MN Bumpfest: Share your experiences of bonding with your baby straight after birth with other MNers – £50 voucher prize draw NOW CLOSED

[MichelleMumsnet]

In the run up to BumpFest (which will tell you absolutely everything you need to know about being a parent - promise) we’re looking to get a better understanding of the experiences Mumsnetters have had around different issues surrounding childbirth.

If there’s one thing that you can be sure about parenting, it’s that nothing is ever quite how you imagine it would be. We know from past threads, and some of the comments here here that Mumsnetters experience of bonding with their baby in the early days were sometimes less straightforward than they’d anticipated.

If you’re willing to share your stories, we’d love to hear more about your experiences. We’ll be using them to inform our research for BumpFest on the different myths and expectations there are surrounding childbirth and early bonding - thanks so much to those of you who post, we’ll be entering everyone into a draw to win a £50 John Lewis voucher.

Thanks

MNHQ

My son was whizzed off to SCBU as soon as he was born, it was an hour or two til they took me to see him. When they wheeled me in I stood up to look at him and fainted! Even though it was a few days until I held him, I was smitten straight away and very much in shock, it wasn't how I'd imagined, with him on the top floor of the hospital, and me in a room downstairs. Luckily as he was my first i was able to spend hours with him thereafter. I bonded immediately with my DDs, grateful they were healthy and fine.

With my first child, I felt that rush of love and adoration straight away. Despite planning a water birth and breast feeding, we had an emcs (undiagnosed breech) and ff after a week. I was still overwhelmed with love and bonded well. It was a lovely warm early autumn, I recovered quickly from the cs, and I walked miles with ds in a sling.

I expected to same with my second child 3 years and a month later. It just didn't happen. It didn't help that I had flu, followed by a traumatic labour, culminating in a uterine rupture and crash section. When I came round, my first thought on seeing dd was that she was rather plain!

We stayed in hospital because I needed another operation when she was 3 days old. She bf enthusiastically and constantly and I was exhausted from labour and flu. When we got home I struggled with ds (just 3) too. Looking after 2 dc was really hard work and dd was 9 weeks old before I could stand up straight and drive again. DD was born in October of a cold, wet winter. Not the most conducive to getting out. I am a very outdoorsy person and felt trapped and frustrated, but too tired to care. I had constant low level illness (tooth abscess, tonsillitis, sprained ankle) and I didn't really start enjoying life or bond with dd until the following spring. I have a whole bunch - maybe 100 - photos I took of her playing on the grass in the spring sunshine. I guess that day was the trunking point. Until then I had just been mechanically going through the motions of caring for a newborn.

No babies are the same!!!

My first was premature and born after a quick labour. I feel like I was in shock for the first month of his life. Then he was colicky and screamed a lot for his first year. I have to admit I found it very difficult. I loved him from the start but I felt so guilty about his birth and worried about his long term health. I cried a lot that first year but fortunately it is all a distant memory now and he is absolutely fine.

I had relatively easy and very quick births both times. Both times, I didn't immediately bond with my LOs. I cared for them, but they felt like very demanding pets rather than beloved children!

It's not been until we started getting smiles and interactions that I really started falling in love and properly bonding with my LOs. And since then, that love has grown every day. :)

Im not sure whether it was because of the failed inductions and emergency c section that I didn't bond with my baby. They showed her to me and then whisked us both away to recovery. I felt so exhausted that I passed out. It was hours later, maybe 24, that a midwife said I needed to feed my baby. I felt so awful, then couldn't feed her anyway. For weeks I didn't feel anything, I just knew I had to take care of her. I fully expected someone to come to take her away. Part of me still feels envious and sad that I never felt that bond straightaway. Then I think it might have at 6 weeks, I remember falling head over heels in love with her. Id never felt anything like it.

I had heard so much about the importance of bonding, skin to skin etc.....when dd was born she was taken away for about 4hours to be incubated and so I was left to have something to eat and talk to dp who had been to scbu and seen her. They eventually brought her to me when she was about 6hrs old. There were no problems about not bonding. I just looked at her and realised "so this is what I'm for" and we got on with it.

