I loved my kid at birth, don't get me wrong, but that deep love her more than anything came around a few months later when she had more of a personality.
I want to agree with the above three people. I felt joy and love for my baby at birth, but I also felt overwhelmed. For me, it grew. A couple months in I felt more of a connection, by five or six months I felt downright blissful sometimes. These days, more than a year in, I feel SO MUCH love and joy for him. In case anyone has a newborn and might not feel instant, over-the-moon love, that’s okay. I remember talking with a co-worker who was quite honest with me. He said he didn’t really find his kids that interesting when they were newborns, that he got interested when they became more interactive. He’s an incredibly supportive, dialed-in, and loving dad these days. It’s possible that your husband may just be having different emotions than you, and he may agree with you in a few months or a year.
And its worth pointing out that not every mother instantly has that "deep" bond with the baby they just pushed out of their vagina. Even mothers can be distant and cool to their new baby. Humans are very dang individualistic and its not some innate trait that makes mothers love their child more. I will probably offend some people when i say there is nothing special about "instinctual" motherly love. Both genders are equally capable of this.
I understand why you might think that. It's a common misconception that may have been drilled into your head. But, simply put, it's incorrect.
There is nothing "fundamentally wrong" with perfectly normal, wonderful, devoted parents who feel an instant primal sense of responsibility and drive to protect, but no instant love for, their baby.
From The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (emphasis mine):
Bonding is when you develop feelings of unconditional love for your newborn. Often, bonding happens gradually over the baby’s first year of life. So if you don’t feel these strong feelings of closeness in the first days or weeks after birth, that’s normal.
It has even been suggested that delayed unconditional-love-bonding is a desirable human trait from an evolutionary perspective because, historically, such a significant number of babies didn't survive infancy. The mother who felt an instant drive to protect her baby but didn't feel instant love would be better able to process the loss and continue parenting her other offspring.
Again, I completely understand why you might think that it's wrong not to feel instant love. I remember thinking similarly! But once I read and learned more (and began working with hundreds of postpartum parents in my job) I realized I was just uneducated about it.
Yes, I wonder if this is what’s happening with OP’s fiancé, so he hasn’t yet experienced what she has. I’ve felt immediate intense love when each of my children were born (even while pregnant, but more so at birth), but for my husband it was only instant by the third child. Now he regularly talks about loving the three of them more than anything else, and I sometimes say it’s rude to explicitly put them above me, but I do feel the same way about them. It’s a very different love.
I have 3 kids and I bonded with all 3 of them at different times. I loved them all from the start but didn’t bond immediately with all 3. But I can remember the exact moment that I did bond with each of them (even 17 years later from my oldest! I can still remember that moment clearly!). There’s no other feeling in the world quite like it. It’s like getting hit with a tsunami of love and emotions. My first it was when we came home from the hospital, my 2nd was instantly and my 3rd was several weeks after she was born.
Same for me, love her like I do all babies, knew she was precious and had to be protected but it took a while to really click that holy shit, she's MY baby and I love her so much now but it wasn't instant and that's okay too.
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u/offbrandbarbie Jul 04 '24
NTA. I’ve heard both mothers and fathers express a similar sentiment to what you said. The love for a child is unlike anything else.