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ParentsMarch 28, 2017

Love at First Sight? When you don’t feel what you’re supposed to feel at your baby’s birth

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What happens when your baby is born and you don’t feel anything? Nadine Millar shares her story of waiting for the feelings to come.

I was 24 when I had my first baby. I’d just started Uni and it seemed like a good use of time. I wrote assignments while he slept, substituted text books for picture books. I used to tuck him into his push chair with a hottie and a blanket, a cocoon against the bitter Wellington chill, and set off into the world like I was invincible.

We sang nursery rhymes all the way to the lecture theatre. Youngest university student ever. He’d laugh when the lecturer said something serious and important, as though cynicism was part of his DNA.

When he got a bit older he went to the daycare centre on campus. He was my mascot, my champion, a reward after a long day reading and writing. If I finished two more chapters, I’d promise myself, I could go and pick him up. Arriving at daycare mid-afternoon, I’d find him buried under blocks or knee deep in the sandpit. He’d look up, see me, leap to his feet shouting my name. Airport arrivals happen every day at daycare centres.

I remember a woman asking me once if I’d thought about weaning him. We were snuggled in one of those embraces where he felt satiated and I felt relief, breasts emptied of a day’s weight.

I looked down at my toddler’s long legs splayed out across my lap and said “no.” Because I really hadn’t. It was impossible for me to distinguish the place where his needs ended and mine began.

Which strikes me as kind of crazy, now.

Because when he was born, I didn’t feel anything. Maybe it was the drugs, or the sheer length of the labour, or just general delirium, but I remember holding him in my arms and panicking because nothing happened. There was just this baby, and so much pain. I had expected love by lightning bolt. But all I could feel was pain.

The pain eventually subsided, but the feelings still didn’t come. As I shuffled around the hospital ward at 3am, utterly exhausted but unable to sleep, I was seized by the terrible knowledge that in a ward full of snuffling and whimpering babies, I wouldn’t be able to pick out the cry of my own son. I felt like such a fraud. All mothers instinctively know the sound of their own baby, don’t they?

Not me. I would have been useless in the wild.

I asked the nurse if I could use the phone – this was back before we all had cellphones – and I rang Malcolm. He was groggy with sleep, clearly unmolested by anxiety about whether he was ready to be a father. He asked me what was wrong, as though it was possible for me to say.

“Nothing,” I lied, looking at the bright red Fire Exit sign above the door. Then, whispering, so the nurse wouldn’t hear, I said: “I want to come home. Can you come and get me?”

I was so scared. I’d made a terrible mistake. What on earth made me think I could look after another human being? I was only 24. I should be down the road chugging tequila shots instead of sipping kiwifruit pulp from a plastic cup in a hospital ward.

Malcolm yawned. “Go back to bed, babe. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

So I did. One foot in front of the other, as if pulled by some invisible hand, down the hall to the room where my baby slept.

My Baby. 

New words in my mouth. So unfamiliar. So absolute.

I shut the door behind me, fingers lingering on the handle.

Lingering, as if deciding.

In the soft light I could just make out his shape inside the plastic basinette. He slept so soundly. Like a little log. He would sleep that way all his life, as though sleep was reckless and extravagant, a pleasure meant only for him. But I didn’t know that then. To me, he was just a stranger.

I tiptoed over and peered into the cot. He wasn’t moving. Not even a twitch. I tapped lightly on the plastic. Poked him gently with a finger.

Still nothing.

I put my ear on his chest, forehead furrowed with concentration.

Still he made no sound.

I leaned in, pressed my nose to his nose. The ancient greeting of our ancestors.

Finally, I felt his breath against my lips. Tiny beating lungs, new to flight.

I inhaled his scent.

And with it, relief.

I didn’t know I loved him then. I just knew I wanted him to live.

Nadine Millar (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi) writes policy by day and narrative essays by night. She has three kids, one husband, a 1978 Bedford house bus in fire engine red, and is learning to crochet. She speaks Māori and Spanish, and dreams of one day being able to write the perfect bio.

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Mother holding curious baby in living room

ParentsMarch 27, 2017

Emily Writes: Translating the crap we say at coffee group about our kids

Mother holding curious baby in living room

Spinoff Parents editor Emily Writes shares the fibs she tells at coffee groups to make her seem like a better parent than she really is.

Being a parent is hard. Sometimes we lie to make it feel like it’s easier. It’s not a mean-spirited lie. It’s a fib to help us cope. There are no performance reviews in parenting and it all often feels like a competition. Of course we know it’s really not – but there are so many competiparents about and can be hard not to fall into the trap. Especially when you feel like you’re coming in last.

