This is so awful that I don’t even have words.
I’ve always had huge empathy and compassion towards Erin and for a long time I really felt that I couldn’t judge her for the way she expresses her grief for Lulu. But reading that, it really brings home how much the grief she is expressing is not for Lulu herself but for Erin and what she feels has been denied to her as a mother because of epilepsy.
It is not okay to put it out there publicly that you’ve never known the love of motherhood before when you already have a child - a beautiful, deserving child who is disabled through no fault of her own. It is one thing to feel grateful that you’ve had a better postpartum experience than your first. It sounds like Erin had PND with Lulu even prior to her epilepsy diagnosis. Many, many mums have a difficult time with the reality of a newborn, especially in our society that does not adequately support new parents or uphold realistic expectations around infant behaviour. So many women have birth trauma, and it’s real. Erin isn’t at fault if she struggled in her first postpartum. But she IS at fault if she refuses to get help for it because it is obviously still affecting her. She also needs to recognise that as awful as Lulu’s epilepsy is, even with a typically developing child, she may have not had a great postpartum. She seems to think parents of typical children have only good experiences. I don’t pretend to know what it’s like to be in her shoes, but all of us, if we are to be good parents, have to accept the children we have and their struggles. We don’t have to like the struggles, but we have to be able to see our children as worthy regardless. It feels like Erin can’t see the daughter she has, only the daughter she “should” have.
I had quite bad postnatal anxiety with my first, who had feeding difficulties and question marks over his health, and who was born while I was living isolated overseas while my father fought terminal cancer. I am not proud of the way I felt at certain points in his first 12 months or so. My anxiety made me feel like a bad mother and I questioned whether I should have become one. It was awful. And I am grateful that my second postpartum experience has been easier, even with some of the same struggles, because I was much more relaxed and confident with more realistic expectations. But I cannot even fathom saying what Erin has. My first made me a mother and taught me that I can endure even when it feels impossible — he is the one who showed me the scale of love a mother can feel. Erin really, really needs better therapy so that she can connect with Lu.
Erin has truly abandoned Lu. She’s written her off imo and Tom is her family now. She’ll have another child because she wanted 2 kids and Lu doesn’t ‘count’. I feel so awful for Luella. Despite her condition she knows her parents and I can’t imagine how it feels for her to have so little affection from her mother.
I’m so glad they found crystal so Lu can feel loved and cared for but disgusted that this is what it took for Lu to find someone who delights in her. You can tell Erin’s parents love Luella too, how do they all stand by and let her give up on her daughter? It’s revolting.
from her posts she clearly had pretty bad ppd after Luella but it feels like she blames Luella and her disability for that instead of recognising it and getting help.
Agree with this. I actually think she probably still has PPD and it’s manifesting in her not being able to bond with Luella. She can’t seem to see that the way she feels about Luella is not normal, even with her having epilepsy.
And what if Lu needs you
what if she wants to sleep on you.
no way you’d do that. FFSSSSS IM SO ANGRY
I wouldn’t have had an issue with this part of her post if she’d followed it up by saying “if only I had done the same with Lu”. Isn’t that the more normal way to think? Lots of mums are more relaxed with their second babies and end up contact napping etc after being strict with their first babies because they think they are supposed to follow all the sleep training rules, but usually those mums end up feeling sad that they didn’t do the same with their first babies. I did contact nap and cosleep with my first but I know I regret that I got stressed out that I was doing the “wrong thing”. Erin seems to be more saying that she missed out on all that with Lulu because of Lulu.
Yet again trying to put the blame on medical professionals.
