Birth and bonding

I felt similarly after both my births even though they were completely different. DD1 was a difficult and long VB. Straight afterwards, I was just exhausted and didn't feel a surge of love. Fascination yes, love no. That didn't hit till about two weeks later.

DD2 was an elective caesar. I felt a little differently. I felt very, very lucky and grateful to have her. I call her my miracle baby - not because she was difficult to conceive but because of other issues that had made it a very hard journey to have her (housebound for six months during the pregnancy). She also seemed like a miracle to me because she was much less active in utero than DD1, so much so that I went to the ob twice because I was worried about her lack of movement. Apart from having a big belly and lots of physical issues to manage (pelvic instability and gestational diabetes), I didn't actually feel pregnant. So until she actually arrived, I didn't really believe I had a baby inside me.

I think the love took a little longer to kick in with DD2. I'm not sure whether it was because of the birth or just because you're busier second time around and don't have as much time to just hold and stare at your baby (although obviously I spent hours a day doing just that anyway).

Well obviously I haven't had my second baby yet so can't comment there, but I can say I wasn't in love with DD straight away. She was this squeaky helpless creature that everyone else seemed to be completely enthralled with until a point I think about the second day after I'd had her - It was the first time I'd been alone with her during the day, I was sitting in the nursery in the sunshine thinking "lets give this bf-ing thing a go" and the radio was playing, so I started to gently sing to her as she fed. And that was the moment I bonded with her and felt she was definitely mine.

Her birth was induced, but wasn't what I'd classify as overly traumatic. But I did find the swarm of people wanting to see her that first day was very distracting (seriously, about 6 or 7 different people in the first 3 hours of her life) and having all the medical staff checking us over every little while it made it quite difficult to bond with her in our own space. This time I think I might keep it to immediate family only for the first day at least.

I think I've figured this out.

I saw Prof Miriam Labbok talk at the LRC conference on the weekend about guilt and breastfeeding.
She talked also about how she believes pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding and the interim years till the next baby should be treated as one continuum, rather than separating it into segments, as we generally do, and care for mothers should be continuous. She also talked about how our mammalian brains control these processes, and expect a normal progression of physiological and hormonal events, and when something interrupts these processes - such as a traumatic birth, separation after birth, not breastfeeding, for eg - our bodies can interpret this as the loss of our baby. What can follow, to one extent or other, is a very real grieving process.

After a completely managed labour and delivery my son spent his second night in the nursery. He'd had some funny poos and they offered to keep an eye on him, just in case. We were anxious and agreed. But I distinctly remember thinking, as the midwife took him away, that he was going and that was that. I always thought I was just overly hormonal, or tired or neurotic. But I think, actually, I was grieving the loss of my child and maybe, somewhere deep in my mammalian brain, I believe that my child died that night.

It's a bit of a light bulb moment and explains a lot of the confused feelings. Just thought I'd share.

I had a induced VB for my DD. She was stillborn but I felt that immediate love surge for her as I held her I couldn't believe how beautiful and perfect she was.
For my DS I had a failed induction and an emergency C/S. I got the surge of love for him before I even held him when they showed him to me. I wish I'd had immediate skin on skin but I did get that in recovery. We now spend HOURS just staring at each other.

madb - that is exactly how i felt.... but I had two fantastic labours and births; and the injection both times. I think that i was just so sobbing shocked with DS that a baby actually came out, let alone breathing and mine, that i sort of retreated a bit iykwim

I think the second time around you can really appreciate the treasure you have and you *know* (more than just intellectually knowing, you emotionall know) what it is like to have a baby, and how precious this time is.

but like PZ said, it's just such a personal thing, who knows! lol

DD1 was a c/s, I didn't have her in recovery and then she had her first night in the nursery. I remember panicking at other times waking up and desperately searching for my baby in my bed, well before we coslept. But I did bond with her well, loved her so much and never felt a disconnect with her. And it's only after DD2's birth that I realise the disconnect was in the way we became a family.

DP and I fought right before I was taken down to theatre. We'd been delayed for hours, I was so anxious about the c/s and then I couldn't hold her after her birth like we'd wanted. I told DP I didn't want him there, I was so upset with him. He did come, but it wasn't a great precursor to her birth. After she was delivered, DP and DD1 went off without me while i was in recovery and only a short time after we were reunited DP had to go home. DD1 is then in the nursery alone, I'm in my room alone and DP is at home alone. Our first night as a family. It makes me cry when I think about it now, because now I know what it should have been like.

DP and I struggled with each other and with parenting together after DD1. Maybe this was us and had nothing to do with her birth, but I can't help but think that didn't help. DP did not want to have another child for many years and one of his main reasons was that he was worried about the birth being like DD1's, that we'd fight and he wouldn't be there. DD2's birth has been so healing.

DD2 was born in our home, surrounded by her family. The first person to touch her was me, no one else held her or looked into her eyes before me. Her sister touched her, cut her cord and then her daddy cuddled her. She was never out of my sight. She has never been separated from her family, not once. We were all together for almost a week before DP went back to work. It makes me cry remembering how we welcomed DD2 into our family too, but the tears are for the joy and rightness of the experience this time.

It really made sense to me when I watched the Face of Birth and Hannah Dahlen speaks of the relationships lost from bad birth experiences. It's not that DD1's was bad, it just wasn't good.

That's so interesting MadB, makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks for sharing.

I believe, for me, it had nothing to do with the birth. I never "fell in love" with my baby, or my toddler, or my school-age son. I never "fell in love" with my husband either. I am not a "fall in love" sort of person.

I do, however, adore my son and we get on great. But I never bonded with him. And I wish I had stopped beating myself up about that sooner, and stopped blaming the birth process or thinking it was somehow indicitive of PND. It's just me and I shouldn't try to be anyone else. I'm fully prepared for it to happen again with Stormy, only this time it won't bother me.

I only have one child so I can't compare things but I certainly didn't feel connected to my DS after birth. My labour was long 25 hours and 2 hours were spent pushing. I didn't have sleep for about 2 nights and didn't eat for more than 24 hours. I was so exhausted after my birth that I had double vision, was faint and couldn't hold myself up. I remember when they put DS on my boob after delivery that I couldn't even put my arm around him and I could barely even focus on what was going on. It was only much later that someone told me that I was in shock and suffering from exhaustion. At the time I thought there was something wrong like loss of blood or retained placenta.

I feel really bad saying it but I told the nursing staff that I couldn't care for him that night. Which they responded that I would in fact have to. My bond with my baby started after I had slept for a few hours it was only then that I began to realise that I had actually had a little bubba. The bond increased over days. The difficulty establishing breast feeding also threatened my bond with my baby but I was able to overcome that feeling through researching breast refusal and learning about what was going on.

Reading back over this is interesting. I've now had baby #2 and whilst I was again induced and had quite a medicalised birth, we did a few things differently. Namely immediate skin-to-skin and breastfeeding in the birth suite shortly after he was born - he did the breast crawl and everything :) We also didn't announce the birth until the next morning (he was born shortly after 9pm and we didn't get back to the ward till after midnight) and had no visitors until the next afternoon - it was just us. He did have to spend a couple of hours away from me under the warmers as he was struggling to maintain his temperature, but I still felt like we had bonded with him a lot better as those first precious few hours weren't disrupted.