A mom of two girls made a confession that no child should ever hear:  “I’ve never liked my child.”

A woman, writing under the assumed name of Jennifer Rabiner, bravely shares her story in the current issue of Redbook magazine and also spoke about it in an interview with Today (clip below).

“I thought that she would be vivacious and smart and loving and make intense eye contact,” she tells the show of her first daughter, called “Sophie” in the magazine.   “That was just not what happened.”

Baby Sophie was a difficult baby.  She slept and ate very poorly, didn’t make eye contact.   “She did not meet the milestones that all the books that I read indicated that she should be making at the various ages,” she said on Today.

“As you can probably imagine, I felt guilty that I was basically repelled by my own child. Who wouldn’t? But honestly, the guilt was overshadowed by a colossal sense of disappointment.  This just wasn’t the magic of mother-daughter bond that every book I read, every movie I saw and every family I’d ever met had led me to expect,” she writes.

It’s amazing that Rabiner even decided to get pregnant with a second child, after revealing her feelings about her first.  When her daughter “Lilah” was born, she had a much different experience.

“Lilah was exactly the baby I’d envisioned: strong and healthy, with a penetrating gaze,” she wrote.   “She nursed vigorously and smiled and laughed easily. She talked early and often and, even as a toddler, befriended everyone she met. When I hugged her, she squeezed back hard, and I felt my own heart beating in two bodies at once.”

Although some may be shocked by this mother’s confession, she finally came to realize what was causing her to have these feelings about her child.

When Sophie was seven, she was diagnosed with a growth hormone deficiency which had caused her slow development – which explained the developmental delays. 

Why did it take so long to diagnose her?  Rabiner was prompted by another mother when Sophie was four to finally stand up to being the parent and be Sophie’s “rock”.  She finally started seeing a psychologist and it wasn’t until her pediatrician did further tests to confirm the issue.

Only after having a second child and having her first child diagnosed properly, did Rabiner embrace being a mother completely.

“It gave me a new perspective on her challenges,” she said on Today.

“It made me gentler with her struggles and it also gave me more patience. It made me feel like instead of me against her, it was us against this diagnosis and I felt like we were on the same team.”

How is her relationship with Sophie now?  Does Sophie show signs of the damage?

“I watch her sometimes, looking for clues of the emotional scarring I fear I’ve inflicted, but I see none,” she writes.

“Instead, she takes running leaps into my arms, her strong legs squeezing my middle in her signature ‘cobra hug.’ Do we see eye to eye? Almost never. But do I try to prop her up every single day anyway? Yes, I do. After all, I’m her mom.”