I say that bluntly because there's really no other way to say it. No matter how many times I had been warned that bonding takes time, that you're not always hit with an instantaneous wave of love for your child, I still wanted to feel it. I imagined my pregnancy as the dress rehearsal leading up to the opening night, that as soon as I got on stage in the delivery room all the panic of the last nine months would vanish and motherly instinct would finally wash over me.
It didn't.
Well-meaning friends and colleagues had promised me that motherhood was going to be amazing, that I would "love being a mother!" I didn't. I couldn't. What was to love? I had grown a human being inside me -- a tiny human person who literally needed me in order to stay alive. That wasn't amazing, it was terrifying. It was like being trapped inside a small space with a bomb that only I could disarm, except I didn't know which wires to cut. The day after we came home from the hospital, Phil ran out to Babies R Us to buy a breast pump and I thought, "Someone just left me alone with this baby. How can I be left alone with this baby?" We both cried. How could I love him? I didn't even know him.
I knew it was normal to feel overwhelmed, even sad. The "baby blues." I was prepared to wait. It will happen the first time he drifts off to sleep in my arms, I thought, or the first time he smiles. That thunderbolt of love, it will happen.
But there was a torrent of uncertainty beating deeper in my chest. I want to go back. This was a mistake.
I never, ever said that out loud. It was shameful. It would have been OK to admit to feeling post-partum depression. But I wasn't depressed. I just didn't love my baby. I didn't love motherhood. I started contemplating returning to work as soon as possible, even though I'd planned to take the year off. I didn't want to spend all my time with this baby. I couldn't.
I didn't hate him, or resent him, or think about hurting him. I took good care of him. We went for walks. I talked to him. I videotaped him rolling over on his playmat and dressed him up in new outfits that our friends and relatives had bought for him. I bathed him even though all I really did was sprinkle water over him with a washcloth and then wrap him up in a hooded towel.
We started going out to the park to meet other moms, and I would watch enviously as they picked up their babies to cuddle and kiss them. If Eli was happy where he was, I tried not to pick him up, to disturb the delicate balance of our ecosystem, because what if he started crying and wouldn't stop? What if I had to nurse him there in the grass, or dropped his pacifier in the dirt, or worst of all what if he cried for no reason at all and I couldn't figure out how to help him? Why did everyone else have this motherhood thing all figured out?
He started to wake up more, to be more alert. He smiled. Still no thunderbolt. Sometimes I thought I felt some fondness stirring and I tried to kindle it into a flame, fanning the embers of my affection. Is this what motherhood feels like? Fake it till you make it.
I called a post-partum depression support hotline. She told me not to be dissuaded from breastfeeding if a psychiatrist wanted to prescribe medication. I told her I wouldn't mind if I was told to stop breastfeeding because breastfeeding was making me incredibly anxious. She told me the idea of not breastfeeding should provoke more anxiety in me because then my baby wouldn't be getting valuable antibodies that would protect him from diseases. I hung up and cried for hours. Thanks, post-partum depression support hotline lady.
Finally I put my foot down. I was going to love my child. I would not live in fear of his cry. I would not panic every time he stirred from a nap. He had soft fuzzy hair and my dad's toes and I was going to love him.
I was brave. I took Eli to mommy and baby yoga and he fell asleep on a yoga mat. When it got cold, our playgroup in the park moved indoors to Barnes & Noble. Sometimes he hated his stroller and I carried him in a Beco, his head nestled under my chin, close enough to kiss. In small ways, he began to seem amazing.
Eli will be 2 this weekend, and I finally feel that thunderbolt of love all the time. When he's sitting on my lap in his miniature armchair at bedtime and I fold his legs over mine. When he carefully deposits an armful of Legos in my lap with a "Here go, Mommy!" and a proud smile. Sometimes I sneak into his room at night, after he's sleeping, just to savor it washing over me, that love I thought I'd never feel: I love you. I do love you. You are mine.
This is not every mother's experience. I always feel a little sting of failure when I see a birth announced on Facebook with a comment like, "So in love." Every mother wants, and expects, to love her child from the moment he is born, or even before.
Sometimes I'd like to do those first few months over again, to cherish them without the cascade of panic in my chest. But then I might not get to treasure how far we've come from there to here.
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