I was expecting a girl and this boy was lifted over my head! Dh said very gently, do you want to know....it's a boy.
I looked at him and he looked just like my mum. For a second I couldn't believe he wasn't the girl I had been dreaming about.
Then the mw tucked him in beside me, skin to skin and wheeled us back through to the high dependency. I fell in love with him by the time we got there.
We spent about four months attached to each other, him sleeping on my chest and listening to lullabies. Even now the baby monitor playing his favourite piece of music makes me cry. He is 5 now and has been joined by his sister. I loved her just the same although it was less of a shock as we found out the sex whilst I was pg.
I sometimes long for these lazy, cuddly breastfeeding days! They were bliss. I realise I was lucky with my two and didn't get baby blues or have a hard time as they were both as good as gold.

I loved DD from the second I saw her but the birth was difficult and I struggled with that, and a lot of my time was spent thinking about that rather than about her. I found being at home lonely but wasn't a 'group' person at all. I think I skirted pretty close to PND - we stopped BF at 7 weeks and I was devastated. I wish if not been freaked out by the MWs saying we'd have to go back to hospital when she lost a lot of weight I the first few days and hadn't given formula top ups. I loved her but I didn't feel I bonded with her as a person until later even though my instincts screamed at me to stay near her - I needed her with me 24/7.

DS's birth was totally different, still not the Homebirth I'd hoped for but closer to a natural birth than DDs, and I understood what people meant about the instant falling in love thing with him.

Now they're 2 and 4, the best of friends and I fucking adore them, they are my world and I am as close to DD as DS

During my pregnancy with dd, my sister in law kept on telling me, you will see, no way you will feel love for your baby at first, it will take a little while.

I was quite anxious during my pregnancy about what I would do with a baby i didn't love.

I ended up with emergency c section, and as soon as I came round from anaesthesia, I saw my dd and felt so much love straight away, more than I could have ever imagined.

This shows we are all different when it comes to childbirth and motherhood

I can't forget the moment he was put on my stomach. I realised that he was here, we'd done it, and he was real. Thinking about it makes me teary.

Then he was taken to nicu and I went a bit 'head down and get on' until he was released four days later. I remember being in my room with him, just holding him making him all the promises in the world that I would always love him.

There have been tough times since; times when I thought he hated me because he cried when i tried to do anything, times when the billionth wake-up per night was just too tiring, and times when I ended to make dinner and I couldn't put him down. When it gets too much, we go back to bed and hug. We muddle through, and his joyful face and giggle is the best thing.

I found it really easy, I just felt as though I had always known him. Even though I had a ventouse delivery that didn't make a difference. We had lots of time just as a family of three which was lovely and we cherished that and I think that helped with bonding.

After multiple miscarriages, I was convinced ds1 wild be stillborn. I had a wonderful home birth and a wonderful intervention free birth.

I was totally unprepared for the wriggly, healthy, little wee thing that popped out. I had no idea what to do with him. Literally. I was expecting a horrible, grief stricken experience.

I remember being shocked when the midwives and my mum left at 3 am. I had put no thought into anything. I'd gone through the motions. I bought clothes, a Moses basket, nappies. After about three days, I came to my senses. That ds is 9 now. And the apple of my eye!

Ds2 came along in a completely different way, hospital, induction, bright lights. I fell for him instantly. It was my job to protect him from the lights, the machines. I didn't put him down for weeks. DH asked me about a week in if he could possibly have a cuddle with him. It broke my heart to let him go!

I love them both more than life itself. I'm not sure how much their arrival has to do with bonding!

I had a really awful pregnancy, an even worse birth, didn't actually want a baby at all, I was thoroughly miserable for 9 months and hated the idea of having a baby around the house.

But when he was put into my arms, I took one look at his face and fell deeply in love with him, a bond that I've never had before and one that I certainly wasn't expecting. Despite all the terrible pain I had been in during the pregnancy and birth, looking at his face for the first time is one of the best moments of my life.

He's a strapping teenager now but I look at his face when he's asleep and can still see the same baby face he had when he was born.

With each of my 3 it was incredibly simple, I looked into their eyes and they looked into mine and it felt peaceful; like we were old souls back in each others' lives, they felt like part of me.
What amazed me was the strength of love, that grows through childhood. Every so often I look over at that child and feel another massive warm rush of love.

