Forgive mothers-to-be a couple idiosyncrasies

Our oldest son Quinn and wife are expecting their firstborn. They sent out the "bun in the oven"postcard in November 2009. The ecstatic news sent me rummaging through columns I'd written when Quinn, our eldest, was a child and I was expecting his brother, Chris. (Now, as I repost Times change but some things don't, and a wanted pregnancy is a time like no other. I wrote a lot about both boys during those incredible child-rearing years and will post a rerun column occasionally with notes about what I've learned since.

Grants Pass Daily Courier
April 2, 1986

Forgive mothers-to-be a couple idiosyncrasies.

The woman was well into the third trimester and struggled to write about it. Pregnancy is so, well, common, and maybe no one cares that she's getting close to being fruitful and multiplying. Pregnant women often secretly believe they're the center of the universe, forgetting that birth is as routine as spring, as ordinary as tulips. In philosophical moments they identify with the earth and how it is the medium for unfathomable growth. Seeds draw nourishment from it, and every spring the miracles repeat, renewing the landscape and replenishing hope.
The baby grows in her, but she does nothing. She has a vague sense that making a baby is the most important thing she can do, yet it requires no effort, no creativity. The egg that produced this baby was formed within her while she was still in her own mother's womb. At conception its physical characteristics were determined, written indelibly in genes.
Pregnant women think about such things and feel important but humble They can be dull company if they often share their thoughts, or if all they can discuss is the activities of the unborn.

The pregnant woman does not wish to bore anyone with incessant accounts of her past several months, but hopes she can be permitted some reflections. She periodically tries to ignore the whole process, turning her mind to matters of greater interest to he companions, but sooner or later, a keen sense of caring emerges. It is difficult to ignore the fact that a highly visible part of her anatomy is gradually being overtaken by someone who already has a functioning brain, and who can hear her voice and music and maybe even the songs of the spring birds in the orchard.
If for a moment she forgets her condition, the becoming person will energetically stretch or flex or roll. She suppresses the urge to call attention to these gymnastics, instead resting her hand on her abdomen and trying to visualize the small but growing person exercising its muscles, cell by cell building toward birth.
She is overwhelmed by curiosity about this person with whom she shares her body, her food, her moods, her thoughts. Sometimes she addresses it as "she," and sometimes as "he," not having a strong preference either way. She sometimes believes she may be the only expectant mother over 35 who doesn't know the sex and confirmation of her unborn child. She wants to know the baby is all right, but she knows she couldn't "do anything about it," as her doctor put it, even if it isn't. So she waits, sometimes impatiently, as the baby prepares
itself for life on the outside.

She's busy, this pregnant woman, but she has time to consider the changes the new person will impose on her ordered life. The baby was not part of the plan. At first she thought about all she wouldn't be able to do. She already had to refuse an attractive magazine travel assignment. She won't be taking many river trips this summer. Working will be difficult. She thinks about diapers, night feedings, and the agony and ecstasy of life with a two-year-old.
Then she remembers the apprehensions of her first pregnancy almost nine years ago. Her sense of the miraculous was not nearly so great as her fear that she would not love the baby. She'd never really wanted a baby or liked babies, so what was going to change her mind?
Now she remembers the flood of love that swept away doubts and left her hopelessly enraptured. She knows a second flood is coming soon and will submerge her misgivings, putting river trips and travel articles on peripheral islands to which she can return.
For awhile the new baby will be the center of her existence. She knows it couldn't be any other way and suspects the fierce maternal love that comes with a baby is built into hormones, programmed by the same incomprehensible intelligence that makes tulips out of bulbs and babies out of bits of male and female tissue. She waits and wonders and thanks God for all the gifts.

What I've learned:

A lot of women could give a crap about being pregnant. And in fact, they really, really don't want to be mothers, for whatever reason, and they don't want their babies. My idea that motherhood is instinctive and that holding the baby in her arms will automatically instill motherly love is wrong, unfortunately for all involved. Teenagers without support, rape victims in or outside of marriage, women of any age who are overwhelmed by life and circumstances, women who had funky relationships with their own parents, especially their mothers, may not be equipped to experience the magic. 

My doubts prior to giving birth—that I didn't like babies and might not care for my own—are mysterious now. Within a couple days I was smitten by an almost staggering rapture.
In the intervening years I've learned about the power of hormones, and how body chemistry prepares women for motherhood, and that breastfeeding enhances the whole deal. Pregnancy is a hormone deluge like no other, and breastfeeding keeps it coming. Women who choose not to breastfeed, or who can't, for whatever reason, miss out on one of the most intense emotional connections in the universe.

At any rate, I loved my babies profoundly, viscerally, completely and I would have killed to protect them, which is why I guess I thought instant motherhood could happen to any woman. Maybe it can. But I have seen a lot of sad evidence to the contrary.