I remember when my son was born. My wife seemed to bond instantly. I felt guilty and faked it but it seemd it took me about 24 hours before the real feelings actually hit. I remember watching him through the window in the nursery just hours before it was time to go home when it actually hit me I was suddenly overwhelmed with love and it felt great because I had been feeling so ashamed of myself.
Took me a good bit longer than that. Same conflicted feelings as you but I figured it would just one day click and it did.
Even mothers report similar feelings of disconnection, it can be a manifestation of Post-Partum depression.
Our pre-natal classes warned us to expect it, that it would pass, and that it was nothing to be ashamed of.
I’m lucky, I fell head over hells before his shoulders were even breached.
Speaking of father-bonding, the new school of thought is to practice “skin-to-skin” within the first few hours of life, even for Dads.
“Kangaroo Care” as wiki calls it
Personally, I think newborn babies all look similar, and they all look more like worms than cute little humans. I think it takes a few days to realize this isn’t some generic baby, it’s your own unique child. Mothers have several months of bonding by sharing a body with the baby before dad even gets to look at it.
24 hours sounds pretty good to me. As a mom, it took about 24 hours because I was tired, hungry, and on drugs.
ETA: I mean, I thought the baby was fine and all, she just didn’t seem like my particular baby.
My husband bonded more quickly than I did, probably not least because I was under general anesthesia and didn’t see the baby for some hours after I woke up. But even then, I was more “insanely protective” than “head over heels” for a long time. Weeks, even. And there was no epiphany: it was a gradual thing.
As soon as she was born I was there with the assistant as we carried her over to the warming table to clean her up. She was looking right into my eyes, clutching my finger with her tiny fist, screaming her little lungs out and she had a look in her eyes that said “Please tell me everything is going to be okay.” So I did, over and over again while laughing with joy. We bonded right then and there and the memory is indelibly locked away in a special place for the rest of my time on this Earth.
I’m on my third (and final) infant, and to be honest, I haven’t bonded much with any of them until they get a bit more interactive and interesting. I have to at least get a smile or laugh or something to bond, I guess.
Babies are incredibly boring.
Is it possible to bond before birth? We were watching an ultrasound when a teenytiny hand moved into view and started waving. Sure, it was reflex; but having your offspring greet you in utero is quite an astonishing sensation.
My immediate post-natal experience is similar to lieu’s, with the added bonus that she voided her mecomium right in front of me. Lent a certain … air … to the occasion, but it also hammered home the fact that she was a functioning (if rather small) human being with everything at hand that she would need for the rest of her life.
As a mother, I agree with Mando Jo that my first feelings were “insanely protective” rather than “emotionally bonded”. I remember holding her in the hospital and thinking “I worked hard to get you here. I’ll be damned if I let anything happen to you now.”
I wouldn’t say I had a single second of emotional bonding until I gave up trying to breastfeed her two weeks later, and finally had time to just, you know, look at her. My husband had had lots of time to look by then. He bonded before I did.
We only have one, and that’s exactly what I discovered. The first hours just happened so fast, it was just more surreal than anything; the next morning I had to go off to work at 7 a.m., back by midnight. And then the next day home from the hospital with this crying poop machine, trying to figure things out. I didn’t really feel like I was bonding until about four to five months in, when started to get a bit more interactive and I had settled into the rhythm of fatherhood. Honestly, hearing all the dad stories, I was expecting to be swept up in an overwhelming feeling of emotion and love the instant the baby was born and I saw her for the first time, but that did not happen at all. And it felt shitty, yeah, but I figured it can’t be all that weird. Like I said, it just felt surreal, or, rather, more unreal.
Yep, mom here right there with Sattua and Manda Jo – I had this deep (and not entirely pleasant) feeling of responsibility towards this poor little kid who hadn’t asked for me as a mom! Bonding didn’t take place until probably a couple of months later.
My husband took about that long as well, maybe slightly longer. I also noticed a sea change when she turned 3-4. Before that he loved her, I’m sure of it; but around age 3-4 she started becoming really fun to be around, and that has just made this level of bonding that I couldn’t even imagine when she was younger – and I think even more for my husband than for me.
We are expecting our first, a little girl, in about 2 weeks assuming Mother Nature plays nice. I could not even imagine a more perfect moment than this. Thank you for sharing, my soon-to-be-daddy heart just melted a bit.
Our daughter turns 4 next month, and I agree with this, too. I was fond of her and kissed and hugged her a lot when she was littler, but in the last half year I have begun to feel, for the first time, that it is a pleasure to be around her. Before that the responsibility outweighed the fun.
It’s all about when the chemicals kick in.
You may as well be another person at that point.
For me, it was the first moment I saw her.
Same for my wife, only that was a couple of days later. The baby was rushed to a neonatal unit* and didn’t come back until then. The moment they saw each other, they bonded.
*In hindsight, it wasn’t that serious – she was anemic (despite having a respectable Apgar score). A transfusion fixed her right up.
Yeah, that’s pretty much the overriding thing I recall. He’d had some issues with a wrapped up umbilical cord, and consequent heart rate slowdowns, so I was more than a little bit scared about the whole birth process. Then when he was born, it wasn’t instant love like you expect. While I was overwhelmingly relieved that he was out and had a Apgar score of something like 9 or 10, there wasn’t really a bonding moment. This was partially because he was monumentally pissed off at the whole birth process, and because they handed him to my wife first, not me.
It took me a good day or so to really have it kick in- until then, it was more surreal/unreal.
Second son was even worse, in that he was born by emergency c-section and spent his first night in the NICU, and when they did let us see him, my wife had first right of refusal for baby-holding, so I didn’t do as much bonding as early. Plus, I was wrangling our other 2 year old son part-time with my MIL while they were there.
If you think the newborn love feelings are strong let me point out that babies aren’t really interactive until they get a little older, and once that starts happening, it’s all over for you. There’s nothing like having a 7-8 month old baby starts hooting and shrieking with excitement that you’ve come into the room or home from work.
It took me quite a while. Definitely over a week. At first I loved her intellectually. I knew she was my daughter and I’d do anything to protect her, but that ommph wasn’t there.
Then one day, it was.
I remember feeling a bit overwhelmed for the first day or two as the realization hit me that my wife and I had taken on a project that was going to require a huge, constant commitment for the next 18 years or so. I also remember feeling like a fraud as I walked around showing off my new baby. I was certain people could see that I was just pretending to be a father and didn’t in fact know the first thing about it. But I loved my son right from the start. The bonding is a continual, evolving thing that grows as your child becomes less inert and more a real individual person. I often felt like I was falling in love with my boy over and over again, every day.
Heh. After my first born was delivered and taken to the nursery to rest I was at the viewing window snapping pictures of him in his bassinet among the other newborns. A neonatal nurse on the other side of the glass walked in and looked at me quizzically. I motioned proudly that the baby was my son. She looked at him, then back at me with a strange look - like she thought I was there snapping pics of random babies for some nefarious reason. I motioned more vigorously “That’s my son!”. She looked down, grabbed the name plate off the bassinet and held it up so I could see. Baby Yang, it said. I am not oriental.
I still have those pics of the wrong baby somewhere.