I Should Have Given Her Up or Why Mental People Shouldn't Have Children.

Today I was talking to my daughter and explaining to her what Avoidant Personality Disorder is and how it is normally developed in people who are shy as children and feel rejected by a parent.  She told me she knew and that she felt exactly the same way. She told me she felt rejected by two parents.

Her dad left us when I was just 3 months pregnant so he was never in her life. It made me sad to think that she felt rejected by me as well, even though I could understand why. Our conversation made me think back through the years to when I was pregnant with her.

I was barely 17 when I became pregnant. Not once during my pregnancy did I ever think about aborting my baby or giving it up for adoption.  I remember that I constantly thought about how wonderful it was going to be to finally have someone in my life to love and who would love me back unconditionally, someone who would always accept me for who I was and not judge me or make me feel like an outcast.  I thought about holding it in my arms and rocking it and giving it all the love I felt inside my heart. I had felt so alone my whole life, felt rejected and unloved by my parents, judged by my siblings because I was so emotional and "different" than everyone else in my family.  Here was this baby to love and love me back. I could hardly wait till it was born.

When I went into labour, there were slight complications and I remember the nurses kept putting the oxygen mask on my face. They had one arm strapped down with an intravenous needle in my arm. I am not sure why, maybe I was bleeding more that normal. The doctor had to tear me because her head was too large to come through. When she finally came out, they didn't hand her to me right away. They took her away to clean her up and when they finally put her in my arms, I was so high on the oxygen they were giving me, that I felt detached and all I remember thinking was that she had no hair.

After that they took her somewhere and put her in an incubator because she was jaundiced and I didn't get to hold her for 2 days.

When I brought my baby girl home, reality sank in and nothing was the way I had imagined it during my pregnancy.  There was not the instant bonding and hours of cuddling and rocking I had anticipated during my pregnancy.

She was a collicky baby and she cried continually for hours on end, her face red, and her poor little tummy hard and extended, her legs stiffened.  I would hold her and feed her a bottle, only to have her throw the whole thing up, crying again in hunger, so I would have to feed her all over.  I remember walking with her at night while she screamed and stiffened in my arms. I remember laying her on her back and gently pushing her little legs up to her belly to try to relieve some of the pain she was feeling.  

I finally went to the doctor who had delivered her and he was no help. He told me I was spoiling her and that I should stop picking her up and let her cry and that she would be fine. He didn't bother to look into any possible reasons for her discomfort. I knew I wasn't spoiling her. I felt so helpless and alone. I felt detached and depressed. When she was 3 months old I took her off the formula and started her on whole milk and the collic ended. 

I remember the nights when she slept and how I would lay awake and listen for her breathing and how I would get up and put my hand on her chest till I felt her heart beat. Once I knew she was safe I could fall asleep. I remember taking pictures each and every month of her first year so I could record all the special moments and keep them in my  memory. I remember the love that would swell up in my heart each time I looked at her beautiful face. 

I can't remember all the early months and years clearly.  I know that I loved her but she was not an easy child. She was high strung and demanding and because I suffered from severe chronic depression, it was difficult for me to pick her up every time she cried and screamed for my attention. I would often just sit there feeling detached. I remember crying a lot. 

When she was 10 months old we moved from my parents home into a little mouse infested motel. I remember sitting on the steps and just crying and crying for hours on end, thinking about her dad, feeling all alone and lonely.When I looked at her my heart would swell with all the love I felt for her. Then she would whine or cry, demanding my attention, and I just felt detached and overwhelmed. I was so young and messed up and I had no idea how to give her what she needed.

When I wasn't crying or depressed, during the times when I was in my hyper manic state, I would go out drinking with friends and leave her with my parents or my sister to babysit. 

I know my parents and my sister knew what a struggle it was for me, and they often told me I should give her up because they could see that I was not mature enough to deal with the hard parts of being a parent.  My sister was 5 years older than me and was married with 2 children of her own. She had problems of her own with a husband who went out drinking and left her all alone with 2 small children. She came from the same family as I had and had the same miserable upbringing, so she had her own issues, and taking on another child was not something she could handle.  

My sister and her husband were friends with a couple who could not have children of their own and who were looking to adopt. She put the idea to me that I should let them adopt Jennifer, my daughter.  They had spent time with her and really wanted her for their own. Part of me knew it was best for her but a part of me didn't want to just give up. I couldn't bring myself to give her away.  I knew inside that it was a selfish decision but I couldn't do it.

When she was 18 months old I married and became pregnant with a son.

I know from the time she was two to five years old, I continued to go through broken relationships, depression and emotional issues in my own life.  Maybe I showed more affection or attention to my son, even though I didn't love or favour him more (contrary to my mother's accusations).  He was just easier. Whereas she was demanding and cranky, he was calm and easy, always smiling, never crying.  I don't remember that I especially picked him up more or went out of my way to show him affection, but where she would whine and demand, he would just gently come up and climb on my knee so that I had no choice but to hold him. If she had been the type of child that would just climb on my knee I could have shown her the attention she needed. But she wasn't a quiet child. She spent the first three months of her life curled up in pain from a collicky stomach and it was the only way she knew to be heard.  I was just too immature and screwed up myself and, even though I felt love for her in my heart, I wasn't able to deal with the loud demands to get my attention and would recede inside myself.

When she was five, during one of my depressive modes, I sent her to live with my parents. I was still incapable of dealing with the emotional demands she put on me and the hardships of being a single parent.  When she was six I moved back home to be with her but the emotional scars were deep by then. I always felt guilty and sorry but that could not change what we had gone through. We were never really close but I think things got better between us for the next few years. She got older and I matured a little and it wasn't so hard. She had a closer relationship with my mother and I guess she got the love from her she never felt from me. So thankfully she, at least, had that. 

So this is why I say I should have given her up and mental people shouldn't have children. Because of my lifelong issues with depression and feelings of inadequacy, feelings of being unloved and unlovable, I turned my daughter into the same emotional, psychological wreck that I am.

If I had had the courage and selflessness to give her up to two parents who were mature enough to know what they wanted, and would have loved and cherished her and given her all the things she needed to grow into a happy child, she would have had a completely different life, been a completely different person. She might have been an emotionally balanced, stable person with the ability to have and keep a healthy relationship instead of this person who has spent her life trying to deal with the rejection of two parents.

I can't change things but I do love her and I'm sorry for how things turned out and how she feels. I am especially sorry for scarring her the way I was scarred.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study is to understand the parenting experiences of women with mental illness from the perspectives of mothers and case managers employed by the state department of mental health. METHODS: Six focus groups of mothers and five focus groups of case managers met to discuss the problems facing mothers with mental illness and to recommend solutions. Focus-group transcripts were coded and items grouped by themes in qualitative analyses to explore the conflicts mothers face in meeting the dual challenges of parenting and living with mental illness. RESULTS: Mothers and case managers identified sources of conflict in four thematic categories: the stigma of mental illness, day-to-day parenting, managing mental illness, and custody of and contact with children. CONCLUSIONS: Many of the issues of mothers with mental illness are generic to all parents; others are specific to the situation of living with mental illness. Mothers with mental illness must play a role in developing standards for clinical care and the research agenda in this area.....read more here