Maybe it's because I didn't have a lot of contact with my baby for the first week of life - I wasn't even able to hold her the first 24 hours or so. I barely caught a glance of her after giving birth until, after an hour of recovery, they wheeled me over to the NICU to look at her. Just look. Maybe it's just a natural thing. I wasn't immediately in love with my baby. Oh, sure, I "loved" her because she was precious. But... I don't know, infants take a while to develop an attachment with caregivers... perhaps it's mutual. I didn't have an immediate bond with this little girl. When she came home I dutifully got up every few hours to feed her, thinking that at least she was cute, even if I was exhausted.
I guess I sort of expected this great maternal instinct to well up in me and start making me superwoman, or especially Christlike towards my daughter or something.
I have a guess, though, that this is just what motherhood is: learning to love the small things and getting through the frustrating ones. Toughing it out through the spit-up and the nightly feedings and the fussing because it just needs to be done. Learning to love the little person that my daughter is in spite of all that.
And I do like what Glenn Beck had to say about it - cuteness is a defense mechanism. "Thou shalt not kill anything cute!"
Because at 3 AM when she falls asleep while feeding (again), I just focus on how cute she is.
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