Held my grandson for a little while question

I do hope she understands. I really do love children, but when so many women nurse their babies it is harder for us older ladies to hold them for a while. And there is the misinterpretation that bothers me.

I see what you mean there.. hopefully as the baby grows older, she will see how such a caring grandma you are..

I hope so. It is just that we live in another area of the city and my daughter-in-law has all her relatives close, and besides I do not drive and the bus route is very convulated getting there.

I do think that most adoptive parents did not have what I went through. I heard of girls giving their babies up for adoption, but then they married and in a few months or years, they got pregnant and gave birth to their first child and later on one or two more. So they never gave up a baby and found when they married, they could not get pregnant and that is because they felt no one would marry them so why not live a wild life? Then there is the attitudes. For those who are my age and maybe a little younger or older, when we got pregnant out of wedlock, there was only one choice adoption and it did not matter if you would have been a good mother (as in my case) or a bad mother. you had to give the baby up. But for the younger ones, those in their 30s and 40s, and some in their 50s, they feel that you should have kept the baby and even if they say it was right for you to give the baby up for adoption, they have this back in the mind that you really do not love babies that much even though you tell them that you did not have the help then. So it is a different of attitudes and culture.

I know women who have given up a child, I know adoptive parents and adoptees. And all these people outside of the job where I was part of the registry. I honestly think you are beating yourself up over the choices you made, or had to make. I agree, even as late as the '70, when children out of wedlock was becoming less of a stigma than it was before, a "good" girl gave up her child if she became pregnant... What you need to start doing is forgiving yourself, hun. Everyone makes mistakes, you can't spend the rest of your life hating yourself for making them. Things have you do affect you for life, but there is no reason not to get work on getting past them.

maybe if you hadn't had the one child early and had waited until you were married, you would've had at least one child, not necessarily more than one

When I had my kids nursing was not what most people did.

Yes back before the 60s, that was not what most women did. And I gave up my baby for adoption in the 60s so I never knew anyone who did.

It is a lot different if you had had your own children, then you can hand them back, but if you never went through the birthing experience (not counting the one you gave up for adoption) you would have felt different. You wish you had had the responsibility of nursing.

I am not a person to have to hold the baby when I see it I set back and watch how every one else do. I guess they think I am mean for not doing it and I dont know why I dont do it but I never did. Really only time I had my kids were to feed them was the same with Grand daughter that lives with me but we do hug every morning and every night! and I get good ones too!

I love holding babies. But I am shy about asking them in case they start making strange. Or needed to be fed and I do not mean some cheerios or a bottle. The other ladies the ones that are young mothers or the grandmothers they let them hold them and I feel as if it is because of my past, that they do not trust me as much.

I still did not like the idea as soon as the baby fusses, I would hand him back. It is sort of like the friends of mine who had been through raising children, having had all their own and are looking forward to being alone with their husbands and being grandparents. Well I never had those five or six kids of mine own to get tired of them, so I do not like to be assumed that I am like those glad to be empty nesters, because I am not.

you think to much of the past that is way gone if ya didnt harp on it maybe you would feel better holding the babies. I just hand back if they hungry !

I think society was more unforgiving then and it seems I had a lot of bad luck then. So I need more reassurance to make up for it, that is more babies to hold and cuddle.

But I never became a real grandmother, never was a real mother. The only time I carried a baby to term, I had to give her up for adoption. Now if I had adopted my sons when they were infants, that is in the first week or so, I would have had that experience but when you do not, people will wait until the baby is three months old before they let you hold him or her because they think you do not know how to hold the baby correctly.

It really hurt when I married and found I could not get pregnant and carry to term anymore. I felt that part of it was because that no one would marry me until the 70s because they wanted virgins and by the time, my husband proposed to me, it was too late even though I was in my late 20s and also that the damage that had been done had gone through my reproductive system gradually. I felt that had someone proposed to me in my early 20s or mid 20s at the latest, that an examination and a simple procedure from the doctor could have resolved the problem. So not only was I unable to bt*st feed I was also screwed. It was as if they wanted the children i WOULD adopt to have a disadvantage. If it were not for the fact that they got br*st milk at the hospital because they were premmies, I felt they might not have gone to university. As it is, I felt i was unable to give them that first few months because we did not get them until they are 3 months old. So it is not that I was unable to nurse, it was also those first three months of missing out.

It would not have hurt if it were not for those dammed studies that said that bottle fed babies are more inclined, etc. and if I had been given a chance to br* st feed my own sons or gotten pregnant later on, or was able to keep my daughter. Bot it seemed that it was all against me. It was as if society was trying to prove that I was bad.

I knew the baby was hungry and I could not feed him. If he were bottle fed as in the old days, there would not be a problem. You see there is disadvantages as well as advantages to br*st feeding. Only the mother can take care of the infant.

When we adopted our sons, we took turns feeding them as well, but they were twins and so when one was hungry the other one was not so it was sort different. But I think in those days when bottle feeding was the norm , the fathers had a greater participation then nowadays when it is mostly all on the mother until her milk stops.