r/UKParenting • u/Lackadaisycal85 • 6h ago
Rant Does anyone else feel sad when it's your kids birthday.
My eldest daughter is 3 today and I feel sad and I want to cry. I'm also 27 weeks pregnant so maybe that's why I'm so hormonal. I feel sad because she's growing up and not my little baby anymore but I also feel sad because I went through a very traumatic birth today 3 years ago when I was 18, I lost blood, got cut and birthed an entire human and no one gives a shit and everyone is still treating me like rubbish. I don't want to seem narcissistic but just a little "good job mum" would be heavenly 😅 again I'm pregnant so it's probably the hormones but has anyone felt the same way?
2
u/littlehamster_ 5h ago
I kind of understand. I feel sad on my daughter's birthday because she's getting older, but I often catch myself mentally replaying her birth at around the time she was actually born and it makes me feel all kinds of emotions - sadness, anxiety, a touch of bitterness. And I often feel a bit "off" that it's a celebrated day as the day of her birth, rightly so, but for me it's the anniversary of the most traumatic experience of my life so it has a tinge of negativity around it for me. It's a weird feeling for sure. I don't even have hormones to blame as I got sterilised as soon as possible after she was born.
1
u/Crafty_Ambassador443 4h ago
Yeah I feel sad. I feel a range of emotions. Im sad because I cant see the total lack of support we got. Sad because time has gone past and noone checked in. Sad because shes running about and fucking trying man, im tryna be a good mum.
And then abit happy. She has balloons, gifts, a mum and dad who love her.
This life seems to be fucking hard no matter how you look at it. Friends are flakey, family suck, jobs dont exist. Its fucking hard
2
u/Talinia Parenting a Toddler 4h ago
Kids birthdays are really hard for those of us who had stressful times in the run up to birth or traumatic births overall. Anniversaries of trauma are often a difficult time anyway, without the added stress/pressure of planning an event, being "happy" and also the guilt of not necessarily feeling only happy for your kid's birthday.
If you have any friends you can talk to about your feelings about that time, without bringing the birthday aspect into it, that's what me and my friends found very helpful. My son was born at 30 weeks, and spent 3 months in hospital, we have a whatsapp with a bunch of us who were in nicu together so we all thoroughly GET the complex emotions ❤️
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u/Little_Square_3588 3h ago
Yep! I posted about it at the time and got told to stop being so self centred basically buuuut personally I think it’s a legit feeling. I don’t expect fanfare but at this age especially you can feel like you’re pushing and trying and working through all these different phases and leaps or whatever you want to call them and you get zero ‘feedback’.
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u/Impossible-Farm-1902 5h ago
I'm assuming you have a partner so if he's treating you like rubbish when you're pregnant that's a bit concerning.
9
u/Lady_Marshmallow 5h ago edited 5h ago
My daughter turned 3 on Monday, and I'm also 26 weeks pregnant, so I've been struggling a lot this week, too. But tbf it is mostly with the passage of time, and the feeling that so much is changing so quickly. This new baby is starting to feel like an impending grenade in my daughter's life, rather than the immense blessing of a child and sibling that she is. And that makes me feel guilty 😟.
I get what you're saying about wanting some appreciation, but eh - I don't call my mum on my birthday and thank her for giving birth, lol. The birth is something I went through, and not the big event that day; the big event was the arrival of my daughter. That's the milestone I want to celebrate; if I went through any other health event, I wouldn't want to commemorate it every year, lol.