Bonding with your baby — No, you’re not a bad mom
By: Matthew Seiltz
Tags: Newborn, Parenting

Source: Kelvin Murray via Getty Images

You just had a baby. When you looked down at his little face, you expected to feel an instant connection. You carried him around for 9 months, so you should, right?

But the thing is, it doesn’t always happen that way. Feeling a bond with your new baby isn’t always instantaneous. You expected to fall in love with her instantly — but the fireworks didn’t go off.

Worse, as the hours turn into days — and exhausted, sleep-deprived nights — it still doesn’t come. Does this mean your a horrible mom?

No.

This is normal.

Why is bonding important?

Although bonding may feel like just “good feelings,” it is really much more than that. Bonding is an unconditional love and attachment between you and your child. It’s essential to a baby’s development. Without bonding socialization skills, cognitive development, and mental health suffer.

In fact, studies performed on newborn monkeys showed a clear difference between the babies given mannequin mothers at birth versus those left with their real mothers: those with real mothers were better socialized and less prone to “suffer from despair.”

The good news is, babies tend to bond in predictable ways. So if you didn’t feel that instant, intense connection you expected, try these tips out and have faith: it will come.

Ways to Bond with Your Baby

Touch

Since babies can’t see very well, their sense of touch is one their primary ways of communication and bonding. Cuddle your baby often, with lots of skin-on-skin contact.

If you are able or willing, breastfeeding helps stimulate hormones that produce feelings of love and attachment — for both of you.

Sound

Your baby learned your voice when he was still in your belly. He knows it, and even if you didn’t carry him — that means you, Dad — he may still know your voice from in utero. Talking, singing, and reading to your baby every day can help them make the connection and form that bond.

Facetime

Although your newborn’s eyesight isn’t well-developed yet, spending lots of close-up facetime with eye contact is just as important as the other tips included here. Over time, your child will begin to participate in your “conversations” by smiling, giggling, making faces, or babbling in response.

Another thing to consider is purchasing an infant carrier. Keeping your baby close will fill your nostrils with her scent, and vice versa, which helps build your connection to each other. It also makes it easier to do all the above while still being able to move around.

Frequently Asked Questions

What if I don’t bond right away?

True connection takes time. Do the caring things that you need to do for your child: holding, feeding, changing, bathing, etc. The bond will come.

I have these terrible, negative thoughts and feelings about my baby — I must be the worst mother on the planet.

Having negative thoughts following birth is entirely normal — many new mothers have them. The important thing to remember is to pay attention to how they affect you. If you are unable to function normally because of these thoughts and feelings, you may have postpartum depression or anxiety, which affects as many as 20% of new moms.

Where a serious problem arises is when you feel compelled to act on these thoughts — like harming yourself or your baby. If this happens, call 911 immediately or go to the nearest ER immediately, as you may have a more serious case of postpartum depression that needs to treated right away.

I had a long, hard labor. I thought I would forget the pain and instantly be in love when I saw her face — but I wasn’t.

This is also not unusual. A physically or emotionally traumatic labor can exhaust you and leave you needing a longer recover, which means it may take you longer to feel that connection to your new baby than if it had gone smoothly.

Says Meredith Small, a cultural anthropologist at Cornell University: “Bonding is not instantaneous, but a process — a relationship that grows from being together over time.”

I had trouble bonding with my baby, but my partner seemed to connect with him right away.

Sometimes both parents feel the connection at the same time, but not always, and it can go either way: the mother feels a strong connection while the father feels left out, or vice versa.

This is also completely normal. As time goes on, this dynamic will change and evolve. Keep taking care of your new baby. Have patience with both him and yourself. Enjoy it. The bond will come.

Finishing up

Saying that becoming a mom is hard is an understatement — it’s way beyond that. Physical and mental exhaustion, coupled with struggling to feel bonded with your baby can be overwhelming. It’s easy to sit behind a computer and tell you “it’ll come”, “be patient”, “it takes time” — but this is the truth.

Focus on the things above, breathe, and try to enjoy it — he’ll only be small for a little while. Growing close to your baby can feel painful and slow, but the bond you’ve always hoped for will arrive.