Loving your child from birth is not easy for all parents. Some take a long time to become attached to this little being who is ultimately an unknown. Author Taous Merakchi struggled to bond with her daughter after giving birth. She tells us.
A birth is often said to be the happiest day in a parent's life. However, some experience the birth and the encounter more like a nightmare than a dream. While the majority of testimonials suggest that you immediately fall in love with your baby, it is important to know that attachment is not automatic. And not becoming attached to your child from birth does not make us a bad person – quite the contrary. There are no perfect mothers or fathers, and parenting cannot be learned in a textbook.
See also: These stars who broke the silence of miscarriage
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On January 14, on Twitter, an Internet user dared to break this taboo, by openly asking her community if they had "felt a difference from the birth of their child" or if it had come "in time" … while assuming not to have felt it directly. Taous Merakchi, author of several books including “The Great Mystery of the Rules”, and of the “Mortel” podcast, took the opportunity to share her own experience. In a series of tweets, she explained how she failed to bond with her daughter and how she could have walked away from motherhood without ever looking back. Honest words that echoed many parents. Speaking up on the subject allows you to see that you are not alone in this situation.
For Aufeminin, Taous Merakchi has agreed to reveal a little more about his story. A nice way to relieve the guilt of moms and dads. Testimony.
An eventful meeting
“I had a premature birth and maybe this is because I couldn't get attached to my daughter right away. It's hard to say because I haven't experienced the other case and other vagaries of vaginal birth echo mine, and I'm not sure it's that easy to explain. generally. What is certain is that after my childbirth, I had trouble shaking off the observation of failure – which was not a failure, and I was told it several times a day, – but that I saw like that.
I gave birth two months early, by caesarean section, and under general anesthesia because the spinal anesthesia did not work. I thought I messed up my childbirth, and even today I find it hard not to make jokes that go in this direction and, in the end, always stir the knife a little in the wound. And this little girl coming out of my body while I had my back turned, I didn't recognize her. Her face didn't remind me of anything, she was 1kg 200, 24cm, she was full of tubes and wires, I was afraid to touch her, I didn't feel she was ready to exist and I was not ready to accept his existence. And besides that I felt that she had rejected me by leaving me two months too early, I felt like I had created a hostile environment and I was like "but what kind of mother I could be if even before his release my body was already trying to hurt him? ".
A link that must have been difficult to make
Fortunately, I knew the attachment was not automatic between a mother and her child. I had read testimonials that went in this direction, in particular thanks to the hashtag #MyPostPartum which literally came out a week before my childbirth (and I also told myself that I did not want to read too much because I still had two months ahead of me, the good joke). But between theoretical knowledge and experience, there are miles and miles. Knowing and living it are two very different things. It prepares the ground, it facilitates the understanding of the situation and it is very important precisely to speak about it freely and outside the circles where the word is already free, but when we eat it in the head it is something else. . We still hope not to be among those who live the "negative" version of the scenario, obviously.
I felt trapped, not up to the task, I felt like betraying my daughter, I regretted all my life choices, I thought it was going to be a constant nightmare. I saw my body as a gigantic traitor, and I saw his as a constant death threat. I didn't want to get attached to her because there was no guarantee that she was going to live. I preferred not to get to know her too much, "just in case." And when I got up to my room after giving birth, found myself alone in my bed while my partner was spending time with her two floors down (he had been able to see her briefly just after the childbirth, and he came to tell me everything in the recovery room), I told myself that I didn't need to meet her, that I could go home and resume my "normal" life without her. I was convinced, deep in my being, that I could have walked out of this hospital without looking back and without the slightest regret for the rest of my life.
The very present guilt
I felt a lot of guilt, and continuously. I found myself horribly cruel and unfit. I kept repeating that I was going to be the worst mother in the world, that I hadn't even been able to be there to welcome her into this world, that she had to be torn from my body while I was I was knocked out to ensure her survival because I was so unable to protect her, even from within. And when I met her and spent my first moments with her, seeing that I didn't feel anything for her, while my partner was already saying words of love to her and was endlessly moved when he saw her, I really felt like a monster. When they put her in my arms for the first time, with all her tips, I just wanted to be taken away from me. I didn't know how to behave. I tried to sing, to talk to him, but nothing felt natural to me. And at one point wanted to change position, I made a bad gesture and his head went back a little, seeing that his neck was still chewing gum, and I burst into tears because that confirmed all my fears: I was unable to take care of it without hurting him and I had to stay away for his good.
