no, i don't want to hold your baby

what it means to have no maternal instinct

The first time I was invited to hold a baby was at a Houston “Sip ‘n See”—women in pastel dresses getting buzzed and passing the newborn. I’d just finished college—I studied film—and the closest I’d gotten to an infant was that claw rising out of the bassinet in Rosemary’s Baby. When I leaned over the party crib, I half expected horns. What I saw instead was Richard Nixon.

“He looks like Richard Nixon,” I said. The room took on the quiet of swallowed horror. Who is this woman, dressed like a teenage boy? I was not built for upscale Texas.

Nevertheless, I was encouraged to hold the baby. I declined. The thought of trying to pass him back and forth made my spirit wooden. Doesn’t he like… not have a working neck? I pictured dropping the baby so I shook my head, incorrigible. Better to be rude than wreck somebody.

I never babysat in my youth, no surprise. I got hired once, forgot the gig, and was not asked again. I loved kids, but not in a way that would make me want to be in charge of them—tell them, “no,” for example. I’d have wanted to shuck off their shoes and show them how to spit cherry pits from a maple tree. Me and kids—we were equals. Frankly, the same. Responsibility would’ve made it weird.

Where I live, herds of small people roam the public grasslands and older girls always emerge to tend the wobbliest little ones. There are lots of engaged, pre/ adolescent boys in these groups, too, but, with rare exception, it’s the girls who hover and care-give.

Where does this impulse come from? Why didn’t I have it? What did its lack say about me?

If I was supposed to be a mother, I’d like babies, I used to think, remembering my outfit at that Sip n’ See— a boy’s Oxford shirt from Goodwill and dirty Converse. The other ladies knew the dress code for I’ll make a great Mom was a sundress and sandals. Was I missing some feminine impulse essential to mothering? I spent years worried about it. Years thinking—maybe motherhood wasn’t for me because I missed the secret code. Also because… newborns are freaky-looking, right?

The first baby I ever held had just come out of my body and by then, there was no declining.

But my arms fit him just right. And the others, too—their shape and density has always felt like a homecoming. The bounce, shifts and holds have arrived without practice—pre-programmed. For my kids, only.

A few weeks ago, a good friend passed me her fresh baby. He looked like Churchill, but I knew better than to say so. I held him in my rigid arms and he screamed almost immediately. You and me both, Pal, I thought, passing him back, feeling like I’d just wrapped myself around someone else’s lover.

What if this isn’t a lack of instinct, but a mark of deference? That baby doesn’t like my strange smell, or the landscape of my unsatisfying breasts. The tendon at the angle of my elbow is, frankly, punishing. Please.

Madame Roulin and her Baby // Vincent Van Gogh

I write this to counteract the shaming of prissy, secret codes. I write this to say that all you need to be a good parent is an open heart, a lot of curiosity and an even greater reserve of patience—which you build, so don’t worry. You do not need the dress or the Doona or the decorated nursery. You don’t need that Park Avenue doctor, or maybe even a hospital. You will do best with a village, but you build that, too.

There’s no secret language, no early indicator of your parenting potential.

Some folks lock in right away, some don’t. My husband felt stymied for months after each birth. And duh—his arms were muscly and his chest was hard and his smell was not milk. But now, he’s everybody’s hero. I watch our boys get older and turn away from me, towards him and my heart breaks and swells.

I do miss those newborns, though. Mine, I mean.

Those eras were strange and magical, filled with surprises. I loved discovering, for example, that our wizened mystics slept so deeply we could lift them by the armpits, cross-legged, and still not interrupt their dreaming. I miss the way a fresh baby startles, arms jerking in a circle overhead, like he’s conducting a great orchestra. And maybe he is! Look how we respond.

I’ve been utterly transformed by parenting, yet I remain the same.

I’m still just a girl in dirty sneakers, marveling at your weird-ass newborn, trying to say with all love and respect: “No. I don’t want to hold your baby.” I don’t want to flex my mothering skills on your kid—and you don’t need me to. What you need, though, are clean dishes. And I’m very good at those.

Here comes the village.

✌️

Isabel

• Have you ever worried you wouldn’t be able to do something (esp because of cultural messaging) only to discover you were meant for it ?

• Also—if you are a parent, did you connect with your baby right away, or did it take time? (I plan to peak at parenting when my boys are 35 +.)

• Finally, I will be away this week, so nothing from me next Sunday.