When I met my baby, I expected an explosion of love. It took months to arrive

My son was born between an anxious pregnancy and a postpartum psychotic break.

Holding him in my arms for the first time, I felt numb. Emptied. It was as though I was observing myself from my previous life looking on as an outsider. Unsettling, yes, but so much of birth is. There were stitches and visitors and midwives and scales. And a perfect tiny stranger who fed and cried and didn’t sleep.

I’d been his mother, bewildered, leaking, reeling (as new mothers so often are) for just four days when the psychotic symptoms began to appear. I became paranoid. Alert. Awake. I was sure that child protective services (where I had previously worked as a frontline caseworker and psychologist) were coming to remove him from my care. I was under surveillance.

I knew this. I knew it in my bones and in my fatigue-battered brain because I had once taken babies into care myself. I began to hallucinate. I believed I was dead. I wondered if my baby was mine.

Postpartum psychosis is rare – affecting one to two in every 1000 mothers. How I felt post-birth, though, in those seconds after my baby was born is far more common and also taboo. But it shouldn’t be.

So let me take you back there, to that space. My newborn is placed on my chest, his little heart is beating against mine. He is bigger, heavier than I expected. For months, I have been told he was “measuring small”. But now he is here, he isn’t small at all, and the weight of him is a shock.

I had, as so many new mothers so often do, expected to feel the immediate rush of love at first sight. We are promised this, or if not promised, we expect it. But where does this idea come from? And why does this prevailing idea of instant love, of instant bonding, differ from the research and what we know of women’s experiences.

As many as 40 per cent of first-time and 25 per cent of second-time mothers experience a feeling of “indifference” when holding their baby for the first time, according to a study published back in 1980 and backed up by contemporary research. The same study found that while most mothers developed feelings of affection after a week, others struggled for months after bringing their baby home.

While my own experience was complicated by a diagnosis of postpartum psychosis, not all mothers who take time developing a bond with their babies have a perinatal mental illness, such as postnatal depression and/or postnatal anxiety.

A traumatic birth experience, for example, or a birth that deviates from a mother’s birth plan can result in feelings of disillusionment, failure and detachment.

When I think back to my own experience, I’m struck by a quote from philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He writes, “[We] often note that right after the birth, a sentiment of strangeness, of unreality arises.”

Immediately, there’s a sense of: But where did this baby come from? Logically, we know the answer. But the feeling, the root of the question, goes much deeper. An experience both profound and confounding at the same time.

Some women describe the experience as surreal. Others say they felt an instinctive need to protect their baby, but did not necessarily have feelings of love or affection. Some new mums struggle to reconcile the baby handed to them with the one they’ve carried for nine months, the “imaginary” baby they’ve felt kicking and hiccupping.

Recently, I’ve been speaking to women around the country about my experiences and theirs, too. Many women have admitted to carrying a secret shame around with them for decades after not bonding with their baby straight away, only to now realise that they weren’t alone – that there wasn’t anything wrong with their love taking time to develop; that there wasn’t anything wrong with them.

American feminist and writer Adrienne Rich once said, “When a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.” So, here’s the truth: you may fall in love at first sight when you meet your baby. If you do, cherish that feeling. It will help you through those bleary early days and months. But if you don’t, know that you are not alone. You are not a failure. It doesn’t mean you’re not a “natural” mother. If you’re reading these words, and you’re struggling with how you’re supposed to feel, know that you’re doing everything you need to be.

You’re responding to your baby when they cry. You’re feeding them and changing them and speaking to them. Maybe you’re singing to them or reading to them. You’re cuddling them and soothing them and shushing them and patting them (and shushing and patting some more).

Relationships can take time to grow, and this one might too. But the love will arrive – and it will be fierce.

“It’s there, you know,” a doctor once told me. “It’s just hidden under the illness.”

She was right. When the love broke through the layers of depression, tearing at the numbness in my body and mind, it didn’t stop. It hasn’t stopped. It just keeps growing and growing.

Ariane Beeston is a psychologist and author of Because I’m not Myself, You See.

If you need help call Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636, Lifeline 13 1114 or PANDA 1300 726 306.