Firstly, they wiped off all the blood, mucus and assorted slime off my kids before they gave them to me to hold.
I had a massive rush of many feelings, not the least of which was, “Wow, look what I made!”
My wife’s equivalent reaction was, “Wow. I had THAT inside me?”
Am I the only baby person here? If you got a baby I’ll hold it.
A couple weeks ago a tweet was going around Twitter: “At some point in your childhood, your parents put you down and never picked you up again. Have a nice day.”
I actively avoided babies growing up, and I did have a babysitting gig going for a while. I would watch babies, but tried to avoid it. I charged higher rates if I recall correctly.
When we decided to have kids, I wanted to have kids, but I wasn’t too excited about the baby part of it, but I figured they would grow up.
My labor ended up being without mediation, and “back labor”, which I gather is extra-specially sucky. It was 18 hours of indescribable agony. At the time, it took the prize for worst experience of my life. The second they put my daughter in my arms, I can’t say I loved her, exactly, but I immediately felt that I would do that all again for my baby (or the next one). I had been worried that I might not love her, but I knew right then that it wouldn’t be a problem.
I felt a sort of electric intensity the first time I held both my children like parts of my brain were just lighting up all of the sudden. I always had a deep bond with both of them and they always seemed to choose me to hold them over their Mom. I’m a dude but I admit I like holding babies even other people’s, babies just make me smile, I can’t control it, they are such silly little creatures. I find it entertaining to watch their facial expressions and behavior because when they are first born they really do act more like little animals or something than people.
That’s more-or-less me. I mean, I didn’t hate my baby or anything like that, I just felt no connection with either of my daughters (now 3 1/2 and 1 1/2) until they were somewhere between 6 and 9 months. As I like to tell my friends, nobody ever told me how fucking boring babies are. The second daughter was easier, because I had my expectations in check, but I felt like shit for the first one because I didn’t experience this magical “nothing else in the world matters lovelovelove” type of feeling everybody told me I was supposed to experience. That came much later.
But, naw, babies are cool as long as I don’t have to take care of them anymore. I actually am much more of a “baby person” than I was before, but I’m really more a toddler person, I think. I love toddlers and preschool aged kids.
This was my experience. I remember that the smell of the top of their infant heads could twang that primitive possessiveness hard.
When I was a teenager, I loved babies, and had a thriving babysitting business as well. I will say though, that when I held my baby cousins, I felt a special rush of affection even beyond their cuteness and knowing I had been entrusted with their care. Ditto for other babies I’m related to. I do not have any biological nieces or nephews, but I have one nephew by marriage I met for the first time as a baby, and I have several “nieces” and “nephews” who are actually the children of my first cousins. I felt “special” about them too.
My son is a bit of a story. He was in an isolette* the first time I saw him, so I didn’t get to hold him, even though I got to touch him. I had been awake for 30 hours, had an unplanned c-section under GA, had maybe 5 hours of drug-induced sleep, than awoke, and demanded to see him, been put into a wheelchair and taken to the nursery, and gotten to touch but not hold him, been overcome by fatigue, and, satisfied that he existed, was ready to go back to my bed after just a few minutes. I actually got to hold him about 7 hours later. So I never had the experience of being handed a squishy, mucousy baby. But when I did get to hold him, he was adorable. I was afraid I wasn’t going to love him right away-- that until he was a little responsive, I wouldn’t be responsive to him. But he made eye contact with me right away. He had exceptional head control for a newborn, and watched my face all the time. I had no trouble loving him.
I was still exhausted, but I loved him.
*He had meconium in his trachea when he was born. They suctioned him and gave him antibiotics, but decided to put him in an isolette for 12 hours as a further precaution against him getting pneumonia, which can happen to babies who aspirate meconium. It’s very rich in things bacteria love. Having known two people whose babies this actually happened to, and the ordeals they went through, I’m very glad these precautions were taken. My son did not get pneumonia.
I sort of have a toddler void. I really disliked the 1-2 year. When he stopped being a baby, and was into everything, but before he could talk much, the boychik really got on my nerves. It probably didn’t help that he had a speech delay, so he had a point in that “into everything” stage where I couldn’t communicate with him well at all. If he’d been one of those babies who’d been a conversationalist at 12 months, that year might not have been so frustrating. He was also kinda late potty-training because of the communication problem, and I was thinking he was going to go to college in diapers.
Conversationalist at 12 months? I’m not even sure either of my kids were beyond nonsense syllables at that point. My 21 month old is only just now starting to form two-word sentences, but it’s few and far between. My older one started a bit earlier, but, still at 12 months I don’t remember any words.
The lil’wrekker talked early. Words at 10-12 mos., by two she was saying full sentences. Alot of it sounded like gibberish, and she had a problem with sss sound. But I understood what she was saying. She ain’t shut up since. That girl has got so much to say. It is amazing. She calls and texts me numerous time everyday. She’s at university about a hour away. I appreciate her need to stay in contact, so much. My 2 older kids were very different, couldn’t get out of the house fast enough. I can only attribute it to personality differences.
The boychik wasn’t saying anything at 12 months. We put him in therapy. He had a few signs, but considering how much sign he had been exposed to, if he hadn’t had a delay, he should have had more than just like, four signs. He had his first novel utterance at around 38 months.
If he hadn’t loved playing with toys so much, and had virtually no repetitive behaviors, he might have gotten diagnosed as autistic. We had him tested for it, and had his hearing checked. He was very briefly hypoxic at birth, and we never did know if that had something to do with it, or if it was just one of those things. Anyway, he doesn’t shut up now.
