You’re standing in the kitchen trying to prepare food with a baby who doesn’t want to be put down. You haven’t showered, there’s laundry everywhere and your partner has texted to say they’ll be home late. 

For a moment, you think, ‘I wish I could have my old life back.’ Then almost immediately comes another thought: ‘What sort of mother thinks that?’

Perhaps you spent months or even years hoping to become a mum. You imagined holding your baby, taking them home, watching them grow. Maybe getting here wasn’t easy. And you love your child so much.

So why are there moments when you yearn for your old life? Why do you often resent being the one who is needed all the time? Why can seeing your partner leave the house (without needing to think about feeds, naps, childcare or what needs packing in the change bag) make you feel so furious?

Perhaps there are even moments when you wonder what your life would look like if you had made different life choices.

And that can be a very difficult thing to admit.

Why do I feel guilty for resenting motherhood?

There’s plenty we’re allowed to complain about when we become mothers. Jokes about never finishing a hot cup of tea, going to the toilet with an audience or realising at 5pm that we still haven’t cleaned our teeth.

But saying, ‘Sometimes I hate being a mum’ can feel very different.

Because what if somebody misunderstands? What if they think you don’t love your child, or that you’re ungrateful? Perhaps you know someone who would give anything to have a baby and here you are wishing, even for a moment, that you could have your old life back.

That’s when a difficult feeling can turn into something else.

Shame.

It’s no longer only, ‘I’m struggling with this.’ It becomes, ‘What does feeling this way say about me?’

Can I love my child and still resent being a mum?

Yes, two things can be true at the same time.

Motherhood routinely leads a woman to experience a series of losses. You can love your child and miss the life you lived before they arrived. You can be grateful to be a mum and also resent how much motherhood asks of you. You can desperately want a child and still find the reality of becoming a parent infinitely harder than you expected.

One feeling doesn’t automatically cancel out the other. Different thoughts and feelings can co-exist, even if they are in conflict.

We humans are complicated. Our feelings don’t always line themselves up neatly so that the ‘right’ ones are on one side and the ‘wrong’ ones are on the other.

Sometimes we feel things that seem to completely contradict each other, and that can be confronting. Especially when one of those feelings is something we believe we’re not supposed to have. 

What happens when you’re ashamed of how you feel?

When something feels too difficult to say out loud, it doesn't disappear, you carry it around with you instead.

You might question yourself every time the feeling comes up. You might push it away, tell yourself you shouldn’t feel it or look at other mums who seem to be coping beautifully and wonder why you can’t just be more like them. Perhaps you feel you don’t know anything anymore, or wonder who on earth you are now.

And when nobody else is talking about feeling this way, it’s very easy to believe that nobody else does.

So you keep it to yourself. You bite your tongue, you tell no one how you really feel. Better to be alone with this than share it and be misunderstood. But your mood is low and you secretly cry a lot.

This can all be exhausting. You’re not only dealing with the realities of motherhood and the feelings you have about all the changes it's brought; you’re also carrying the weight of believing you shouldn’t be feeling that way in the first place.

And shame tends to grow when it has to stay hidden.

Talking about difficult feelings without being judged

Sometimes simply being able to put something into words makes a difference.

It doesn’t magically make everything better. But you don’t have to keep carrying the weight of it around in quite the same way.

And that’s one of the things that can be really helpful about postnatal counselling.

You can talk about the thoughts and feelings you’d struggle to say to your mum, a friend, your partner – or anyone else. You’re talking privately to another person who isn’t there to decide whether what you’re feeling makes you a good mum or a bad one.

You might finally be able to say, ‘Sometimes I really resent being a mum.’

And instead of immediately having to defend yourself or rush to add, ‘But obviously I love my child’, you can stay with it for a while.

When you have a baby you lose sleep, time to yourself, a sense of personal independence, your previous work & routines, money, a sense of competence. Relationships change with your friends and family. There are changes with your body, your sexuality, your energy, your whole identity. 

So what are you missing most? What are you exhausted by? What do you need? What else might be sitting underneath that resentment? 

There may not be a neat answer, and talking about it doesn’t promise to make challenging feelings disappear.

But perhaps they don’t need to disappear before you’re allowed to talk about them.

Perhaps you can start by allowing both things to be true.

You love your child.

And also being a mum is really hard and there are hateful feelings too.

Would you like somewhere you can say the things you don’t normally say?

If some of this feels uncomfortably familiar, you don’t need to have it all worked out before you talk to someone about it.

If you’d like to find out more about working with me, get in touch. We can think about what’s been going on for you and whether I might be the right person to help. If I don’t have space I can also recommend perinatal colleagues who may be able to help too. I'd love to hear from you.

 

Pippa Watson Rees,

October 2026

References

Lucy Jones (2023) “Matrescence” London, Penguin Books

Dr Paula Nicolson, (2001) “Postnatal Depression: Feeling the Paradox of loss, happiness and motherhood.” Chichester, Wiley & Sons ltd