Bonding
My mother dreamed she was floating in velvet stillness, swimming among the stars. She noticed one of the glittery specks glow a bit brighter than the others. She squinted at the star and knew it was her daughter.
"I picked you," she told me, tucking the bed sheets around my schoolgirl body.
As my mother retold her story at my wedding, I looked at my new husband and thought that someday I'd tell the same tale to our children.
But when I pushed my first daughter into the world three years ago, she felt less like a fated bundle of starlight and more like a stranger.
The blue drape of a doctor shoved a slimy, floundering heap over my bloody bed sheets. I ripped down my hospital gown to expose my breast, an action I knew to be essential to bonding with my newborn daughter. The creature thrust her hand into my mouth. It tasted salty. I wanted to feel a thrill, tasting the flesh of my flesh.
Instead, I gagged... Read more from Lisa Emmerich's personal essay "Bond Rate: It took me a long time to fall in love with my baby.
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