Bonding – Hope

 

With her second baby, Hope didn't feel an immediate explosion of joy after birth, and a few hours later, she experienced her first intrusive thought.

Written testimony

I was hanging off of my husband’s neck, and [my daughter] was basically coming out, I didn’t even really, I didn’t have to push her, there was no tearing nothing, but I felt outside of my body. I felt I was looking at my body opening up, I felt I was outside looking, and that was weird. And then as soon as I had given birth, thank goodness, you know, like I had my doula who was like, just chill out, you know, like just you know, it was dark and your instinct is to grab your baby sometimes. But is that because you actually want to, or is that because you feel like you have to, you know. And so, I just paused and just try to like process the fact that I just had a baby here, and this baby is mine. And I didn’t feel the attachment, I did not feel the explosion of phenomenal joy as I did with my first baby, and it scared me, really it scared me, but I was okay. And I knew what the healthy behaviours are to promote bonding and I knew what the baby needed and all that and what I needed.

So you know, the evening continued and a lot of skin to skin and latching on and all of this, but I had, that night after I gave birth, probably two three hours after I gave birth, I had my first intrusive thought. Which was that my little baby’s fingers, that looked like anemone, you know, like those sea tentacles almost, so soft and like so thin and so delicate, you know. And I just saw my little baby’s fingers as she was on my chest and I saw them, but get snipped off right away, yeah. And that scared me a lot. And . . . that was a lot of postpartum, I had a lot of these crazy, really scary intrusive thoughts, and I did not feel attached to my baby, like I did not feel that I loved her. I felt that I had a baby for my older daughter, so she wouldn’t be an only child. I felt that, when I looked at my baby, I guess I have to take care of you because who else will, because you’re my baby.

I feel fine now, you know, I feel so happy, I feel happier now than I did before I had [my daughter]. When I, you know, before even I went in for the last, because I didn’t know if should we have this baby, like oh my gosh, should we try again, like my other child’s seven and a half and we’re good, and we just moved and going on in my career and then ambivalent through the whole pregnancy. I am so glad to have this baby now, and I’m so in love with her now, and would do anything for her, but I didn’t feel that way for a while after birth and it’s extremely scary to not love your child.

Thank God I know what positive mothering behaviours are, like because I just act them out to the best as I could, but I think you can’t act them out to their full potential without that natural feeling behind them. And so, you’re not able to read, you’re not able to – and I think there’s something in the love hormones that makes the breastfeeding work better too.

I did a lot of reading on postpartum depression online and one of the things that stuck to me is this woman who had her testimonial and you know, and it scared me too, because her baby would have been, is two years old now, and only by the first birthday did she bond, you know. And women, they bond at different times, but to wait a year or two years to fall in love with your baby, that is so hard. You know, for me to wait, I remember falling in love with [name daughter], it happened slowly, but I remember the first time that I really kind of, my heart kind of softened and opened, and it was weeks after she was born, weeks. And it may be actually the whole crisis thing with the breast milk, I wonder if it was actually another event that had a reason, which was I had to freak out that my baby was dying for me to like focus on putting everything into that baby, so.

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