Love at First sight

 The assumption that a mother instantly falls in love with their baby as soon as he or she is born is widely accepted. If I’m being perfectly honest, I didn’t actually fall in love with our little Ned until probably over a week into his life on the outside. This doesn’t overly surprise me as I’ve never thought of myself as ‘mumsy’ and haven’t ever really been desperate to have kids (even though I knew I wanted a family.)

The exhaustion from labour, teamed with the confusion of how to care for a newborn, paired with the indescribable post-natal sleep deprivation really contributed to these delayed feelings. It also didn’t help that baby Bourke had a mild case of jaundice which affected his eating resulting in a few stressful days for all three of us. In the first couple of weeks with your new baby, just getting through each day is a milestone and quite monotonous. There isn’t too much to love about getting the hang of breastfeeding (and then finding out you aren’t producing enough milk), changing wet and dirty nappies less often than you should be (as a result of not providing your baby enough food) and attempting to stay awake for hours on end when all you want to be doing is sleeping.

Today is Ned’s twenty-fourth day on Earth and I know now that I am totally smitten with our brown eyed boy. I can remember the moment I realised that I was in love with him. He was in bed with me (probably after a mostly sleepless night) and even though I know it probably isn’t possible, he was smiling. I managed to capture one of these initial smiles and for each one after that my heart melted and then melted some more. 

Every day I love him that little bit more. Each day he is becoming more alert, communicative and really is such a joy to have in our lives.  I have so much to share and love having you along for the ride.

Did you fall in love straight away with your munchkin/s?