Loving your new baby isn't automatic

When parents first meet their baby soon after birth, recognizing love for the baby may not be automatic. People call this bonding and it has been so emphasized that parents who don’t ‘bond’ often fear they lack in their relationship with their babies from the beginning.

It’s absurd to assume that your relationship with your baby might fail because no lightning-bolt bonded you together immediately after birth. Love will come but it will take time. Usually, we define the word love as interaction between people who know each other.

If there is love, there must be a sharing, a giving and taking of affection and support. A brand new baby on the other hand is neither lovable nor loving. She is not truly lovable because she has not yet got herself into predictable, knowable shape nor had time to produce the characteristics which will make it clear forever more that she is a unique person.

Love at first sight?

Indeed you may love her on sight because she is your baby; the fulfillment, perhaps, of a plan or dream; but you can’t instantly love her as one person loves another; she is not fully a person until she is settled. She isn’t loving because she does not yet know of her own existence, let alone yours. She will learn to love you with a determined and unshakeable passion unequaled in human relationships. But it will take time.

The mixed feelings you have with your baby now are neither a guide for the present nor a warning of the future. The overwhelming tenderness that sweeps over you as you cradle her head can give way in a moment to furious irritation at her crying. Your pride in being a mother can be turned into phobia as you realize that you are committed to her forever and will never again be free to be an entirely separate individual person.

Natural flow

If you allow it, your body will start loving the baby for you even before she is properly a person. Whatever your mind and the deeply entrenched habits of your previous life may be telling you, your body is ready and waiting for her. Your skin thrills to hers. Her small frame fits perfectly against your belly, breast and shoulder. That tiny, warm head is there for your cheek to rub and your thumb moulds itself to the startling grip of those small, bony fingers.

Scratch my back I scratch yours

Reveling in the baby physically speeds up the time when she can join in this essential business of loving. She will not lie passively, leaving it to you to make all advances. If you will have her close, she will make advances to you, too. She has a built-in interest in you because you are essential to her survival. She will see to it that love comes.

Your body’s command and your baby’s physical reactions are your best guide to handling her in these very initial days. Child-rearing plans and policies are no use to you yet.

Simple needs

The baby needs to be handled so that her new life seems as little different as possible from life in your womb. Her needs are simple, repetitive and immediate. She needs food and water in the combined form of milk; warmth and comfort from cuddling arms and soft wrappings in a small, safe bed and she needs protection.

Wrap her warmly, her hold her closely, handle her slowly, feed her when she is hungry, talk to her when she looks at you, wash her when she is dirty and give her peaceful time to come to terms with life. Peaceful contentment means you have got it right. Distress means you have got it wrong. Let her reactions guide you.

If you can manage this, the baby will gradually come to realize what she needs and realize that she gets what she needs when she needs it. By the time she is a settled, knowable, lovable small person, she will know the world to be a good place to be alive in. And that, after all, is the best start you can possibly give her.