Hoping I find love for my baby after birth

[toohotintrousers]

I am 35 weeks and really struggling to feel any love for this much wanted baby and feel awful saying it.
With my other 2 as soon as I knew I was pregnant I loved them from the bottom of my heart and still do but this time I can't feel anything.
Dh says I will feel different when he's here and my maternal instincts will kick in, I hope so but I don't know why it hasn't.
We wanted this baby so much and I want to love him but I feel so different this time from my other two, like a numbness as if I haven't fully accepted he's going to be here soon.

Is he right will I feel that rush of love when he's born or is something wrong this time? I don't feel very connected to him even when he kicks.

It took me 6m until I got that rush of love op, a mixture of shitty pregnancy, shitty unsupportive partner and PND. I never 'loved' either until after they were born!

It'll come!

I'm sorry you experienced pnd I did wonder if I had something similar but I feel happy within myself and life in general.

I would imagine op that it would feel very different being pregnant with number 3 on the way and two other children at home already to look after than it would being pregnant the first time, and even the second given that you don't know what having multiple kids will be like at that point. My guess is that it's not lack of love - it's maybe just that this time you're more informed and aware of what's to come so it's in context? I don't think there's any one right or wrong way to feel. I struggled to relax during my pregnancy because we had a few scares at the start and even though I very much wanted ds, I felt like I couldn't relax and enjoy the pregnancy until he was safely in my arms. And even then I was probably more in awe of him for a few days before I felt like he was really "mine". We have a lovely bond and our attachment is solid and he's more important than anything in my life (or my life for that matter). Try not to put pressure on yourself and remember that all your feelings are valid. My guess is you're exhausted and run off your feet and don't have the same free time to sit and visualise and dream about when baby is here that you probably had before you had two other children.

I did not feel a rush of love when DS was born. I didn't feel much of anything. It all came later on.

Please don't beat yourself up if you don't feel it straight away.

I felt no rush of love for my first. Then one day she had a (very small, very minor) accident, and I suddenly felt the most overwhelming urge to protect them and that's when the love kicked in.

Don't beat yourself up - from what I can gather its a perfect natural response and one experienced by many.

I have 4 children, 2 I loved immediately, 1 took 8 months the other, I can’t remember exactly but several weeks.

It will come. I felt exactly the same way about my last pregnancy (it was a tough one and so much other stuff was going wrong). It was really strange while being pregnant to not feel attached to the baby at all, I was planning how quickly I’d end maternity and how much childcare I could organise for KIT days and going to visit friends without the baby… I have done none of those things since the baby arrived. It didnt happen immediately but I absolutely love my child now.

The rush of love is massively overhyped in my opinion. All I felt was a huge sense of responsibility for quite a few months. It was a slower burn and I think that should be normalised.

No 1... bewilderment and a huge sense of responsibility...took a few weeks/
No 2. It took 4 months ...til that I was just going through the motions
No 3 instant love
No 4. Severe PND and it took probably about a year.

There is no wrong or right or timescales. I love them all, it just emerged in different time scales.