Post Partum

Thinking Scary Thoughts after Having a Baby

“I couldn’t stop the images of throwing my baby through a window or smothering her out of my head. I felt like a terrible mother! How could I think these things?”

Afraid that if she told someone she was having these intrusive thoughts her child would be taken away she kept them to herself, enduring months of anxiety, guilt and shame. It was only years later, and significant time in therapy, that she allowed herself to say them out loud. The relief she felt from voicing these thoughts was immediate. “Why did it take so long for someone to understand what I was going through? If I had found someone who understood when I was living through the hell of my daughter’s first year, my experience of motherhood would have been much different.”

If you are having such thoughts, you are not alone.

It’s not only you, and you are not going to hurt your baby.

According to Jonathan Abramowitz, a psychology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “Intrusive thoughts are virtually universal among both new mothers and new father.” Parents can have thoughts of throwing their baby, putting them in a microwave, killing them through suffocation or stabbing, or having sexual thoughts about their infant. He went so far as saying, “If parents say they don’t have them, they’re lying.”

For some parents, these thoughts become persistent and highly distressing. They can even affect a new parents’ ability to function. Take heart though, if these thoughts are distressing for you, it is a clear sign you are not going to do anything to hurt your baby. There is a difference between postpartum psychosis (a larger delusional worldview, such as believing your child is from Satan, that is the motivating factor behind news stories of women actually killing their children) and postpartum OCD. With OCD, the thoughts/urges/images feel alien, distressing and cause overwhelming anxiety. “It’s a horror movie that’s going on in your own head.”

What you can do

If you are worried about the thoughts you are having, that’s a good sign. If your thoughts seem totally out of character for you and you know they are irrational and do not make sense, it shows the thoughts are obsessive symptoms of acute anxiety. You do not need to feel the enormous guilty burden alone. Remember – these thoughts are NOT about who you are. They are symptoms. The good news is these symptoms are treatable. It is important to get help. Talk to your partner. Talk to your doctor. Reach out to someone who understands. You deserve it.