I really wasn't too sure that I even wanted children, but dh did. I thought being pregnant was appalling - couldn't ride my horse, play squash etc. Thoroughly grumpy about the whole thing. Went down to hospital in labour and looked down at my bump thinking 'I hope I'm going to like this thing when it comes out!' Labour lasted 52 hours - OMG no one tells you that, do they?! Had an epidural in the end and felt as though I was watching someone else push a baby out - totally detached from the whole experience. Then they handed me the bloody, mucus streaked blob of humanity, I looked into those moon pool eyes and WHAM!! - love at first sight

Dd birth was awful, a really long drawn out and physically exhausting process. I had actually forgotten why we were there at the end- convinced I was going to die I was shocked that a baby appeared!
Straight away we had skin to skin and I can't remember what happened to me after that, I just remember focussing on her. She was the most precious thing I've ever seen and I felt that bond straight away which I was very glad about.
Luckily dd took to bf straight away and I loved spending that special time just me and her where she looked so happy and content.
We had a rough couple of months as dh worked away and I don't have family close by so it was just me and her. In a way I think it helped as we are so close now.

I remember the first night, in the post natal ward and my DD crying and crying and I was unable to comfort her. I did not feel very bonded then and the nurse who came in when I asked for help and just said, your baby, deal with it, did not help. Still, it did not stop the bonding happening as she slept and in her quieter moments!

I was too tired and woozy from the gas and air to feel much at all at first but my god, when they bought me tea and toast I was ecstatic!

I wonder if MN should have worded this "share your experiences of bonding with your baby" rather than "share your experiences of bonding with your baby straight after birth". Maybe those that didn't bond are thinking they don't have any experience of bonding with their baby straight after birth, because it took longer than "straight after birth"?

When my DD arrived, she was beautiful, so tiny and so perfect. She was placed straight on to my stomach and we had some skin to skin. I remember being very shocked that she was not a boy as i had, had a strong feeling that i was pregnant with a boy.

I was only allowed a few moments of skin to skin as the peaditricians needed to check her over. When they had finished, they gave her back and everyone except my DP left the room. She latched onto to my breast amd had an amazing breastfeed.

The midwife came into the room and was shocked that she was BF with no help. She then did her obs again and found that her temperature was low so she was placed into a baby warmer where she slept for what felt like ages.

I gave birth a exactly 1am and didn't sleep at all till 10pm that night, i was so shocked at how perfect she was.

I knew instantly that i loved her, this did not however stop me later on developing PND which i although i knew in myself that i had, it took me a long time to admit to as i was very ashamed.

Hmm, I had a slightly defend experience in that I didn't immediately take to dd1... She was an inconvenience and a hassle to my life that I didn't feel I needed, this in turn led to postnatal depression - however with the second dd I felt an overwhelming rush of emotion and love (possibly something to do with a lovely epidural and zero pain!) - dd1 is now 3 years and I couldn't possibly love her any more. So it increased a million fold!

With both my children I worried about bonding with them. I think its just hormones and stress when pregnant.
As soon as my first was born she was put to my tummy and breastfed but then she wouldnt breastfeed for about a day. She then would only breastfeed no bottles and this was until she was 2. We are very close and breastfeeding definitely help with bonding
My second who is still breastfeeding at 17 months is also very close.
I was very worried about bonding with my second as I couldnt imagine feeling the same about another baby as I did with my first but as soon as he was born he breastfed instantly when put to my tummy.
The bond was there straight away but I found I love my children the same

Ds went straight into SCBU when born so I didn't get the chance to do anything other than see it was a boy. didn't matter that i didn't get to hold him or anything, bonding came naturally over time anyway.

I ended up in theatre with my 1st and my BP was in my boots and they battled to keep me conscious so kept pumping me full of drugs. I had been numbed from the neck down with a spinal but was adamant I was pushing the little champ out rather than have a CS. I was totally wasted and badly injured so didn't get skin on skin for his first hours and his 1st feed was from a bottle. I struggled with BF and I believe this made bonding difficult coupled with the traumatic birth experience. Looking back I had PND but put on a wonderful act of being totally loved up with my DS. He is coming up for his 3rd birthday and I love him dearly, but missing out on that immediate skin on skin defiantly robbed us of something special :( about to deliver my second and my Birthing preference says even if I am unconscious please let me have skin on skin!!