Feelings Towards Your Child
Are you feeling strange carrying this child? Or feelings toward your child coming to mind that you’d rather not admit? Sometimes our feelings are very powerful. They are capable of steering us one way or another. Feelings make people do right things or wrong. Feelings can be fleeting and some can be constant and unbearable. No matter what you are feeling it doesn’t do any good to just say you shouldn’t be thinking what you are thinking. Some women who give birth in loving marriages have trouble bonding to their child. Just because your child wasn’t conceived in a good way doesn’t mean that you’ll have these feelings toward your child forever.
While you’re pregnant all kinds of thoughts run through your mind. And the worst is, “Will my child look like my attacker?” That has to be hard. But I’m going to have women who have a child who looks like the attacker speak on this. Remember if it is too hard for you you’re still a hero and you can place the child for adoption. There is always a solution. Don’t live with fear. It isn’t healthy for your baby if you’re pregnant and it’s definitely not good for you.
If you’re pregnant it’s hard to imagine a cuddly lil bundle of joy after what just happened right? So if you’re just not feeling it yet it might happen when the baby starts to move and you realize that is another human being in there – your baby. One woman said the very moment she saw the positive pregnancy test she wanted to “get it out.” But the very next thought was “This is MY baby!” And no one was going to take her baby away from her. For others it took a bit longer. Another girl said, “At first it was hard but when he smiled his first smile at me I melted.” Remember everyone is different. You’ve been hurt and you’re not a bad person for having thoughts. One thing you can keep telling you is that this baby is YOUR baby. He/she is grateful for the life you gave them and is not the man that hurt you. This baby is innocent just like you and needs you. It might take awhile – that first smile or maybe a time when you’re the only one that can stop the baby from crying because you’re his mommy. Moments like that will build your confidence. When people compliment you and say how precious your baby is you can rest assured it’s because he’s YOUR baby not your attacker’s. Your baby won’t hurt you. Here’s what one woman said about her feelings toward her child:
The Love of My Life
By Tayhise Martinez-Williams
There was a time when I believed as many believe that a child of rape was a monster child – not real and not deserving love. I was 12 years old pregnant, by incest, alone and carrying a child-that to me was gonna look like the guy from the movie mask and act like Godzilla. No, I did not kill her because, to me, even Godzilla deserved life. So I ran away from home and began my journey down a very lonely path, which I might add fueled the fire of my deepest fears. One day though I went to see an ultrasound. The doctor told me, “Your child is normal.” My mind did not comprehend these words until she was born. During the entire pregnancy his words rang deep in me “your child is developing very normal.”
How can this be? Questions brewing in my head, he must be mistaken. So I believe I was 6 ½ months along when I was told that we were going to have another look at the child, this time I kept eyes open, almost hoping to find, horns, a tail I don’t know something to prove that “it” was a monster. What I found was not what I expected at all, I found myself smiling and asking is the baby OK, shocked by my own words for the first time since the conception of my child I called her a baby, not it, not this thing a baby. I remember so clearly in that instance I swore I saw my precious smile at the camera (must have been my eyes playing tricks on me). That moment on I began to earnestly seek her movements, talk to her in love, whispering to her in night where I was so alone telling her I will do better. The ultrasound made me see her for who she was, will be and for the yet to come. On the day I gave birth to my beloved little girl, the adoptive mom asked me, “Do you want to hold her?” Well scared that she may have eyes of a demon, or even vampire teeth, I still said, “Yes.” I saw a perfect, beautiful curly haired girl that looked like me. The resemblance shook me to my core; wait this little child was an image of me. Slowly so no one would see I opened my mouth, still very leery but now holding her tight to my chest. I whispered to her, “I will give you what I never had – love.” I must say she was, is and forever will be worth it.