I am not madly in…

I am not madly in love with my baby yet. I know some women are immediately, and I would worry about not feeling the love, but I'm too tired. Besides, I figure it'll come eventually. Most of the time, I'm just grateful that she's sleeping, or frustrated that she's howling, or fretting about whether she will ever figure out how to nurse. Mostly, I'm just happy to get through a day still feeling relatively sane.

But sometimes, she is just too cute, and for a few seconds, I melt.

6 thoughts on “I am not madly in…”

  1. Greetings from Puebla Mexico.

    I have known mothers who took up to three months to feel in love with their newborn babies. So, you are not an outlyer in this regard.

    I am still hoping I get to meet your daughter sometime.

  2. Mary Anne Mohanraj

    Come to WisCon some year, David — I’m sure I’ll be bringing her there. 🙂 Hopefully even next year, esp. if I can convince Kevin to come up with me and do child-care…

  3. Wow, I was searching for breast feeding support about the possiblity that I was over-feeding my 2.5 week old when I stumbled onto your site. Sounds like you’ve really made some good steps towards your goal of breast feeding with the help of the pump. That is wonderful, but it wouldn’t matter if you had to give it up.

    My son was born May 25 and I, too, had a c-section and have done too much – can’t figure out how to take it easy either. But I have my moments with my sweet son. One minute I feel so connected to him and the next I am about to burst into tears because it seems he wants to eat all day long w/o even a break except to burp and switch breasts!

    I am beginning to get upset with my husband who keeps excusing himself to do yard work for hours on end (honestly, Kevin sounds like a dream boat!), when all I want from him is some support. Please was the dishes please rub my back (carrying that little guy and breast feeding for 12 hours a day really takes it’s toll on your back muscles). Additionally, my mother-in-law was here to “help” and she was totally supportive of his stupid yard work, even when I was weeping on the couch. All I wanted was family bonding time and all I got was ignored. I felt awful like I was being overly demanding.

    Guess I’ll keep looking for the over-feeding info. I appreciated your blog. It’s straight from the heart. Thanks!

  4. Mary Anne Mohanraj

    Dylan’s Mom, I wish I had something useful to say about the overfeeding issue; all I know is that if the baby isn’t spitting up much, he’s probably not overfeeding. He also probably isn’t actually eating the whole time he’s at the breast — he’s probably doing a lot of ‘comfort sucking.’ I have no idea how you’re supposed to handle that, though…good luck with it.

    As for the husband — hmm… Kev read your comment, and his thought was that probably your husband wanted to be helpful, and didn’t know how to help — so he went to go do yard work, ’cause that was productive, at least. Maybe you could make a short list of things he could do that would make things easier for you, or make you feel better? I could imagine a priority list:

    1) Check is wife is okay, and if she wants cuddling, backrub, sympathy, reassurance, etc.

    2) Do urgent household stuff, make sure everyone gets fed and that there are enough clean burp cloths, receiving blankets, onesies.

    3) If first two are taken care of, only then worry about optional household stuff. It’s okay to have messy house/yard.

    Honestly, what’s most helpful to you might just not be occurring to him. Of course, if you’ve already talked about it, then my suggestion is useless…

Leave a Reply to nik Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *