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For me it was different with the 2 children. My first was an easy pregnancy, and although I was ecstatic, I truly bonded once he was born. The second was a difficult delivery, and my daughter's first few days were tenuous, I was in definite mother-bear mode.
One of my nieces is expecting her first baby, and her facebook postings during the pregnancy have brought a question to my mind:
When did you begin loving your child? I don't mean loving the idea of being a parent, because that could happen years before conception. But when did you actually love your child as a real person?
Also, when did you begin thinking of your child as a real person?
Let us know whether you are the birth mother, the father, or an adoptive parent.
I had my first daughter at 19..I wasn't ready for a baby but during the pregnancy I began to feel love for her I also had a dream one night while pregnant that it was a girl and in the dream I was dressing her up in this pink and white outfit and she was really pale skinned with dark curls and really chunky ...well months later at my baby shower I received a pink and white outfit the exact outfit in my dream I swear honestly so then on November 4th I gave birth to a 8lb 15oz chunky girl pale skinned with dark curly hair lol she was born at 6:08 A.M. and I myself was born at 6:08 P.M. I know there is a special connection with me and my first baby and I love her more than life itself
I've posted this before, but it was when my oldest daughter made that first eye contact and smiled. It was like excitement wrenching through my heart...before that, she was (I apologize to say) this shapeless little nuisance I changed, fed, bathed, held every day. I thought there was something wrong with me because I didn't feel any bonding with her. I was 25 year old, DH and I had been married almost 5 years, and I did NOT want a baby. She was unplanned. When she looked me in the eyes and smiled...that was it. I can't believe I didn't want to have her. 31 years later, I can't imagine life without her.
When I first saw him as a real person and my heart just burst with love for him - he was four months old and I had been out of town for work for two nights. He was staying with Grandma and Grandad. When I got home - he smiled so big and tried to wriggle out of his bouncy seat. That's when I realized he knew who I was and all those nights of rocking him to sleep - really meant something. He loved me; I was shaping a life. That's when it really got real for me.
Awww, what a great story! Something similar happened with my granddaughter. I went over one day to their house to pick her up because I was going to take her with me somewhere. She was just a few months old and when I got there she was in her car seat, ready to go. When she saw me she dropped the binky from her mouth. She knew who I was!
As for my own kids: I remember the first most vividly, because once you add a second and then a third, life is a whirlwind and it's just hard to remember every single thing like you do with the first. But with the first, I would say it was when she was born. She looked just like I had imagined/hoped my baby would look. She was perfect. She was born in the middle of the night. Back then babies didn't room in with their mothers; they were kept in the nursery and brought to the mothers at certain times. The morning after she was born I heard the nurses in the hallway taking babies to their mothers and I heard a cry and I already recognized it as her cry even though she'd only been born 6 hours before.
An interesting question, when did you first love your child. I think I loved them the moment I saw them in the delivery room, and as they went through childhood I was fascinated with them, amused by them, intrigued by them, and of course helped them any way I could.
But much much to my surprise, it took me until they were past puberty to really like my kids. I cannot pinpoint a day or moment or specific incident, but sometime during those teenage years, I realized that they were really very cool, engaging, funny and smart people. And that was true even during some very rough patches. Ultimately of course, that only deepened my love for them, and profoundly so. That's one Dad's experience at least.
You might as well ask me exactly when does fresh fruit become rotten fruit - or when does red become orange on a rainbow - or when does a child become an adult. There _is_ no point I can point at and say "There it is/was". It is a developing relationship that transitions incrementally from one form to another - and there is no point for me to identify where a change occurred.
I would have to say that I loved my children from the moment I knew they were in there (biological mom here). But I didn't see them as "real people" apart from me until sometime in their first year of life. It felt like they were just extensions of me for a while, until it became obvious they had their own minds
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