If you didn't fall in love with your baby immediately, please tell me your story

[MorrisZapp]

My gorgeous, wanted DS is 3 weeks old and although I love him dearly, I'm not 'in love' with him yet. I haven't felt that rush of maternal love yet and I'm hoping/ assuming it will grow in time.

Did anybody else go this long without being madly in love, and do you love your DC madly now?

3 weeks is nothing, you have plenty of time, be easy on yourself. I have 2 DD's, there is a big age gap between them, 14 years. With DD1 I had the rush of love, I remember it so clearly, it happened at 11am the morning after she was born. It was wonderful and amazing and I was just so in love with her.

However with DD2 it just did not happen. I looked after her and worried about her but I didn't feel that love for her. I felt very cheated in the beginning, I had experienced the "rush of love" with DD1 and because I didn't feel it with DD2 I felt guilty, it made me doubt if I really did love her, I felt it was very unfair too especially as I knew what it could be like.

However DD2 is 3 now and I just absolutely adore her so so much. I'm so proud of her and think she is amazing. I can't say I had an actual moment where I fell in love with her as such, it was more a gradual thing which grew and grew and grew and just keeps on growing :)

I also suffered from PND initially and got some good advice from a counsellor I saw. She said to just say "I love you" out loud to DD2. Initially I felt silly saying it but soon the emotions began to come through, I found that simply saying I love you to DD2 helped me.

It's obvious you love your son MorrisZapp, otherwise you wouldn't be worrying about it. Give yourself some time, you will definitely get there :) Take care x

PS. Have found this thread very uplifting, even now I can feel sad and guilty that I didn't have that rush of love with DD2 and reading other peoples experiences has made me feel ok that it was more gradual with her. Thanks everyone for sharing.

I was very similar with dd1; I actually felt a bit detached from her though. Even months after she was born I was still going 'oh my god, I have a baby'. She just seemed like this strange little person who'd come to live with us. It did get better over time, just hang on in there.

Ah OP you are completely normal, don't worry too much.

DD is just turned 2 but i still have problems around her birthday due to memories of an horrific, nightmareish induction, labour and EMCS that ended up affecting every part of our early days, including my milk never coming in and complete failure to bf and bond. I remember feeling relieved when she slept and annoyance when she woke up and cried.

At about 6 weeks, i turned to DP and said 'I don't wish her any harm but I don't love her'.

Fast forward to 10/12 weeks and I was besotted and still am. I love her so much it scares me and I would literally die for her. I can't say what happened - there was no 'moment of love' but getting out of the house helped alot, as was making other mummy friends, but she just grew on me I guess! I LOVE LOVE LOVE her to bits.

She continues to amaze me everyday and at 2 is so so much easier than a new born but then after about 12 weeks, life got easier and easier, gradually.
Bring on the terrible twos i say - I never was that good with newborns!

For you, OP, just be kind to yourself and trust that it will come, you are completely normal and if after another few months it still hasn't got better, then maybe have a quiet word with your doc/HV but until then, just enjoy as much as you can and I promise you it will and does get better.

Currently TTC No2 so it must be OK!

Thank you so so much.

These posts are all wonderful.

My first child was 5.5 months old before I was glad I'd had him. And he was a planned, very much wanted baby. Before that point I just hadn't bonded and wasn't enjoying it at all.

The rush of love is mostly a TV/film phenomenon, I think. You know, woman labours for three days without drugs in agony, then as soon as the baby is put into her arms, big smile because it was all worth it. And mother and baby live happily ever after...

My experience has been very much like Nooka's described earlier.

I've never had a 'rush of love' or a 'falling in love moment'.

I loved them both from the moment they were born but not in a head over heels kind of way, but more in a 'you're my child I'd do anything in the world for you but right now I'd like trip to the shops and a converstaion without interuption' kind of way.

I have then found my love growing every single day that i've had them. Thay have just got better and better, more wonderful, more fun more interessting and adorable as they've got older. Babyhood has not been my favourite phase, i loved them but found it all quite suffocating.

Mine are 10yrs and 7yrs now and the last 5yrs have been wonderful.

I think I differ from lots of mothers I see on Mn who can't bear to be parted from their babies and couldn't go for a weekend away. I needed time away when they babies, it was too all consuming for me. Whereas now we take them everywhere, I can't bare to be without them as I know we'd be having such a good time together. I love the sharing of life and experiences with them, the raltionship and joint memories, babyhood isn't like that.

With DS1 it was complete and utter love, right from the start. I had a horrendous and incredibly long labour and dislocated my coccyx at delivery. I was in so much pain and they cleaned us up, put us in bed to try and feed, sent DH home and left us totally alone all night. I couldn't even get off the bed so just lay there feeding him and watching him in total amazement as he watched me back with huge eyes.

With DS2 I had an very easy home birth and was really surprised not to feel that rush of total love. He was breast fed and we co-slept and he got all the hugging and kissing and snuggling that a baby could ever want but I didn't feel the same inside. It was quite a while before it turned into real love. I remember playing peep-bo with his blanket, all warm and cuddly and I suddenly just wanted to eat him all up.

They are now 14 and 16 and drive me crazy but I still love them with all my heart.

Didn't get the rush of love with DD1 at all, I was utterly desperate for her to be a boy and couldn't believe when he was a she! The love gradually grew over the weeks though.

She's 4 now and I can't get enough of her. I have to physically restrain myself from hugging her all the time. I love 3.30pm as I just can't wait to meet her from school.

It will get better I promise.

it's a real taboo, don't you think?

I've just remebered posting on MN when DS1 was a baby (6 years ago!) about how wonderful that rush of baby love was. In truth, I copied what ohter people wrote/said to me in RL, simply top fit in and feel excluded.

