When I was pregnant with ds1 I just felt like I had a parasite growing inside me. When he was born dh and I mostly just stared at him and eventually someone asked aren't we going to pick him up! Thankfully, I was always of the impression that you had to get to know someone first before you loved them so didn't worry about all the romanticised rush of love stuff. It was at about 2 months when I suddenly realised I would literally die to save this baby of mine. I figured that was what people meant.
When ds2 was born 7 years later I actually did feel a rush of love, I put that down to having had practise!
ds1 is most likely Aspergers. ds2 is autistic with a speech delay but above average intelligence, how that is all going to pan out we don't know.
My rather practical approach to parenting hasn't affected my relationship with ds1. He was never one much for cuddles or looking you in the eye while feeding. He was always very independent in his play. He was the kind of child I imagined I would end up with! ds2 demanded and needed constant physical contact for years. I made my peace with that. He's sociable, he loves interaction and play. But the difficulties with him seriously affected my mental health and I am not the person I was before, for better and for worse.
But parenting changes you. There is no Perfect Parenting. There is no perfect match of child (for instance dh is better with the neediness of ds2 and was not great with independent ds1 when little). There is no guarantee for anyone your child will be healthy or unbullied or be whatever one imagines success to be.
A friend and I were chatting about our children a year or so ago. Our oldest are around the same age. We used to talk when they were little about how we weren't going to make x, y, or z, mistakes. We would ensure mental health, we would give them armour, they would be positive about themselves. But every child is their own unique person who is shaped by events outside of our control and as we travel through life we are changed by events outside our control too. That's not to be fatalistic, it's to embrace life in all its glory and misery and the imperfections that we are. My friend and I have not succeeded in all we set out to do because we simply couldn't, it doesn't work like that. Coming to terms with that is part of parenting too. Coming to terms with having children who will find it even harder to get through life than an average person is difficult. I think made more difficult my mainstream ideology about what constitutes a social burden (anyone who is not a perfectly working economic unit), what constitutes selfishness in parents, but remember, those people also tend to think rich people are inherently intelligent and poor people are inherently thick despite actual evidence to the contrary!