So of course there will be times when you say something that stretches the truth just a smidge.

I no longer go to coffee groups. I found them to be a bit too much of a challenge. It wasn’t necessarily the other mothers, it was the pressure I put on myself. They – those clean and calm other mothers – seemed to have it all, and have it all together. I felt a bit like I was in need of being performance managed out of this, the best job there is.

I know now, having been a mum for four years, that nobody really has it all together.

But in those days, well, with a new baby I felt like I was being judged no matter what I did. I wanted it to seem like I wasn’t falling apart and I didn’t want anyone to know. So sometimes I said things that needed a translation. A dictionary of Coffee Mum to Real Mum phrases. And they went something like this:

Oh yes, we have a very strong bond.

Translation: He won’t let me out of my sight including at night so I get no fucking sleep.

It’s a very, very strong bond.

Translation: He likes to watch me poop. And I let him.

He’s adventurous.

Translation: He got stuck half-way under the fridge once and I had to use butter to get him out again. Please assure me that’s normal.

He’s a talker.

Translation: Can you hear me over the sound of his relentless screaming?

He’s very independent.

Translation: Just this morning he told me I’m not his best friend, will never be his best friend, and never have ever ever been his best friend.

He’s a problem solver.

Translation: He moved a chair to cover the hole he put in the wall because he head butted it just to see what would happen if he head-butted a wall.

He’s very advanced.

Translation: He farted once and it gave him such a fright he cried for an hour and your child is already saying Hello in three different languages so I need to say something OK.

He’s bilingual.

Translation: He watches 12 hours of Peppa Pig a day so he has a British accent.

He keeps me on my toes!

Translation: I haven’t slept in four years and sometimes I talk to my wine.

I agree – breastfeeding is really wonderful isn’t it?

Translation: I have mastitis and this is literally the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life and if you say breastfeeding is easy one more time I will punch you square in the face.

I know, so much judgement, I never judge other mums.

Translation: You literally just said you don’t work because you don’t want anybody else to raise your kids. You literally just said that. Also your top is ugly. I know it’s designer but it’s ugly.

My husband and I are closer than ever since we had kids.

Translation: The other night we fought for two hours about who ate the last Trumpet. HOW COULD HE EAT IT WHEN IT WAS MINE.

Yeah I don’t drink much these days either.

Translation: I haven’t had a drink yet and it’s 10am so sure.

I miss my kids when they’re at kindy too!

I do not.

Yeah they’re going to stay at their nanna’s tonight and I’m going to miss them so much!

I am not.

Mine sleeps through the night too.

If through the night you mean never.

Oh I know, screen time is terrible.

I have had sexual fantasies about Fireman Sam.

I am grateful! I am literally cherishing moments so hard I am in agony.

Can we be real? Please. Read my mind.

***

After playing this game for a few months I met a woman who answered differently. She set up the “I’m loving this, every single second, every minute, aren’t you?” trap and I agreed that yes, I was loving it, every single second, every minute, of course. Then she burst into tears. We walked outside the shitty Plunket rooms and looked at the grass that hadn’t been mowed in months.

It’s so hard, she said.

It is, I said.

She never stops crying, she said.

I feel like I can’t give either of them enough time. They want me so much, I said.

This isn’t what I thought it would be, she said.

Same, I said. I thought two would be easier than this.

I can’t cope with one she said.

But you are! I said. Look at you! You’re dressed and out of the house. You’re here.

She smiled. I smiled. We hugged. We sat on the concrete. Two new friends. We had broken the barrier. Thrown the dictionary away. We were two mums really talking now.

We met again the next day. And again and again. Cold coffee and warm homes. Talking and talking and talking until suddenly it was hours later. We decided we needed to make a promise to always tell the truth. We talked to more mums and when stopped ourselves from falling into fibs.

If we’re judged, we’re judged. If we’re seen as bad mums, then so be it. We have each other, and we have others and suddenly we have a community. In the truth is the beauty of parenting. It’s hard. It’s wonderful. It’s too good to be true, and too hard to make up.

We don’t need a translator, we need each other.

Find your people. No fibs here.

Emily Writes is editor of The Spinoff Parents. Her book Rants in the Dark is out now. Follow her on Facebook here.

Follow the Spinoff Parents on Facebook and Twitter.


This content is entirely funded by Flick, New Zealand’s fairest power deal. In the past year, their customers saved $417 on average, which would buy enough nappies for months… and months. Please support us by switching to them right now.

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