Phillip Toledano wrote a book called The Reluctant Father. In it he admits to having felt "confusion at the lack of love" he felt for his daughter when she was first born. I haven't read the book that Toledano wrote, but I want to thank him for writing it because I know what he is talking about. I felt that lack of love when I gave birth to my first child and I know I'm not the only mother who has ever felt or will feel that way. Now, it is one thing for a man to admit to not falling head over heels in love with his child immediately, but for a mother to do so is unthinkable to many. Do you think I'm awful because I wasn't overwhelmed with love the second I laid eyes on my first daughter or do you understand and get where I am coming from? Before you judge me as a cold-hearted poor excuse for a mother, let me tell you what I felt when I met my firstborn for the first time.
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After hours upon hours of induced and heavily medicated labor, I pushed my daughter out. I saw the doctor lift her up and she was covered in hair all over the place. To this day, she is the hairiest baby I have ever seen. She had hair on her forehead, her back, everywhere. I know it is normal, it's called lunago and the hair in all the odd places does eventually disappear, but that was the first thing I noticed.
The second thing I noticed was that I felt nothing. Where was this soul piecing bolt of love that I was supposed to feel? It didn't come. Instead what I felt was, Hmmm, that's my child. Weird. I don't know this person at all.
The first time I was left alone with her, I was terrified. My husband went to go get the car so that we could leave the hospital and I sat with my baby in my arms waiting. My heart started beating fast because she started to cry. I sang to her and tried to soothe her, but I felt like a fraud. I felt like I was doing the things that people told me are nurturing, but I wasn't actually being nurturing, I was just pretending to be.
Then we got home and I was so happy that my husband had taken time off work and that my mother was there as well because I had a little stranger to take care of and, quite frankly, I was really tired from the super long labor and recovering from all the drugs they had pumped into me.
I can't tell you when my daughter stopped being a stranger to me because I can't pinpoint the moment. What happened was that second by second and minute by minute she drew me in. She helped me let go of who I was in the world when I was just me being for me and she taught me how to love with a kind of love I had never known was possible.
I adore my daughter now. I love her so much it is indescribable and unquantifiable, but that love came not the moment I saw her, but flowed into me sort of like a tide rising.
I'm not ashamed that I didn't fall in love with my first daughter immediately. I had to learn to love her with the intensity I love her with now. Maybe I was in shock when I first met her, maybe my heart wasn't big enough yet for all the love it needed to hold.
The remarkable thing is that with her help my heart became so accepting of love that when I had my second daughter, I did love her head over heels immediately, but only because her older sister taught me that I was capable of so much love.
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