A new mum has received some advice from other mums after admitting that there have been times when she's felt some 'regret' at having a baby.
Children certainly change the lives of the people who have them but adding new members to the family isn't for everyone, and there's no denying that a person's life is irrevocably changed once they've got that responsibility.
Posting to Mumsnet, one woman told people, 'I regret having a baby', and was inundated with responses from people offering advice and guidance.
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She wrote that she loved her baby 'more than anything in the world' and would never want anything bad to happen to her child, but she 'just can’t shake the feeling that I regret having her'.
Expressing a desire to 'go back to my old life', the new mum said it was 'quiet, peaceful and unexciting', and that it was exactly what she wanted from her life.
She said that before her baby she worked from home, had quiet evenings and the occasional holiday but in the 10 months since giving birth, she's struggled to deal with the 'constant sense of responsibility' and 'always having to be on alert'.
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Hoping to get some help with her situation, she asked other mums whether parenting got easier as her child got older and what other parents had experienced.
Her post on Mumsnet got quite the response, as other mums reassured her that what she was feeling was normal and it did indeed get easier as time went by.
One mum broke it down by age groups and said that they'd found the first six months to be 'f**king awful', while the next six were 'slightly better but still f**king awful'. The mum went on to say that between the age of one and two was 'the worst phase ever' - but after that, things improved a lot.
The mum who'd made the post said she found the guide to be very useful and to the point.
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Someone else said they found parenting got easier as their children grew up and got 'better at entertaining themselves'.
Many others shared the same message that 'it will get better', and suggested that 'every parent has felt like that at some point'.
Another said that 'after a few years you don't really remember your old life' as parenting becomes 'the new normal'.
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Quite a few said that 'once they hit two it becomes easier' and lots of mums said that the older their kids got, the easier things became. She wasn't alone in how she was thinking, however, as one mum admitted she did 'mourn the time when I could fully switch off my brain' and not have to worry.
Topics: Life, Parenting, Social media
Joe Harker