The answer is no, actually. She doesn’t. Bare with me and be open minded before you’ve read the title and already made up your mind on this!
I was thinking aimlessly as you very often do at times, and had a very random thought about my unborn child: does she actually love me?
As you can tell, my child isn’t born so this isn’t a weird form of postnatal depression I’m talking about.
What I mean is that as lovely as the idea that you have an instant bond with your baby and they love you and you love them and sunshine shines and butterflies fly and soft music plays in the background as the natural cycle of life plays out is, I cannot be the only person who has realised that as far as we know, our newborn bundles of life have no actual idea of what love even is yet. I know there’s probably a few isolated case studies available to possibly try and prove otherwise, but as far as I’m concerned, I am my childs means of survival and the initial bond she will have with me will be for that nature – to survive.
She won’t “love” me because I’m her mum and she “knows” I love her and bla bla bla. She will rely on me because she knows I provide food, comfort and safety which is all she knows she needs. She is still the same as a baby that existed when cavemen did – her prime instincts are purely that of survival. Love comes later on.
I’m not saying that we should be disheartened and throw all our hopes n dreams away now because the love will come. But for the women who have had, or plan to have, a baby for the reasoning that “it must love me and no one else will love me more”… Relying on/needing someone isn’t quite the same as loving them!
Feel free to add your opinion/fact/arguement in the comments as I’m quite interested to see how other people feel about this matter!
This is my post at exactly 37 weeks pregnant. I have 3 weeks to meet my little baby cub and I can’t wait… Maybe some will blame the crazy hormone boost that’s happening in preparation for birth as a reason why my thoughts went this way – I was just throwing it out there lol
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You’re right. They don’t know about love yet. And it took me a few weeks with the first one to get over the terror of having to keep this tiny, demanding little person alive before I really knew what it meant to love a child, too. It’s all a process. And an amazing one.
I’m not so sure, it raises a wider issue of knowing what love is, which would be no small matter for debate. Of course we cannot know, but that is not to say that they don’t know, or don’t feel whatever it is that we qualify as being ‘love’. How can we say that ‘love’ for a parent figures, animal, human, prehistory or present, is not instinctual as well?
Anyway, that’s a big topic to be thinking about at this time of day
Thanks for being thought provoking!