Difficulties Meeting the Newborn

For nine months, the mother has invested her feelings in a baby who existed in her imagination. After birth, that baby gives way to the real one, onto whom she must redirect her emotional investment.

At birth, two things shape the feelings a mother has for her baby: how closely the baby resembles the image she built up during pregnancy, and how well the love she felt for the little one who, until shortly before, had been part of her own body carries over to the newborn. Even so, even where there's no continuity of representation between the fantasized baby and the real one, if the mother feels the same loving feelings for him from the very first instant, the foundations on which the relationship can develop are solid and positive, and suggest she'll be able to care for him without particular difficulty.

Here are the words of a new mother who went through this:

«I expected him different, not with all that dark hair, that little monkey-like fuzz on his shoulders, even on his ears… and yet he's beautiful, I keep looking at him and it seems impossible that he's the very same one who, until a few hours ago, was moving inside me. Even though he doesn't resemble the baby of my imagination in the least, from the very first moment I saw him he had already captured all my love. The feelings I had for him before he was born are the same ones I feel for this little bundle lying on me, whose chubby little legs I knew by touch even before seeing his little face. He's my cub, I feel I would give my life for him, that I would kill with my bare hands to defend him, because he's a part of me, the most important part…»

For other women, however, the first feelings toward the newborn are completely different: even when there's continuity between the imagined baby's image and the real one, the emotional continuity is missing, that is, the ability to recognize him as their own baby. Here are the words of two mothers, ordinary women, expressing the deep anguish they were going through, a sign of the difficulties that would later emerge in caring for the child:

«Identical, perfectly identical to the one I'd imagined: a boy, blond, chubby, I'd even call him cute if I felt like looking at him. But the one they laid on my stomach in the delivery room feels like a stranger to me, someone I don't know. If I'd been asleep, I'd have thought they'd swapped my baby for this one, and I feel an unsettling indifference toward him… How will I manage to care for him, to love him, if I feel no emotion at all? I expected to be overwhelmed with joy, to cry tears of happiness, to cover him with kisses…. instead here I am, cold as a marble statue, pretending to take an interest in this stranger, just because I'm ashamed of being different from other mothers. I feel judged, criticized, but I can't manage to feel anything…»

«They laid her on my stomach and I screamed that no, I don't want her, or maybe I do, it's not that I don't want her, but I'm scared, scared she'll fall, scared to look at her closely, to realize that she's really real, alive, right there, no longer inside me… that it's her I'll have to reckon with… no, what am I saying, that I'll have to connect with. Will it be hard, will I manage? I'd imagined everything differently, the birth, her, me… I'd like to hold her, kiss her, but I'm afraid of hurting her, or of hurting myself, because her gaze will bewitch me, she'll take possession of me and I won't know how to say no to her anymore and my life will become hers…. Take her away from me, take her away, I can't have her here right now, I don't want to see her now, later, when I'm calmer… right now I need to sleep, I need to think, I need to understand, right now I don't know who she is, I don't know who I am… I'm scared…»