Mother love

By Maeve

Today we took the children to a museum. It is a bit more exciting than it sounds because it is a working farm, exactly as it would have been 100 years ago. We watched the pigs being fed and the cows being milked by hand. We walked through the most amazing walled kitchen garden where the trees groaned under ripening fruit, the vegetables were neatly ordered in rows, the artichokes higher than the children, the pumpkins fatter than the baby.  We watched the round-faced cook bake apple pie in the Victorian kitchen, we watched the maid boil the dirty laundry in a big copper pan and then put it through a mangle. We walked through huge beamed barns, as silent and as magnificent as cathedrals. We saw rabbits and chickens and donkeys, and I yearned, as I always do when I visit these places, for a life more connected to the earth, for a life more simple and true. It was a great day.

Except I can't stop thinking about the woman in the shop. An older lady, she was dressed in her Victorian costume and greeted us with smiles, a real twinkle in her eye. We got chatting as we paid for our tickets and as the children wondered on with the husband, her and I stood together over the pram and cooed at the baby. My baby. Number four. "He is delicious!" she said with delight as he gave her his most winning smile. A little later she came to find us in the coffee shop and brought chocolate pennies for the older children. "I had four boys, like you," she said to me.

I went back to the shop later to buy a recipe book, and she was still there. "You have a lovely family," she said. "You are very lucky!"

"Yes," I replied and I couldn't help smiling, "I know."

She chucked the baby under the chin and he smiled at her again. "It took me a long time to love my last one," she said, "I never had that overwhelming fierce rush of love you get when they are born."

I wasn't sure what to say. "Oh," sounded a bit lame, but it was all I could think of.

"My marriage was very rocky by then, and my boy was born deaf," she continued. "It came eventually though. When he was about 4-years-old. I just looked at him one day and it hurt. Suddenly, just like that, Whooosh! I fell in love."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"So am I," she said. "Four years is a long time."

Maeve is a freelance writer and mother to four boys.

Comments

[Laura]

Thanks Amy H. for your post.

When I posted I selfishly was just thinking about the child, not the mother. Really she must have had her reasons to feel that way and probably today she suffers for those "lost" four years.
The good thing is that she fell in love for her child after all.

[Lil' Liberal]

Poor mother. It's got to be difficult having a child and not feeling that love.

It can be amazingly difficult for a parent to not feel that connection/love for their offspring. My dad became horribly distanced from me when I lost my hearing. He claimed that when I lost my hearing I only lost my hearing, and he lost his daughter. (Convo between him and my mum that I lipread). It wasn't until I became pregnant that I realized how difficult that must have been for him, and how hard it must have been to go through that.

Love and connection isn't something that we can force ourselves to feel. And admitting when we don't feel it can be horribly hard.

I'm glad that she found her love for her son, and am sorry that both of them went so long without it.

[maria]

I was talking to a new mom once and told her I really could just skip the first 6-8 weeks of babyhood - heck up to 6 months. They're thankless, the babies don't smile and it's all work. And I had difficult babies who cried all night and never let me sleep. They turned into joyous toddlers. She looked at me with this huge sigh of relief and told me how glad she was I'd said that. Her mom had been telling her how much she should love our children and she just wasn't there yet.

Also - there are a lot of different kinds of love. I loved my babies when they were fussy difficult children. I loved my special needs child when he was in the ICU for weeks - because - well I did. But that love so much it hurts, fall in love - that came later...

[amy h.]

I just want to respond to the previous comment. I think the attitude that "how can we not love our baby" is what makes many women afraid to share when they do not have an immediate overwhelming love for their child (an issue that has been brought up on dot-moms recently).

There are lots of reasons why this woman may not have felt an immediate attachment to her child (e.g., her failing marriage, depression related - or not- to her failing marriage or the special needs of her 4th child, the fact that her child may not have been as responsive to her due to his physical challenges, etc, etc).

Before we judge another mother I think it's important to consider how it may have felt to be in her shoes for those four years.

Thanks for the post.

[Laura]

Your post just made me cry.
How can we not love our baby even if he has special needs? Poor child!
No further comments.... I am speechless.