I suffered from a baby blues which luckily only lasted a few days / weeks. I stayed in the hospital for ten days, my partner shared the room with me, we went to see our daughter every day, and little by little, at the same time as my scar healed and I became more mobile, by dint of talking to the nursing staff, by dint of talking with my partner, and by dint of spending moments with my daughter, the cloud finally cleared. But the first week was very, very hard to live, I cried a lot, stuck in bed, between the intense physical pain of the scarring, the trenches and everything that goes with the postpartum, and the immense psychological pain. , the trauma of premature childbirth where nothing goes as we had hoped, I had to dig deep inside to find the strength to come out of this hole.
When the heart finally opens
I think the first time I really felt anything was when I met his gaze. It was a few days after her birth, she had finally all of her breathing apparatus removed, she still had a catheter and a gastric tube but at least her face was clear and she was easier to handle. And one day his eyes landed on mine, and I saw the whole universe there. I was overwhelmed, I felt a still unexplored compartment of my heart open wide, and from there it only grew with the days.
But then again, it didn't change everything all at once, it started a change that took months to put in place for good.. She stayed in the hospital for a month and a half, we went to see her every day (then every other day, each in turn, because of the new rules that were put in place during confinement) and when she arrived at home, we had to start all over again because it was yet another revolution. But suddenly, throughout this process, I was talking to him. I explained all that to her, all that I felt, with very theoretical words and as little violence as possible (I was not going to say to her "you know my little one, there I could go home without you, I don't. would have nothing to do, "I kept that to myself), and I made her promises. The fact of verbalizing what I was feeling with sweet words also helped me, because it already forced me to address myself to her, and not to be too cruel in what I said, nor for her, nor for me.
A subject still too taboo
It is important to free the floor on this subject to relieve the guilt of mothers and fathers. The more we talk about a subject, the more it fits into the norm, the more it is part of the landscape, the less it shocks, the less it disturbs, and the more we understand it. It is valid for all taboos, the key is always to talk about it, to share, to testify, to reassure and to inform. Every time a hashtag or a tweet on the subject goes viral, we always observe the same phenomenon, a wave of "BUT ME TOO !!!" and people who say thank you because they thought they were the only ones in this situation. Talking about it means putting a big spotlight on a subject that is terribly isolating, and therefore dispelling any feeling of being abnormal, of being a monster. It is being able to open a dialogue, between people concerned but also with those close to them, potentially, if it was difficult to do so at the time. And it is also preparing for it if you are preparing to live this experience for the first time and already have in advance some keys to overcome all that, and at least the certainty of not being alone in the world.
If I had one message for people in my situation, it was to accept these emotions which are terrible, cruel and painful, but not to give them more room than necessary. We won't be able to dispel everything overnight, there will be a period of adaptation, it's normal to hate yourself and think horrible things, but it will pass. It won't stay forever. And it will take the time it takes, because we are all different. Do not hesitate to call on a professional, especially do not neglect these resources if you are lucky enough to be able to have access to them (there are psychologists in maternity wards too, I was offered to see her to help me, and I was in therapy myself at the time so I was super surrounded). Let loved ones reassure us too, trust their vision of things which is not clouded by a cocktail of hormones and existential questions that make you dizzy. Show tenderness towards yourself above all else. It's like what they say on airplanes: always put on your oxygen mask first before helping others. There it is the same. You have to take the time to recover, find love for yourself, before you can give it to the other. It is also essential to remember that a birth is a meeting. We may have created the being we hold in our arms, but we do not know it for all that. It is a stranger that we are thrown on our knees saying "there you are, you are responsible for his survival now, good luck!" while nothing is known about this individual. Besides not necessarily feeling love for this baby right away, what also shocked me was that I didn't feel any love from her. I didn't feel like it didn't make much of a difference whether she was in my arms, her father's, or a neonatal nurse's. She needed adults to take care of her, but from there to feeling especially safe in her mother's arms, honestly I didn't feel it. But today, when I see that she is agitated and that she utters shrill cries while laughing when she sees my face, I tell myself that I did well not to run away from motherhood and to take the time to get to know her, because she's a really nice little person and we both have our own language. That's it, I feel that she is my daughter and that I am her mother. But it takes time, it's not the same journey for everyone, and it's good to know that. "
Taous Merakchi better known under the name of Jack Parker is the author of several novels The Great Mystery of the Rules ; Letters to the teenager I was – ed. Flammarion Witch, Please – ed. Pygmalion. As well as books and podcast Mortal.