A mother says she felt “ashamed” after feeling “completely detached” to her newborn son following his birth four years ago.
Michaela from Wigan was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after four miscarriages and a still birth before her son was born in 2022.
“I just felt disbelief, like he wasn’t mine. I couldn’t make it add up that it could be OK,” Michaela said.
Michaela eventually received help from the Building Attachments and Bonds Support service (BABS), run by Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Trust, which works to connect mothers with their young children.
Michaela, who is now speaking out to urge others to get help, said she had always wanted to have children.
“I’ve always wanted to feel the kicks and get excited,” she added.
But her pregnancy was dominated by anxiety. She and her husband had spent years dealing with repeated loss and when Nico arrived in 2022, she was unable to properly respond.
“Everything I did, I just felt completely detached,” she said.
Michaela worked hard to overcome her feelings, playing with her son, telling him stories, researching the best way to build a bond, but nothing worked.
She said: “I met all his needs, so his nappy was always changed, I did baby-led weaning with him, I breast fed him for 18 months. From the outside, I looked like the perfect mum, the Instagram mum.”
Inside though, she said she was “a mess” and “couldn’t cope”.
“There was no bond, and I knew that he had bonded with me. And that was the hardest thing. I knew that I was his world. I knew it,” she added.
Clinical psychologist Dr Catherine Corker said it was a more common situation than many people realised, partly because so many mums were reluctant to speak up.
“It can still feel like such a taboo for someone to say, ‘I’m having really unexpected feelings about my baby. I didn’t expect to feel this way’,” she said.
“I think the feeling of shame and judgement and guilt gets in the way of people saying ‘I’m really struggling’.”