Beyonce’s Birth Story Reminds Me That I Didn’t Bond With My Children Immediately

I know a lot of women experience a deep connection with their children when they are pregnant. I wasn’t one of them. Don’t get me wrong – I really wanted to be. But I never had those sweeping maternal feelings until after my children were born. Beyonce did! She’s always showing me up. She gave an interview to Marie Claire Australia this week, in which she confided that communicating with Blue Ivy during her birth was what helped her endure the pain of labor.

”I felt very maternal around eight months,” she remembers. ”And I thought I couldn’t become any more until I saw the baby…But it happened during my labor because I had a very strong connection with my child. I felt like when I was having contractions, I envisioned my child pushing through a very heavydoor. And I imagined this tiny infant doing all the work, so I couldn’t think about my own pain…We were talking. I know it sounds crazy, but I felt a communication.”

I actually think that is beautiful. I just always felt like a complete separate entity from my children when I was pregnant. I felt them moving around in there, I was thrilled to be pregnant – I just never thought about what they were going through while I was in labor. Of course I wanted them to be healthy, but my labors always felt like a personal journey for some reason. I really can’t explain it.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I’m not one of those women who was consumed by the maternal bond many women talk about experiencing the first time they see their children. It didn’t happen immediately with my first or my second child. This is something that is a little hard to explain; it’s not that I didn’t immediately love my children. But the burning “mother’s love” that I now have for them – it didn’t happen immediately.

I wonder why some women experience this bond right away and some women don’t? I always blamed it on the c-sections. Remember the scene in The Business of Being Born where that French doctor talks about the monkeys who reject the children that are sliced from their wombs? I hate that guy. Anyway, it turns out that is a bunch of crap. Women who experience natural labor also sometimes don’t bond immediately.

Back to Beyonce. Hers is a beautiful story. She seems like a woman who really enjoys being a mom.

(photo: iam.beyonce.com)