you don't say...

No one tells you that you might poop when you give birth.

Also, no one tells you that when you have your baby, you might not feel like it's your baby.

We're saturated in images of creamy, animated bluebird love for our brand new infant, but after nine months (or six) in utero, when you are suddenly handed this creature, amazing it may be, but it's hard to relate to reality. It's something that has never existed before. You were pregnant and used to the kicking and squirming from inside, and you had a closeness that can't be replaced. Then they hand you a red, sticky, crying form, and you're tired and in pain, and you're supposed to be suffused with joy.

I don't know what it is like to expect to feel joy, as I was filled with apprehension. I wasn't happy about the situation because I believed that the baby might not make it. I was in benign acceptance mode. When they placed him on my belly, I was amazed he was so big, surprised he was so maroon, and pleased to hear a little attempt at a cry, but I did not feel love. I felt fear. I wanted them to take him and make him live. Once I was back in my hospital room and allowed to leave, I did not want to go and see him. I waited until six o'clock in the morning to go over to the NICU because I was afraid. I did not start to love him until a week had passed, and that love has grown by degrees.

It's probably something mothers are not supposed to talk about. I didn't love my fetus, and I had to fall in love with my baby. But it's not just me; mothers of term babies have said similar things. It doesn't feel like it's your baby, it feels a little like an alien. Dads attach right away; they've been waiting for this for months. So have moms, but there's an accompanying sense of loss as well as a raging stream of hormones putting distance between you and the new arrival. I am sure that post partum depression is not helped by the guilt that new moms feel for not floating on a blissful cloud from the moment their baby is born.

My reactions when he was born are probably more common than one would think, especially when the baby is premature. Finn has love in unquantified amounts now, and that grows all the time. Even though he's never lived with us, I know and feel that he is mine, and I miss him more every day.