Don’t worry about bonding with baby
Shock of Outnumbered’s grown-up kids
IWAS married within a year of graduating and pregnant three months later so I revised for impending motherhood just like I swotted for finals. I took notes on Dr Penelope Leach’s Baby And Child, which became and remains my bible, committed chunks of Dr Miriam Stoppard to memory and devoured everything else I could pore over along the way.
Among the dusty volumes reposed one whose author and title now escape me but which contained the most important information of all. Don’t worry if you are not instantly engulfed in a tidal wave of love for your baby. We don’t worship every adult we meet at first sight – some people we take to, some are acquired tastes.
I can virtually see the page of the book, even though it’s 30 years since I last gazed upon it. Some gregarious upbeat mothers are blessed with introverted, thoughtful babies. Some shy, introspective mothers are allotted loud, in-your-face infants. Happy mums can be paired with fretful, unsettled offspring. Troubled, worried mums may be given confident, tranquil babies.
Either way, decreed the writer, even the most jarring mismatch doesn’t matter a jot long term. Don’t expect overwhelming harmony, fireworks, bliss and a meeting of souls. Instead, get on with the job at hand. Change, feed, care for and cuddle your baby. Discuss affairs of the day, pour bubbles in the bath, rattle a rattle for all you are worth.
Be busy. Grab as much sleep as you can manage. Do not, repeat not, waste a moment of your time worrying about love.
THE Christian teaching promotes the dynamite combination of faith and works. Exactly the same formula results in loving your baby so seismically you can barely breathe for adoration. Babies are programmed to make us fall head over heels in love with them and, if we can just relax long enough, with or without faith in the process, the alchemy happens.
That’s why the news that 60 per cent of new mothers have problems bonding with their new babies shouldn’t frighten or worry anyone. These women have simply been asked the key question a few weeks or months too early.
If you don’t believe me, procure a lace-edged handkerchief in which to snivel and treat yourself to a ALL CHANGE: Ramona Marquez, Daniel Roche and Tyger DrewHoney, and inset, l-r, Tyger, Ramona and Daniel in the show NINE years on, the children from the hugely successful TV comedy Outnumbered aren’t kids any more. Practically unrecognisable the three former child stars appeared at a cast reunion and plunged the nation into shock. Without asking our permission they’d only had the brass neck to grow up! How very dare they? Life, as ever, imitates art and I’ve perusal of the wonderful letter written by 30-year-old Auckland dad Patrick O’Malley to his three-yearold daughter Lola.
With painful honesty he describes I WAS tipped off. Ask the dental hygienist to sandblast your teeth. I did. She said she’d have to check to see if I qualified. Would my gums be robust enough to take the strain?
She did. They were. I was chuffed. She lost count of the recent occasions on which I’ve encountered people I haven’t seen for decades. Somehow, without my knowing it, they have aged exponentially – sometimes excruciatingly. (I know I must have done the same but thankfully you can’t see yourself as others see you.) It must be a facet of old age but I find myself with a clearer memory of their old his terror and bewilderment at her birth. He didn’t know what to do with a girl. He hadn’t the faintest idea how to cope with a baby.
He was scared and shy and not at shoved a giant rubber ring in my mouth to move my lips out of the firing line. It wasn’t especially comfy. Then she let rip with what felt like a beach-full of sand, hurled with heart-stopping velocity at my grimy incisors. (young) face than their current old one. They are buttering ciabatta or sipping gin and tonic and I’m thinking: “Where is the real you? The one that lives inside my memory. The one I can see so freshly in my mind. How can this lived-in, mature, crinkled version be the you I used to know?” Isn’t ancient crone-dom weird and sometimes rather less than wonderful? all sure he was equipped to be a father. This loveliest of love letters, however, finishes: “When did I fall in love with you? From the moment I met you. I just didn’t know it yet.”
MY NEW LOOK GNASHERS HAVE BEEN SANDBLASTED
The result? Downright magical. The stains of a lifetime’s Curly Wurly chewing erased. Almost Osmond-esque whiteness.
It took less than 10 minutes and cost under £70. Astounding.