Written By: Rachel Gillcrist
Connect with Rachel: IG: @rgilly
Age Written: 34. Age Writing to: 30. Location: Hermosa Beach, CA, U.S.A.
To Her,
You’re lying in the hospital bed, and they’ve just set Quinn on your chest. You feel a rush of energy, but not the deep emotional bond you expected. He feels like a stranger, and you wonder if that’s normal. Later that first night, you wake to his crying and are jolted by the realization: this is your kid. You feel the excitement and the fear at once, because he is still a stranger to you.
I want you to know that this is normal, and that the bond is coming. You just won’t find it where you’re looking.
Over the next few months, you’ll feel it grow through devotion and service. He doesn’t ask anything of you, and he doesn’t owe you anything. You simply do whatever he needs, which is love and safety to grow. Somewhere in that daily giving, you’ll realize that this is how the bond gets built, because it’s how you learn who he is.
Though right now you’re putting so much pressure on yourself to speed that up. You believe being a mom means knowing him before and better than anyone else. It doesn’t. Being his mother means being the one who gets to witness who he shows you he is.
I know that when you don’t know what he needs, you compare. You look at the moms around you and wonder if they all have a deeper bond with their kids than you have with yours. You wonder if that’s why you can’t make him happy, why he squirms at the restaurant, fights sleep on the airplane, or pushes you away from the counter when you’re trying to make dinner. In those moments, the frustration and fear you feel come from not knowing what he needs, and that makes you question everything.
So you try to optimize. You absorb every piece of content you can about feeding, sleeping on his own, ditching the paci, extending naps, and surviving flights. It all feels like a way to get through this uncomfortable transition faster. Underneath, there’s a quieter fear: if you just let it happen, does that mean you’re accepting that it will never change? You need it to change. You can’t live in this phase forever.
It’s draining you. It’s shaking your confidence and making you judge yourself, even feel shame, for not knowing him well enough to always have the fix. You tell yourself that if it isn’t working perfectly from the start, you must be doing something wrong. Isn’t this supposed to come naturally? And if it doesn’t, what does that say about you as a mother? Are you too soft on him, not correcting behavior? Are you too hard on him, not reading his cues?
Here is what helped. Start saying the thoughts out loud, especially the raw, vulnerable ones. Tell Sunny (your husband) the things you’re afraid to say: who Quinn is, whether being a loud kid makes him a hard kid, and how you let him be himself without molding him into someone like you, who is always amicable and easygoing. Tell your mom. Tell your group of hermosa mom friends. You won’t always be asking for help. You’ll just need to say the thought and let it sit outside of you so you can see it clearly.
These three communities matter because they share the same things: no judgment, shared experience, and unconditional love. Find people like that and hold on to them. It’s the most valuable part of any community.
Be discerning, too. In your mommy and me group, you’ll meet so many people doing things differently. Some sleep trained and some didn’t. Some co-sleep and some don’t. Some nursed and some didn’t, some had unmedicated births and some didn’t. It will feel like each of these choices is somehow part of your identity as a mother. It’s okay to take what you like and leave the rest. The same goes for the internet, which turns out to be about 10% helpful. Pick the one or two voices you actually want to listen to and let everything else go. All that contradictory advice exists because every kid is different, and everyone found a slight variation that worked for them. Once you take that at face value, it stops feeling like there’s a right way and a wrong way.
Most of all, know that everything is a phase, and nothing is permanent. One week he’ll nurse less, and the next he’ll be totally fine. One week he’ll wake early every morning for no reason, and the next he’s back on schedule. One week he’ll be glued to you, and the next he’s playing independently on his own.
Your real confidence will come when you realize that everything is changeable. If a schedule doesn’t work, adjust it. The bedtime routine you choose now isn’t setting the scene for the rest of his life. That belief, that every little thing you do carries enormous weight, only breeds fear. The moment you let it go, you’ll start to see your strengths as a mother and actually enjoy this, instead of feeling burdened and scared of it.
You’re doing better than you think. Go easy on yourself. He’s already showing you who he is.
With all my love,
Me
