Bringing Out the Mother Bear

Kacy decided it was high time that I write a blog entry, if for no other reason than to dispel the notion that Kacy was a closeted single father who invented me. :)

My maternal instincts are unnaturally absent. This is highlighted by my illogical phobia of Infant apparel. While most pregnant women are cooing over all the cute baby clothes and paraphernalia, I drive my mom and mother-in-law to Babies R Us, but then sat in the car while they went shopping. In fact, it took me 7 months into my pregnancy before I would even approach the Infant section of Target, and even then I lasted all of about 23 seconds before panicking and running to the comfort of the Home Furnishings Department. While other women were patting their bellies with smug looks on their faces, I looked at others enjoying a fine bottle of wine with pea green envy.

Indeed, I began to think that I was somehow deficient, that I would not be a good mother, and that I would not feel a connection with my son. Why couldn't I get "into" this whole baby thing?

Several books later, I was assured that not feeling connected to your baby right away was normal. And by "right away", the books meant several hours to even a week or two. By then, the books confidently claimed, the mommy hormones would kick in and magically transform me into a transfixed and devoted mother.

Nine weeks postpartum, I was convinced that an undetected autoimmune disease had destroyed my mommy hormone producing glands. Oh sure, I half-heartedly cooed at him and changed his diaper willingly, and fed him when Kacy would patiently remind me that my son had been screaming for last 20 minutes. But, all of it felt surreal. In fact, most of my thoughts about Zachary had more to do with wondering when he was going to stop crying and let me get some sleep or go back to work than ooohing and aaahhhing over how precious he was. The only real progress that I made was I had upped my time in the Target Infant section to just over 2 minutes.

Enter: Annie Olsen-Ealy, Zachary's babyphile godmother. As previous blogs indicated, Annie is magical with babies and actually enjoys all that "lets dress the baby up" stuff. So, one day I came home from work to find Zachary dressed up in this lime green Disney "Pooh Bear" outfit. I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but foreign words left from my mouth before I could stop them...."Ohhhh, he is adorable" I cooed.... .

And I was transformed, into a mother, for realsies.

For the first time ever, I actually snatched my baby from another person's arms (which, when that person is Annie, is no easy feat!) for the simple pleasure of wanting to stare at my beautiful son and adore him.

Now the logical person asks: What is it about dressing a baby up as a bear that makes them so freakin adorable? I'm not sure, but it certainly brought this mother bear out of hibernation.