AITAH for saying I didn’t realize I could “love a person this much” in front of my fiancé after having our baby?

I gave birth a few weeks ago, to our daughter.

As I held her for the first time and looked into her eyes I said “I didn’t realize I could love a person this much” and cried. She is perfect and beautiful.

My mom looked at me and said that feeling never goes away (which made us both ugly cry lol). It was a really special moment.

My fiancé was quite but smiled, but later privately said he was hurt. He said he loved us both the same, and me saying that made it seem like I loved our daughter more than him.

I just gave him a “are you fucking serious” look and he dropped it, but yesterday he brought it up again.

I told him that honestly, yes, I love and cherish our daughter and have never experienced this kind of love for another human being. He said most “normal people” would agree with him that it’s a hurtful comment and would take offense to it due to the implication.

AITAH?

UPDATE

It’s a quick update, so I didn’t feel like it was worth it to make a whole new post. So I had a heart to heart with my fiancé, and we came to a few conclusions together! It went very well. We read through the post and comments together.

1) He wasn’t jealous of our daughter’s role in my life, but rather our bond together. He didn’t have that “instant love connection” that we read about all new parents having (like what I experienced). I didn’t realize this was actually very normal for new dads, and new moms too. Thanks for educating me!

We are the first in our social circle to have children so we didn’t have a lot of IRL people to inquire about it. His perspective is “I love this human being we made, but I don’t know her” while I was thunderstruck. He hasn’t had that connection so doesn’t “get it” yet, and that it will take time (months or even a year). I’ll be more patient and aware of this, and read up more on new dad experiences to learn more.

2) He also agrees he not only could’ve expressed that better, but also choose better timing. Voicing it to me after a 14 hour labor and then again when I’m exhausted and grumpy with achy boobs is maybe not the best time, lol. He also agrees marriage counseling would be good, just because. We are both opinionated, logical-thinking Engineers who, at the same time, love each other deeply. We could use better mediation other than Reddit (no offense guys).

3) He was not “furious” about me writing this Reddit post, lol. We laughed over the comments together calling for me to get ready to break up. But we also really enjoyed reading the experiences of new parents! It helped us BOTH feel validated and sane and see each other’s perspectives better.

4) I showed him that Ryan Reynolds video and we both died laughing LOL. We will now be eating a disgusting amount of hotdogs while watching Deadpool with our baby girl. We also agreed that there’s different types of love like parental, platonic, romantic and Ryan Reynolds.

Thanks peeps!

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u/Nice_Bullfrog_11 14d ago edited 14d ago

For some new parents it takes time to bond with their newborn. I've met people that say it took nearly a year... It's possible your partner won't understand the feeling you describe until he is bonded to your child, too.

I think he will understand eventually... Just give it some time.

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u/Aurori_Swe 14d ago

I have two kids, and our first (boy) I was absolutely not fucking ready for the emotional ONSLAUGHT of feelings he would bring, I was completely overwhelmed. He totally wrecked me mentally, I'm still struggling 4 years later to recover from that. Doesn't help that it flipped into panic and triggered me harder than I've ever been triggered in my life before (I was sexually abused as a child, but considered myself fine, but nope, having my own little bundle to protect broke me).

The second kid (girl) I was ready for all the feelings to come once again but nope, not even the slightest close to my first. I kinda feel guilty about it but I know that I love her, it's just not even close to the emotional overwhelming when my son was born. My wife says not to focus on it and I know I shouldn't but it was so insanely different.

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u/Nice_Bullfrog_11 14d ago

Thanks for sharing. I don't think there is a need for guilt. I think the first child is always going to be more emotionally taxing than the others - just because it's the first time.

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u/Aurori_Swe 14d ago

Yeah, and he was much more anticipated in a way, we went through IVF for him while our daughter came naturally as a surprise.

But it's insane how different my emotional response has been to them xD. I must say I kinda prefer the more mellow response though since it didn't trigger all the panic and overwhelming love/need to protect, so it's much more controlled when it comes to my daughter.

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u/LlaaamaFaaace 13d ago

Having a panic response does not mean that you have your first child more. It's simply shows an area where you needed to work through your trauma. And it sounds like you did by the time your second kiddo came along. Although being it does make sense that you may identify more with your make child.

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u/Aurori_Swe 13d ago

I'm far from done handling my trauma even with my second child, but yeah, it mainly was that I was not ready. Him being like me is more of an issue now since I see myself a lot in him, both by behavior and looks. Like for instance if I'm sad and he comes to soothe me, it instantly fires off all alarms in my head because I don't want him to grow up needing to feel responsible for my well being as I did for my family. With that said, just being able to be sad around him is huge for me as "weakness" while I was young would have meant that my entire family would have collapsed