PPD fantasies and what are they good for?
I never experienced PPD, thanks for that. But I know such fantasies as other described them, if even in a milder form. And I was asking myself, what are these fantasies good for? Here is what I figured out:
In pregnancy senses sharpen to sort out bad food. So things would smell fool or taste fool or will cause nausea. That is for protecting mother and child. Right?
After birth that is no longer necessary. But now there are other threats. So our intuition sharpens to help us rcognize dangers. One of my fantasies f.ex. is seeing DD fall from a tower or drowning. Just because I let her slip through my finbgers. That flashes up before my inner eye on a bridge when DD is looking into tha water. And my grip gets tighter. I am sure mother in neolitic age had visions of bears or saber-toothed tigers carrying their children away. Today it is about cars or knives. So our fantasies warn us, and we can protect our children. If necessary even from us self.
And as horrible as those fantasies can be they are good.
Is there an anthropologist among us? Can you confirm this? Does it make sense to you?
...the lover, the dreamer, and me (Jim Henson)
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i agree, not a professional but i once heard that daydreaming about scenearios help us work out solutions so i think that is perfectly valid! it is just keeping it in check, reality wise, that is tricky!
it kinda makes sense, but some of the things aren't that helpful - i was terrified every time I walked through a doorway that I would split my son's head open, which kinda makes sense because I could be extra careful to protect him, but when we were in the hospital I had this image of his face peeling off. Which there is no real solution to. Or my friend who was terrified that she would somehow throw her baby at the wall. Not that she wanted to, but that somehow something would force her to. Another one that seems more scary, and unhelpful.
But yeah, falling and knives are reasonable, I don't know
I think that too an extent these things are healthy, but sometimes they cross over into scenarios that are unreasonable and unlikely. Like my friend used to fear that she would accidentally put her baby in the fridge. There's no precaution to take there except not putting baby in fridge, or long drawn out crazy scenarios that moms dwell on for hours, getting wrapped up in bad thoughts.
I think for some moms the scenarios get out of hand, and start mucking up normal thoughts.
But knives and doorways and such I think that is us just adjusting to caring for a baby and understanding that we do have to look at some things with a new level of safety, and I would be totally curious to know how neolithic moms handled mom stuff--very interesting to me.
until eliot was about a year old that I was going to drop her on the cement. And yes she was my third. But I was nervous everytime we were out that I couldn't hold her cause I might drop her and give her some horrible affliction. Interesting. But it made me almost to paranoid to even hold her while we were out and about.
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