I said the most beautiful sight I’ve seen was my baby brother. There was no sudden rush of love; I already loved him before, but I was happy to meet him at last! And it was more beautiful than meeting our middle brother because for middle brother it was the day after and we were surrounded by relatives who watched me like hawks; little bro, I met the nurse in the hallway as she was bringing him to meet us. She asked “hey, are you [lastname]? I think this is yours!”, asked if I knew how to hold a baby and handed him to me after I’d said yes. We actually got a calm moment of looking at each other without a swarm of worrying grown-ups.
No children of the body and nobody would call me “a baby person”; I don’t… swoop on little kids, which to me is what those people tend to look like. But if I’m handed a baby or a toddler, or adopted by one on the train, I’ll be happy to spend some time getting to know them.
By the time I met him, baby bro wasn’t bloody or snooty or crying… he’d already been cleaned and swaddled. Family weren’t allowed into birthing rooms at the time.
One of my sorrows about having such a bad relationship with SiL Control Freak is that I was barely allowed to look at The Nephew, much less hold him. For some reason she insisted in making Jay (whose opinion of babies is “bring them back when they can talk”) hold the baby, but I wasn’t allowed to.
I am much warmer to and more tolerant of other people’s little kids now that I have my own.
A hint for others. Our second daughter was a bit speech delayed, and we learned some sign language and taught her some. It really helps them make themselves understood and reduces the frustration level. My grandson, 18 months, isn’t delayed at all but still enjoys signing that he wants more food or more books.
Nope. I love babies, and I am good with them, but my own daughters were something special.
I got to hold my grandson for the first time when he was two hours old, and it was almost as good. I was older and he wasn’t going home with me, so it wasn’t quite the same. But I can get him calmed down and put to bed better even than his parents.
I think almost everyone, even “not baby” people, has a significantly different response to holding their own child vs any other baby. Evolution has selected very strongly for parents who become instantly enraptured with their offspring. Rationally, it’s good for the species as a whole but biology isn’t going to leave something so important to your skeptical frontal lobe, so it doses your lizard brain with oxytocin like you’ve never felt before to make sure you get the message.
I can attest as a relatively emotionally dispassionate man; who was wise to the reality of life, death, the universe and everything; who had ‘loved’ several different partners; experienced a range of sensations, emotions, and altered states of consciousness; who had seen hundreds of babies being born and several dozen who died without much more than a clinically detached response to it all- when the OB laid my son on my wife’s chest I was hit with a emotional response I didn’t believe I was capable of having. It was really like the culmination of every happy moment I’d had up to that point.
I had just finished a grueling triathlon to the top of mountain where I saved the lives of my high school sweetheart and her clone and they want to snowboard down 15,000 feet of waist deep champagne powder to skinny dip in a warm saline infinity pool while we drink pina coladas, smoke the finest green and watch the sun set over the ocean. It was truly a paradigm moment where there becomes a ‘before’ and an ‘after’. I got the same hit with my daughter a few years later, but not quite as intense, mostly because I was expecting it and I wanted to analyze it like someone else had mentioned upthread which took me slightly out of emotional whirlwind (very different birth situations as well which added to the dissimilarity).
Since then, I still have no problem staying dispassionate and clinical when my job requires it, but I have started to notice this same response from other parents when they see their babies for the first time and if the situation allows me to stand back and lower my guard, I’ve been known to get a little ‘eyelash’ in my eye just from feeling their emotional overload.
You might never like changing diapers and 3AM feedings but there is something primal that will bond you to your own children. Some men, especially, will never learn to love the baby stage (that’s okay, IMO). I think that feeling other men have related about loving their babies but not really liking them until they get to be 9-12 months old is very common as well. They are really just pupae until they learn some mobility and begin developing some personality and you can start treating them like the tiny humans they are.
I used to work as an interpreter before I got carpal tunnel syndrome (since successfully treated, but I can’t work as an interpreter anymore); I still have lots of Deaf friends, and my son has frequently seen me signing with them. I also signed to him, and when he was clearly language-delayed, I signed to him without speaking, so he was getting ASL. Didn’t really work. He still picked up only about four signs by 12-14 months.
He really needed therapy.
But he’s caught up now, and we never did know the reason. He’s left handed (so is his father), and it’s remotely possible that Wernicke’s area and Broca’s area have located in opposite hemispheres, which occasionally happens-- in left-handers, they usually either both locate on the usual side, or both locate on the opposite side, but a few people have this divided brain. Boys have a smaller corpus callosum than girls, so he would be at a disadvantage for processing cross information. Then, there is the fact that he was very briefly hypoxic at birth. His doctors were of the opinion that is wouldn’t affect him at all, but who knows?
My husband had very little experience with babies when the boychik was born, and I had lots. Nonetheless, he was the one who wanted to hold the baby all the time. I had to convince him it wasn’t actually good for the baby NEVER to be put down.
Sometimes we used to joke that I was the wire mother, and he was the cloth mother.
Shodan, what you wrote about your son, that was both wonderful and intense.
My youngest is 8, I will still sometimes go and lay down in his bed with him after he goes to sleep because I miss holding him and rocking him to sleep as an infant. (apparently I have talent and skill as an infant-rocker-to-sleep person with kids in my extended family) As a Shiny New Grandpa this year (TWICE!) Maaaaaan, the first time I held my grandson and my granddaughter…wow! it took me right back in some ways. I dunno, I’m kind of a family sort of guy. I like kids, family is all, The Family is All!
Now come over here and lemme talk at youse. Imma gone make you an offer, an’ you don’ wanna gonna say refuse, cause the Family is Everything ok? You get me? Okay, now lissen up.
