Bad Parent: Bond Rate
It took me a long time to fall in love with my baby.
by Lisa Emmerich
February 26, 2009
My mother dreamed she was floating in velvet stillness, swimming among the stars. She noticed one of the glittery specks glow a bit brighter than the others. She squinted at the star and knew it was her daughter.
"I picked you," she told me, tucking the bed sheets around my schoolgirl body.
As my mother retold her story at my wedding, I looked at my new husband and thought that someday I'd tell the same tale to our children.
But when I pushed my first daughter into the world three years ago, she felt less like a fated bundle of starlight and more like a stranger.
The blue drape of a doctor shoved a slimy, floundering heap over my bloody bed sheets. I ripped down my hospital gown to expose my breast, an action I knew to be essential to bonding with my newborn daughter. The creature thrust her hand into my mouth. It tasted salty. I wanted to feel a thrill, tasting the flesh of my flesh.
Instead, I gagged.
"Gross," I thought, and felt a curtain of guilt fall over me.
How could that be my first reaction to my child?
An earnest reader of Dr. Sears, I had done my attachment parenting homework — reading Goodnight Moon to my ample belly, singing songs of welcome in English, Hebrew and Spanish, imagining aloud the adventures I planned for the two of us.
Instead of sparks of connection, I felt an immense weight on my shoulders.
But when I first stared into Sasha's eyes, the flat gunmetal grey of a newborn, my plans evaporated. Horrid thoughts replaced them: She is taking my career, my identity, my rest, my life. She doesn't even look like me. I am too young for motherhood. She won't stop screaming.
Everybody trumpets the instantaneous mommy-baby bond. "You'll feel it the first time you see her," other mothers told me. Instead of sparks of connection, I felt an immense weight on my shoulders. I would have run in front of a stampeding herd of elephants to protect her, but my devotion stemmed from obligation.
I did what I thought I should. I snuggled her in the rocking chair and nursed her every time she rooted or fussed; I held her while I danced in front of the giant dining room mirror to lousy children's music; I toted her outside and pointed out the smooth green leaves, the vast blue sky, the boxy brown houses; I hummed beside her crib for hours every night, resting my hand on her tiny back long past when my fingers numbed. But I didn't do these things because of some intense, otherworldly affection. I did them because I felt shackled.
At times, just a glimpse at her smooth, round cheeks covered me with elation. But that joy was chased by a nasty dose of self doubt. Looking back, I think I was terrified. Maybe I hadn't grown up at all before then, although I'd moved across the country, held a good job, scrounged enough to buy a house. I had been counted on. But never by someone so precious and full of potential.
©2009 Lisa Emmerich and Babble
About the Author
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Lisa Emmerich is a freelance writer, editor and photographer. She teaches feature writing at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where she and her husband raise their two daughters. |
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