To want to dry heave everytime someone goes on about 'bonding'??????

[moondog]

Why? I need to know more to give a YABU or YANBU.

Babies

I';m fine with the glue and sellotape thang.

Or both? That's not legal, I think.

Maybe it's those adverts with a man stuck to the wall with wallpaper paste? They are disconcerting.

It's so naff.
In partic in context of 'Dad' worrying about bonding with a baby who is breastfed.

I want to kick 'em in the cock(s) for this.

moondog I would love to bond with you

I think that it is terribly sad when they have to keep everybody at arms length so they can 'bond'.

You wouldn't.
Really.

Or when people go on about having 'amazing bond' with mother/brother/aunt/hamster/stick insect.

Exactly Pisces.That sort of nonsense. Sooooooo bloody self important.

Well - to be briefly serious (!) - there is a thread running about this where a woman had PND and trouble bonding/loving/liking/connecting with her daughter, so in that instance you would be BU, I think.

But I know what you mean re breastfeeding, etc - think that's just daft. So also YANBU.

I just think it is too precious for words! Letting your parents, siblings and friends see and hold the baby doesn't stop you bonding.

I have to admit I had no problems letting family hold DS, and if he started crying I may have said 'well you broke it you bought it'

I let everyone hold DD when she was born, even though she was my PFB. I was just so eager to show her off to everyone, ad wanted to be out and about and being with people. the though of being shut up was never on the cards. I still "binded" with DD - TBH I think I was luckily able to do this before she was born and it was just there from the start.

Maybe for those who struggle int he beginnign though, then maybe they need that time???

I;m really sorry but baby and bonding will always bring this to mind!

blogmacammacam.blogspot.com/2007/11/duct-taped-baby-on-wall-alternative-way.html

lol.

I agree about neurotic dads. but thee's nothing wrong with the word bonding.

bond bond bond.

it's a pyschological concept dontcha know

moondog...totally agree in the bf/dad sense of bonding...it is a crap sentiment....

as in initial bonding , I have had very different experiences ...my 2 vag/birth I bonded immediately, my meant to be homebirth that than was a E -C-section well..it took a long time....so....I think it is trauma tha effects bonding....

Yup, mine had meconium aspiration when he was born (dirty little bugger) so he was whisked away the moment the cord was cut to special care and I didn't hold him for 3 days.

We still 'bonded' through an incubator and ventilator and didn't need any special alone time to do so. Maybe just being worried sick and grateful he wasn't more seriously ill might have helped...

He's 21 now and is coming with me to a Duke Special concert on Wednesday. How I love my boy!! I just wish he'd keep his room tidy tho.

technofairy... snap.

ds2 aspirated on my blood (how???!!!!) and was sent to scbu after an hour of wheezing and choking and going greyer by the minute and i wasn't allowed to feed him or even touch him til over 36 hours later and if anything i felt more insanely, possesively, instictively bonded to him than i had the older two.

dp has said from the minute we had dd that all that bf-ing/ dad bonding shite is complete and utter BS.... he fell in love with dd the second she was born and his male brain computed that 'my god, she wasn't just fat there was a baby in there, my baby!'

i do think the bond with your child is and extraordinary thing, but if it has to have complete and utter isolation and other weird practices to be achieved there's something wrong in the first place.

I do think that I am beginning to sound like a grumpy old woman - I'm only 41 - but there does seem to be so much bullshit about childbirth, breastfeeding and bonding these days. Some of the threads on this site amaze me. Which is probably why I stay and read them

I'm still furious about being told that it was a physical impossibility that my breast milk quality, not quanitity, had deteriorated by an OP. Despite a HV and Paeds consultant telling me that even though I knew it myself. Apparently breast milk production is the only bodily function that can never, ever become less effective or go wrong. My arse!

I am a grumpy old woman too Technofairy! Women have been having babies for ever and yet some mothers get to be real Prima Donnas about it.
You don't have to have a silent house and only 3 people there to bond. It should be a joyous happy occasion, not turned into something miserable with DPs policing visitors.
People complain about visitors expecting to be waited on. I would be far more casual-tell them where the kitchen is and let them get their own drinks etc.

Yes, all terribly self-indulgent. Everything seems to have a name and an issue given to it these days. Agree.

Technofairy I too am a grumpy (but not too old ) woman. There is a lot of BS surrounding birth and babies these days. The whole thing has turned into a bloody circus.

BTW, I have to say that on the visitors front I was quite keen to not have any for the first day or two, but only because I was exhausted and, er, grumpy. I just couldn't be arsed to speak to people, it wasn't because I was worried about the relationships dh and I were having with our babies.

The 'bonding' never stops anyway, the level of it fluctuates as your children grow up. There is too much emphasis on baby bonding. It is another stick for us to beat ourselves with if we don't.

SOMETIMES I think the moaning men do about not breastfeeding and therefore not bonding is just an excuse not to help along the lines of "well I would help by bottle feeding but I can't breastfeed". Erm feeding the baby isn't the only thing to do to help, the washing up would be a start.

I can understand not wanting a lot of visitors in the first couple of days, but not when it drags on for weeks.
There now seems to be a whole industry around it, with magazines etc telling you what it should be like and how you should feel, and it is a bit like having the 'perfect' wedding, people want the 'perfect' birth-unfortunately it is outside their control and can go wrong. People then feel failures. It is similar to b/feeding-I believe totally that breast is best but some people can't and they can bond just as well with a bottle.
It is only the first day of the DCs life-they next 18 yrs (and longer)are far more important.
People can have a fantastic birth, b/f until the DC is 3yrs, co sleep etc and still be toxic mothers!
The bonding never stops, as TheBolter says.