I felt like an outsider. I kept thinking: what kind of mother doesn’t love their own baby?

hen I pictured meeting my baby for the first time, I had a very clear image of how it would go. It was a moment I thought about often throughout my pregnancy – and even before that when I first decided I wanted to be a mum. In my head I saw myself on a hospital bed, sweaty, exhausted but elated, opening my arms to receive my fresh, pink and wrinkled child. I would look down and instantly recognise him. I would cry tears of joy. It would be the most overwhelming but also the happiest moment of my life. What actually happened was very different.

After a straight-forward pregnancy and a fairly smooth – if you can ever describe something as monumental as birth as ‘smooth’ – start to my labour, there came a point in the afternoon when panic suddenly invaded the room of the birth centre. The baby was stuck and I was exhausted. The paramedics were called, I was rushed off in an ambulance to the local hospital.

When Robin was eventually wrestled from me there was no piercing cry like I’d also imagined. He wasn’t breathing and was whisked away for resuscitation. Eventually there came a quiet whimper, some coughs and the sense that the medical staff were letting out a collective sigh of relief.

By the time he was handed to me, bundled up in a scratchy blue blanket, I was desperate for that first moment with him. I was ready to cry happy tears and feel that instant connection I had been led to expect. But it wasn’t like that at all. When I finally looked down at the puffy-faced creature in my arms, I felt as though I was looking at a complete stranger. Had the doctors got it wrong? Was this little person really mine?

My husband’s eyes lit up with love and happiness but I was left feeling cold. My indifference took me completely by surprise. I never once thought that I would have to learn how to love my child

In the early weeks of Robin’s life I paid no attention to what he wore, leaving the dressing of him to my husband. I was too exhausted, and too anxious about breaking him, to attempt manoeuvring his jelly-like limbs into a tiny onesie with far too many poppers.

A lot of the rest of his care fell on my husband too. I did the endless feeding but then handed him back over to his father. He seemed calmer with him, happier and more settled.

When I watched the two of them together I saw what I was missing – the love that was so obvious in my husband’s eyes and the sense of connection between them. I felt like an outsider. At times I thought they might be better off if I weren’t there. I kept thinking: what kind of mother doesn’t love their own baby?

I assumed that when he was born I would feel an innate sense of connection and closeness but instead he felt like any old baby, not my son. All the maternal feelings I thought I would experience were so lacking.

My midwife recommended some things I could try to help with bonding: taking a bath together, reading to him and getting involved in as many aspects of his care as I could. Getting him dressed in the morning felt like a good place to start.

I remembered a rainbow onesie I had bought Robin while I was pregnant and the fact that I owned a very similar rainbow jumper. I decided on a whim to put us both in our matching bright colours. As I looked down at him I felt a flicker of recognition for the first time since he’d been born.

Adverts for matching mum and baby clothes had always made me cringe in the past; I wanted to be a ‘cool mum’, not a mum who would be embarrassing enough to dress like their offspring. But I now look back on the moment I started dressing like my baby as the moment things started to change in our relationship.

After that I started putting us in matching outfits whenever I could. ‘Look at you both in your matching stripes – you’re an adorable pair!’ a woman said to me in the supermarket one day. Her words and her smile brightened my day. In our matching kit I felt like Robin and I were a team. It was something I hadn’t felt before.

Until that point I’d been caring for him with a sense of responsibility but without any real enjoyment. This helped me to throw myself into an aspect of his care that didn’t come with too much pressure.

They say that smiling for long enough can make you actually feel happy. Well, I found that dressing like my baby’s mum made me feel like I really was just that.

Now, Robin is 18 months old and while we sometimes end up wearing similar colour palettes, I rarely dress us in completely matching outfits any more. Thanks to therapy and, most importantly, time, I have settled into my role as his mother. Dressing like him gave me a way to build a bond that was lacking in those early days but I no longer need to manufacture a sense of connection.

My love for him arrived gradually, rather than in a lightning bolt like I’d expected, but now that it’s here it is deeper, fiercer and sweeter than I ever could have imagined.

The Vintage Shop of Second Chances by Libby Page is published by Orion Books and out now