motherhood, etc
They tell you once your baby comes, you’ll forget all the pain and everything will be worth it. You will be overwhelmed with love and maternal devotion, and your life will never be the same.
That’s true, I suppose, up to a point. But let me just say this: I remember every agonizing minute of my 36 hours of labor. When I first saw my son, I didn’t feel a tidal wave of affection or even emotion. What I felt, instead, was something bordering on apathy. The pain overwhelmed me. Meeting my son did not. Was it the exhaustion of birthing? The aftermath of the too-little-too-late epidural? Or was I just a strange kind of mother? I don’t know. I didn’t know what to make of myself, to be honest. And I would venture to guess that the sentiment was shared by the nurse who tried to offer him up to me, and to whom I responded with “no, not now please.”
The love came after.
At first, all I felt was responsibility, uncertainty, the feeling that I had made the biggest mistake of my life. How could I have agreed to be responsible for a child??? A human. Jesuschristwhattheactualfuck.
And this is what I felt when I lay on my hospital bed, my little baby son next to me on a crib. This is what I felt when I, exhausted beyond belief, had to get up every two hours to nurse and suckle an infant who was now completely under my care. This was what I felt when I changed his diaper for the first time, and noted the dried up crust of an umbilical cord protruding from the beginnings of a belly button.
The love will come after, I told myself. It was a mantra I held on to for dear life.
The love comes after.
It did. It does.
Let me tell you something. What you feel in the earliest days of motherhood is not indicative of your worth as a mother. The love you may or may not have when you birth your child is not indicative of the love you will have for him when you finally believe that he is yours, that he is your son, that he is now, completely and irrevocably, part of your life.
Luke is only 7 months old, and here are the things I know:
He is the brightest spot in any room. He is an angel. I will do anything for him. And I pity anyone who tries to truly hurt him, for there are places inside me that are dark and bleak and grotesque. Pity the fools who would meet my demons, for they would not survive. (I promise.)
Originally published on Tumblr, September 2014.