Lori, you've got some good advice so far. And like others have said, good on you for acknowledging the difficulties you've had in the past and being proactive about it!

I was very nervous about how I'd feel about this pregnancy too. #5 was a total accident, as was this one (I'm having a Lady Bracknell moment) and I was a bit scarred by my response to #5. It took me a long time to accept that pregnancy - probably the time it really stopped being just a burden was at twenty weeks when our parish priest offered a blessing to my tummy at the communion rail. It struck me then that this was a precious little life, quite apart from my own feelings towards it!

When #6 came along, I just decided to go with the flow a bit more, and let my feelings resolve quietly. It has really helped that I've had therapy over the last year, and that dovetailed into accommodating this big change in our lives. I accepted in early pregnancy that the relationship would take time to grow, and I nurtured what bits of it I felt and tried to let go of guilt over what I didn't feel.

I'm still ambivalent about having another baby, but it's like I've been able to develop the relationship with the baby *as an individual* separately to that ambivalence. Separating out the personhood of the baby from my own issues has been really helpful, if that makes any sense!!

I think too that sometimes, bonding just doesn't happen the way we expect it. With dd3, she never really felt like my child until she was nearly school age. Now we are very close. There were a lot of factors involved in that, but in the end, we got there.