I was reading an article in a magazine about the phenomenon of mothers who don’t feel that instantaneous rush of love when first presented with their baby that we’ve been told we should feel. One mother felt really down on herself and wondered what was wrong with her because she had loved her first child, a boy, the moment he was laid in her arms, but she didn’t feel anything for her second child, a girl. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks after the birth, while washing her daughter, that she developed that feeling of love and adoration.
I don’t want to know if you did love your child, but don’t now (a completely separate subject) only if it took you more than, let’s say, a day to feel love for your new baby, and if you did start to love your child, what triggered it.
This is a complex thing for me to answer. I loved my children unconditionally from the moment they were born and I was very excited and thrilled from the experience but also very scared, especially with the first one. I would have gladly sacrificed my own life to spare them at even before they were born. However, I don’t like newborns all that much. My daughters had colic and it was hell for all of us for a few months each time. I knew what I was getting into and mentally prepared myself for it and knew it would pass which it did after what seemed an eternity.
I have two living daughters out of three. The middle one died at 6 weeks of age from one of the rarest genetic diseases known and it took some of the best Harvard Medical School doctors to even diagnose it so that we could have another child and we lived in a special apartment within Children’s Hospital Boston Neonatal ICU for a month while she was dying. Sophie was in a coma most of that time and we knew that she would die. The experience was as horrible as horrible gets but I don’t think about it all that much except when questions like this come up. I certainly affected me for good but I never really knew her. Her little sister was born almost exactly a year later and she in one of the loves of my life.
My point is that while I did love my children from birth, I grew to love them a lot more as they got older and got to know them and their personalities. I don’t think you can have full-fledged love of all definitions of the word until you get to know who a person is.
Actually, from before, at least with the first two. The third was unplanned, with a shorter-than-I-wanted interval between her and the second. In fact, I was still nursing the second when I got pregnant. So the first month of so after I found out was kind of rough. But by the time she arrived, I was looking forward to her. Never a day when I wasn’t in love with any of them.
I won’t talk about the times I didn’t like some of them, but that was later.
No, I didn’t. I had a really,* really* bad case of postpartum depression and I felt nothing for her until around the time she was able to smile at me. The more she could communicate, the more I loved her. Now that she won’t shut up I couldn’t adore her more. But at first she was just a chore as I was preoccupied with my extreme depression.
I don’t know if I loved my daughter right away or not, but I definitely did not immediately feel that intense bonding that mothers are just kind of expected to feel. I thought she was sweet and cute and it would have devastated me if anything had gone wrong, but compared to how I felt about her a couple/few weeks later, it was not the same. I didn’t know her yet and I felt traumatized and depressed and in pain from the birthing experience.
I think the unrealistic expectation that parents will always feel the immediate surge of love needs to stop.
Yes, it is complicated. I have had depression all my life. I was well into my 30’s when I got pregnant, never planned to, it was truly shocking! I wasn’t quite right in the head during my pregnancy because I would go out to garage sales every single day and haul home tons of baby stuff! My husband and his mother would “sort through it” for me (and get rid of most of it), lol! Add to that I didn’t have any friends or relatives with babies, I had no experience with them at all, I was stuck out in the suburbs with only Dr. Spock and Penelope Leach books for references, AND I was terrified out of my wits 24/7. They would bring the baby in to the hospital room for me to feed and I could not grasp that it was really mine and was actually kind of relieved when they took it back to the nursery. Brought the baby home and you’d think there was a time bomb upstairs there in the crib! But after a while I got into a routine, we didn’t suffer through the colic thing, and I relaxed and the love just grew from there. And grew and grew, through the crawling and learning to walk and the teething and the potty training…it was all good, and we did all right! My baby has a college degree now and my love has never ever wavered. But the first 2 or 3 months, it wasn’t like a Lifetime Movie, while I was feeling my way,
I joke that I didn’t bond with my kids until they were old enough to share a beer. It didn’t take that long but I didn’t feel an instant connection. It’s been a long time (45 years since the first) so I can’t describe the feeling precisely. I felt protective of him but I don’t think I “bonded” until he did something that made it feel like he was “mine” and that he needed me – not just somebody but me. Maybe it was the first fever or the first diaper rash. Whatever it was, I fixed it and I felt competent, like a mother, rather than someone who had given birth.
I loved my son from the moment I knew I was pregnant. My daughter ws unplanned, and came at a very difficult time in my marriage, so for the first few days I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of her. I got used to it pretty quickly though, and I’ve loved them both more and more every day since. Even so, I still threaten to sell them on ebay at least once a week.
My husband had a harder time. He loved our son but didn’t really bond with him for a while, and It took him about a year to really like our daughter (in hubby’s defense, she was a difficult baby). Now she has him completely wrapped around her finger in the timeless tradition of fathers and daughters everywhere, and our son is his buddy.
The night after our first was born, I called my mother hysterical. Breastfeeding was already making me crazy (I hated every minute of nursing both my kids. It’s an odd problem only I seem to have.) and I wasn’t letting myself switch to formula. I was convinced he would just shrivel up and die if I did. I was so preoccupied with the feeding issue and fear that I couldn’t bond yet. I could only feel the weight of obligation.
