I had a realisation.
I guess you could call it *the* realisation.
I looked at my sleeping daughter and had ‘the moment’. She will be four months old this weekend, and it has taken me this long to feel ‘it’.
The much talked about.
That amazing, overwhelming, innate radiance that you *should* feel the minute they put the baby in your exhausted post-labour arms.
I’ve spent the last four months in a ‘methinks the lady doth protest too much’ state of affairs, proudly telling anyone who would listen that I was FINE with the lack of feeling and simply patiently waiting for the moment to come. In truth, I had horrendous fears of simply never feeling ‘it’… Maybe some people just ‘have’ kids. Maybe some people don’t want to smother their child in love and adoration and are happy just having a small, diaper-wearing buddy around the house. Maybe the absence was all I was going to have.
And I can’t tell you what changed.
To others in the same situation, I don’t have a magic formula to what makes it better. I can just say that after a feed at O Dark Thirty O’Clock last week, I looked at the sleeping baby in the cot and my stomach went ablaze. I don’t know about butterflies…. there were fire-breathing dragons in my abdomen and I suddenly realised that I LOVED MY CHILD. I would throw myself in front of any thing, any one, any anything to make sure she comes to no harm.
And so I smiled, kissed her forehead and went back to bed.
And I’ve not looked back since.
The relief is extraordinary.
But the feeling is even better.
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