Your mom & your T are both WRONG just as my mother & everyone around me was WRONG when it comes to that maternal instinct.....there are some of us who NEVER do get that maternal instinct even when we do have the baby.

I grew up as an only child & was never around kids & the younger kids I was around I never had a desire to be anywhere close to them...their actions only aggravated me......

Getting married wasn't high on my list of things to do either.....should have listened to my internal instincts on that with regards to the guy I married also.....but I ended up getting married.....then summer vacation came from working on my degree & the pill wasn't an option because of the problems it caused.....so oops.....I ended up pregnant....strange thing is I realized I was pregnant about 15 minutes after....just something inside felt different & sure enough....I was right which was really wierd. I didn't tell anyone for quite awhile as I was trying to decide what I was going to do....going into marriage I made it known that NOTHING was going to get in my way of getting my degree & the first comment that came out of my H's mouth told me to take off a couple of years of school & go back later.....those were fighting words in my life especially with him as a H & the marriage wasn't good from the beginning......

I'm glad I decided to have our daughter now....but at the time I sort of thought if I did want a baby later on abortion could mess that up....but now I"m so thankful I made the decision to have her because my concept on abortion has changed 100%.....anyway........

All through the pregnancy, I kept up all my major exercise, swimming every day, riding horses, skiing in the winter right before having her.....my obgyn said that if you have a good pregnancy there isn't anything you can do that you are used to doing that will mess it up....he even had a lady that was sky diving throughout her pregnancy.....back in the late 70's even before ultra-sound.........

I ended up only gaining 10 pounds throughout the pregnancy & my daughter was 8lbs 2oz of that.....so I really ended up loosing weight in the overall pregnancy......last month was stressful when I found out I had to have a c-section because I was too small to have a baby her size otherwise.....that stress was part of my weight loss as I normally react to stress in that way. Throughout the pregnancy, I never had that feeling of how wonderful it was.....it JUST WAS.......& I was shaking so bad after the c-section, I really had no focus on her when they brought her to me......H was sitting in the waiting room for long after the delivery.......I have some really cute just born pictures of her & in the hospital....but I never had any close maternal feeling toward her.....I refused to breast feed because I was finishing off my semester in college & wasn't about to be tied to her & had no desire to be tied to her either in that way.....probably because my desire for my degree was greater than my desire to have a child......I had no idea how to bathe a baby....my H did as he had 3 younger siblings & he was already 5 years old when the first sibling came along......& because he had been such a jerk about my taking time off college which I refused to do, I made him do most of the care of our daughter.....so part of my lack of maternal feelings might have been my fighting feelings against the direction my H wanted me to go in....but the feelings just really weren't there. I was able to relate to her better the older she got.....but even to this day & have no desire to be around young kids & babies are something I never gravitate to. Some kids I relate to well but many, I really want nothing to do with.......

So I truly believe that there are some women who do not have that maternal instinct & even though there aren't many, there is nothing wrong with NOT having it....it's something we just need to accept about ourselves & not feel guilty when others try to make us feel that way.

Sorry for the longer post...just something I've felt passionately about for most of my life because many have no understanding of how I could possibly feel this way being a woman...because so many are under the mis-guided belief that all women have maternal instinct.