People tell me this stage passes. They show me pictures of sleeping babies and say I will miss it. I want to scream when they say that. I love my daughter. I also sometimes fantasize about walking into a hotel, switching off my phone, and sleeping until nobody knows where I am. Burnout in motherhood has no clock-out time. The person exhausting me is also the person whose warm cheek against my chest can make love hurt so badly I begin crying before she does.

ANONYMOUS