Examples of harm thoughts

In the words of the mothers I interviewed for my doctoral research [pseudonyms are used for confidentiality]

“One horrible quite vivid one was him floating face down with his little hair.. hmm, it was horrible…yeah and just a mottled colour. Yeah, that I’d taken my eye off him for a second. I don’t know what I’d done… and then just turned back to the bath like that.” FEE*

“I think most of the thoughts have either been about me shaking him, maybe putting a pillow… even though we don’t have a pillow in his bed… over his head, or throwing him against a wall.”  MALIA

“… everybody also saw that you had this beautiful baby and you should ‘Ohh, she’s so beautiful’, and ‘You’re so lucky’ when you didn’t feel like that. You just didn’t want to go, ‘No actually I feel like throwing her off a bridge’.” YVETTE

 *See Publication tab for details of full published article