With my second, I called my mother hysterical, this time because I was going to leave and let the hospital find him a great home. I was not able to do this. I was going to screw him up. This was too soon.
My mother talked me out of my insanity both times. So, I guess I loved them and felt happy with both, but I was also terrified. As that fear abated, the love grew and became much more uncomplicated.
The childbirth experience was so overwhelming (and so fast–I went from water breaking to delivery in 2 1/2 hours, and only pushed for about 25min) that when they put my son on my chest, I think the only emotion I was in touch with was bewilderment. Here was this grey, sticky, screaming baby that just came out of me lying on my chest, and he was MINE. Holy crap I have a BABY! :eek:
RuffLlama’s lungs were quite developed and functional for being 3 weeks early, and as he screamed away from the trauma of birth, I kept apologizing to him. I mean, birth had to be traumatic for the little guy, right? The OB nurses were vexed and asked a few times why I would be apologizing. I just felt like, geez, he went from nice, quiet, snug, warm, dark, cozy living to OMG BRIGHT LIGHTS LOUD NOISES FLAILING LIMBS WAAAAAAAAAH!
I don’t even remember kissing him until after we brought him home three days later. It just didn’t occur to me. Again, the overriding emotion was bewilderment–or, more succintly, a serious case of WTF?! But, as time passed and we bonded, things changed.
I suspect this time around I’ll be much more attached to my second son (due in six weeks) simply because I’ll know a little better what it means to be having a baby.
Now, please excuse me while I freak out OMG SIX WEEKS?! GAH! NURSERY! LAUNDRY! DIAPERS! CLEANING! NESTING!
I had heavy implantation bleeding very early (like I had only known I was pregnant for a week) and it was the scariest thing that has ever happened to me, that I thought I was losing it. I knew then how much I loved that little cluster of cells.
When she finally came out (after 24 hours of contractions 2 minutes apart), she was crying and they brought her over to me and I said “Hi, baby” and she stopped crying and just tilted her head and looked at me and I bawled my eyes out, so happy to finally meet the little one that had me scared for so long. She was all that I hoped and thankfully I didn’t have any postpartum regrets.
torie, a lot of mothers hate breastfeeding after trying it. It’s not just you and it’s ok.
Shagnasty, I’m very sorry for your loss and thank you for sharing.
It was this way for me, too. I was interested in them, I cared for them, I took my responsibilities seriously but my feelings at first were nothing like what I felt for my kids a few weeks in.
My mother says she didn’t fall “in love” with me until I was about a year old.
The second I was born, I was whisked away to another city because I was dying and they had to get me to a NICU. She didn’t physically see me until I was a couple of weeks old (she nearly died too so was stuck in the hospital), and I didn’t go home until I was about a month old, so the bonding process was delayed. She said she knew she had to take care of me and all but the actual crazy in love part came later.
But then, I had a c-section under general anesthesia, and couldn’t lift her for a few weeks postpartum except to nurse, and I ended up with serotonin toxicity syndrome from badly combined meds, so for the first couple of weeks I felt like I was detoxing, which I guess in a way I was. Uncontrollable shakes, horrible nausea, no appetite whatsoever, and hypervigilance. Even when I wanted to sleep I couldn’t. The whole experience is pretty much why I never want to have more children, even though pretty much everyone who meets my daughter says she’s the best baby they’ve ever known. It took me weeks to really feel human enough to start bonding with her in any real way. Luckily, she was a newborn, and as long as she was fed and cuddled and changed and swaddled, she didn’t really seem to notice much that her mom was a total wreck.
No, I didn’t love my son when he was first born. It took about three weeks until I started to bond with him. I was in labor with him for over 32 hours, then developed eclampsia immediately after delivery. The resultant migraine I had for two weeks from the combination of the seizure and high blood pressure made me absolutely miserable. Plus, I was undernourished from not being allowed to eat in the hospital for almost a week and not being able to eat from the migraine after I got out. It was all I could do to drink water. I lost nearly 60 pounds (I had gained 40) in that three weeks. My son wasn’t getting enough food, so he woke me every 30-45 minutes to nurse, which hurt like hell.
Anyway, after my blood pressure was finally controlled and the migraine gone, I began to bond with him, but it took a while. I just had to fake it 'til I made it. Hopefully kid #2 will be easier. I guess I’ll find out soon.
First of all, I’m very sorry for your loss, Shagnasty.
This is something I’m very afraid of. I have a history of depression and I’m very afraid that I’ll be unable to connect with my children when I have them. I’m comforted to know that even if this happens, it should come to me eventually, and I’m not the only one. Thank you very much everyone.
I was much like this (except for the quick labor, both of my labors were days long). In both cases, I was exhausted, felt disgusting, and was still being “worked on” when I was handed a slimy, cone-headed, puffy-faced, smooshed-nosed baby. I was better with the second one, but I still looked at him like he was a stranger…that I was now expected to care for! I would say my first thoughts were something akin to, “Gross. Wow. Hi stranger. Wow. Holy shit. Can you take this away so I can get a sandwich, a shower and some sleep?”
It took getting home to make it feel real and perfectly right and feel love so deep that it makes my breath catch even now.
But at first she was just a chore as I was preoccupied with my extreme depression.