My feelings were normal, albeit on the exctreeme end of normal

sorry, bad typos....

"to not feel excluded"

No rush, PND, really thinking it would be better for everyone if DD was adopted. Don't be afraid of your feelings, whatever they are, and if things turn very dark, get help - you are not alone.

Some days I look at her and think "who the hell are you?" (she's nearly 3 now)

Other days she just gives me a huge hug and I melt.

This motherhood thing is weird, and very, very few people are 'naturals'. Hormones were sent to try us, they can be wonderful, they can be hell sent waves of evilness.

3 weeks is an extremely strange place, be good to yourself and make sure everyone else is good to you too

I expected to love my DS passionately immediately and just didn't get that rush. It has grown so much over the last 3 months. It will come, just enjoy things right now.

One of my first posts was because I was convinced I was some unnatural freak of nature because I didn't 'love' my baby. Before baby arrived, I could never understand how people could abandon their children on the steps of hospitals/orphanages/whatever - but in those dark early days I honestly spent some of the time thinking DD would be better off there. I felt I was doing a crappy job of being a mother, I didn't feel anything other than crushed by the relentlessness and overwhelming responsibility of looking after a new person, and even though she was very much planned and wanted, I actually at times resented DD (we had real feeding problems so every feed felt like a battle of wills, it was soul-destroying on top of exhausting). I looked after her to the best of my ability, but it felt like I was babysitting someone else's, not my own. One night she was crying, I was at my wits end - I'd checked her nappy, she wasn't hungry, temperature was fine, thought I'd done everything - DH asked if I'd picked her up and tried giving her a cuddle. The thought hadn't occurred to me. I felt terrible... more guilt on top of everything else.

About 3 months in, things got a lot better. At about 6 months, I was besotted. I adore DD more than anything in the world, she brings me more joy than I could possibly imagine, and is very affectionate - so my early cock-ups don't seem to have permanently damaged her, as I feared in my perspective-lacking, hormone driven newborn fug - but I will never forget how hard those first days were. Even if each day feels like it is a struggle to get through, time passes, your little one grows, and you will adjust and come to love your baby more than you can imagine. I remember people on MN telling me this at the time of my first postings, and to be honest I didn't believe them, but it happens. Hormones and lack of sleep have a lot to answer for.

When DD1 was born, I had undiagnosed AND. I suffered a horrendous long, painful labour (face up baby, hand cupping her head above the ear) with forceps delivery and then PND.

I remember very little of the first 18 months of her life.

I was insane and attempted suicide.

There is light at the end of such a tunnel.

I can promise you this.

Do not despair. You are not alone and you will get through this.

I had PND following all three of my births and, despite being medicated for the last two, my meds still needed adjusted and even switched following the births.

I love them all madly now, age 7, 4 and nearly 2.

Do NOT beat yourself up! Give yourself time. Be kind to yourself.

Keep talking to us, we are here and we have been there and we understand.

most of my friends who had non-sleeping babies, didn't get that rush, it is difficult, plus hormones don't help... it will grow on you.
i have a very easy baby and very hands on dh, helps a lot, still it takes some getting used to, it is a gradual thing, it gets a lot better after 10 weeks, you'll see... after 3 or 4 months, you won't even remember life without him.

if you think you may have pnd, go to your gp, explain, they'll tell you is perfectly normal, also baby groups, other mums will keep you going, they'll give you tips and listen, and they will hold your baby, give you a break...

My most precious memory is the first rush of love (long overdue) for DS, my first child. It's like a flashbulb memory. I am there, watching him, hearing him, seeing the clothes he was wearing and the face he was pulling. I remember the smell of him even! DD I loved from the off, which was fab of course, and made me less prone to the guilt of thinkning "shouldn't there be more to it than this?". But although I had some difficult times waiting to love DS, that wonderful memory is worth it I think.

I didn't have PND btw. A traumatic delivery that took quite a lot of getting over physically and mentally, which I suspect is part of it all, but not PND.

Again I am speechless with gratitude for everybody's kindness and honesty.

Thank you so much.

Although I loved DD from day 1 it was more of a dutiful "I love you because you're so vulnerable and I need to take care of you" sort of thing - it wasn't until about week 8 that I remember looking at her while she was feeding and realising I was actually falling in love with her. And I think that's perfectly reasonable really, it takes a while to get to know your DC and for their personalities to start to emerge, and for me that had to start to happen before I could start to love her for who she is rather than just as a helpless infant who needed me to look after her.

And now she's 14 weeks old and I adore her and I think I love her more each day (although there are still moments when I'd happily hand her over to the postman and have done with it! ).

With DD1 I most definitely had the rush of love after such a long and complicated labour. I just fell in love with ehr at first sight . With DD2 I had a much better labour but didn't get the rush that I was expecting which left me with all sorts of guilty feelings about whether I loved her as much as DD1 and it still upsets me now. She didn't make eye contact properly until she was nearly 3 months old due to DVM and that was v hard. I still query my feelings for her yet I love to see her little cheeky grin and face light up when I come into the room. The feelings are getting there but it has taken such a long time for me. I'm hoping that one day I will feel the same for her that I feel for DD1.

spurting jugulars - i'm so in love with babyblade that your post made me cry just thinking of her!
i had a terrible pregnancy, emergency section and ended up seriously ill. i didnt get the skin to skin i so badly wanted baby was in scbu and i was too ill to go visit for 2 days. i lay there and kept having to remind myself i had a baby. bonding took ages and agree with the others, baby was something to care for. took a few months to really feel the love. dh bonded brilliantly instantly btw. now i love her so much i think i will explode.

and yes - i am battling with PND
some days i feel i cannot get out of bed i am that overwhelmed.