When You Don't Feel the Love
/I’ve never shared this with anyone.
When my midwife placed my baby on my chest after each of my births, I felt….nothing.
Well, I definitely felt relief that labor was over. But that moment of instantly falling head over heels in love with my new baby.. I didn’t have that...
What was wrong with me???
The early postpartum days of taking care of and feeding my brand new baby were just out of obligation to keep this tiny human alive. Hearing their cries did not pierce my heart.. I just wanted the crying to stop.
I wasn’t excited to latch my baby to my breast-AGAIN- and feel a wave of joy while they were eating from my body… I was just trying to keep them fed.
While it felt nice to have a warm, snuggly baby curled up against me, I was never overcome with deep, immense love… until I was. But that took weeks…
I felt so guilty for not having an instant connection with my three babies…
I couldn’t blame this lack of connection on a traumatic birth… All of my labors were very straightforward.
I also couldn’t blame it on a lack of support after we brought each baby home from the hospital. My husband, along with several other family members, were a wonderful support team during those early postpartum days.
So why didn’t I feel what I saw portrayed in movies and what I heard from other mothers? What was wrong with me?!
What I learned is that there was absolutely NOTHING wrong with me.
I just needed time.
We don’t always immediately make friends with strangers, and all of my three kids were total strangers to me when they were born.
I needed time to get to know each one of them. To learn them, understand them, find out who they were… The moment that each one of them smiled for the first time, is the moment I finally felt connected to them.
I loved them from the moment they were born and the weeks before those first smiles came, I just wasn’t “in love” with them immediately.
If you can relate, I’m vulnerably sharing this with you today to help normalize your experience... as well as mine.