Some moms love their child(ren) from the moment they first realize they're pregnant. They go through their pregnancy, in love with being in love; and when the baby arrives, they simply have a face to put with the idea that they were in love with. As their child grows, their love simply has a slightly larger baby to be the object of affection. All is well for these moms.
Some moms love their babies from the moment they first lay eyes on the little one, moments after birth. They spend their pregnancies wondering what the baby will look like; and when it comes and they see that perfect combination of mom & dad, (even despite the potential birth-head-molding), they are in love. Same as the group above, their love doesn't grow as their child does, it just changes. All is well for these moms, too.
Then there's the group that I'm in. We go through pregnancy, worried about work, beating ourselves up for eating too much of the wrong things, and wondering how we're going to get everything done (and we never do - my 3rd bedroom wreck is a testament to that). We don't really "love" our babies when they're inside of us - it's sort of interesting to feel the baby kicking, but we wake up a lot to pee, and we don't know the babies yet, so how could we love them? When our babies come, we are very interested in the baby - it's fascinating, after all, in a sort of clinical way. But unlike the first two groups, we simply don't experience that love-at-first-sight bliss. It makes us feel sad and like we're bad moms, but it's how we feel. I mean, the babies haven't done much to make us love them yet - they have almost no control over any functions, so we know to not even expect a smile. When the babies don't even look one bit like the mom or anyone in the mom's family, it's upsetting! (After all, I carried the little one around for 10 months!) Sure, we take care of the babies, and we learn to interpret their cries, and things get (a lot) better when the baby starts to coo and gurgle and look cute in the outfit Aunt Carolyn gave him. But, we just don't love the babies yet.
That's why, when the women in this last group finally fall in love with their babies, it's so great. After 3 months, I'm happy to say that I finally had that epiphany yesterday with Deven in a Music Together class - I love my son!
Photo is of our Mindful Birthing birth group reunion - was fun to see all the babies.
Check out this video, too:
Some moms love their babies from the moment they first lay eyes on the little one, moments after birth. They spend their pregnancies wondering what the baby will look like; and when it comes and they see that perfect combination of mom & dad, (even despite the potential birth-head-molding), they are in love. Same as the group above, their love doesn't grow as their child does, it just changes. All is well for these moms, too.
Then there's the group that I'm in. We go through pregnancy, worried about work, beating ourselves up for eating too much of the wrong things, and wondering how we're going to get everything done (and we never do - my 3rd bedroom wreck is a testament to that). We don't really "love" our babies when they're inside of us - it's sort of interesting to feel the baby kicking, but we wake up a lot to pee, and we don't know the babies yet, so how could we love them? When our babies come, we are very interested in the baby - it's fascinating, after all, in a sort of clinical way. But unlike the first two groups, we simply don't experience that love-at-first-sight bliss. It makes us feel sad and like we're bad moms, but it's how we feel. I mean, the babies haven't done much to make us love them yet - they have almost no control over any functions, so we know to not even expect a smile. When the babies don't even look one bit like the mom or anyone in the mom's family, it's upsetting! (After all, I carried the little one around for 10 months!) Sure, we take care of the babies, and we learn to interpret their cries, and things get (a lot) better when the baby starts to coo and gurgle and look cute in the outfit Aunt Carolyn gave him. But, we just don't love the babies yet.
That's why, when the women in this last group finally fall in love with their babies, it's so great. After 3 months, I'm happy to say that I finally had that epiphany yesterday with Deven in a Music Together class - I love my son!
Photo is of our Mindful Birthing birth group reunion - was fun to see all the babies.
Check out this video, too:
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