I thought something was wrong with me

I never dreamed about babies growing up

I have never been a “baby person,” so the fact that I’m currently a mom of two and, dare I say, lowkey loving motherhood is honestly as surprising to me as it probably is to some of you.

I think women talk a lot about wanting kids, but not enough about the women who assumed that magical maternal “ah ha” moment would eventually arrive, and then… it just never really did.

This week, I want to talk a little bit about what the mental journey to motherhood actually looked like for me… because I have a feeling I’m not the only woman who’s ever wondered if the absence of that feeling meant something.

But first, the highs and lows!

In this column, you’ll find:

• 💤 A semblance of a rem cycle

• 📉 The pressure of “getting back” after baby

• 🧪 fairy kitchen potion play era

• 💭 What it feels like to not feel maternal

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⬆️ This week’s highs:

(I’m knocking on wood 100x before saying this) but L has only been waking up 1-2x a night and I’m getting more sleep than I have in months. I credit to to Kendra Worth’s gentle sleep training strategy. This video in particular helped a lot! I also bought her course, but haven’t had time to dive into it yet. Will report back!

⬇️ This week’s lows:

Now that I’ve hit the 3 month mark of my baby, am I officially out of the newborn stage? I am feeling an intense pressure to get back to work (part time of course) but with a momentum based job like mine, it’s hard to just dip your toe back in. So much of this feels like all or nothing.

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• Last week my neighbor came over and we were sitting on the rooftop patio at my house. She is also a mom to a cute 3 year old and she took me off guard when she told me “you should put a mud kitchen out here!” A mud kitchen? Have you met me?! That sounds like my worst nightmare. But then she laughed and said, no like a Fairy Kitchen for “potion play” …okay, now i’m invested.

  I started looking up small footprint mud kitchens and found these cute options on Wayfair and mocked up a little inspiration. I actually think this is so cute. I definitely thought I was a witch growing up (probably didn’t help that my name was Sabrina) so I’m so into my kids doing this.

  

• It’s travel season and if you’re looking for a portable steamer, I recommend this. I have been the victim to a spout of angry hot water from my steamer that only decides to act up on silk. After trying (& returning) 4 steamers, I finally have one I can endorse! Its lightweight enough, pretty, and most of all it works well and is small enough to travel with.

• This cushion foundation is my new favorite and I think I like this way better than the viral red one. This is good if you want skin-like makeup that covers redness & blemishes but doesn’t feel like you have anything on. It lasts pretty well for me (about 8 hours) but can be extended with the right primer & setting spray combo!

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Confessions from a woman who never felt maternal

Growing up, I was never the girl who was interested in babies, and I remember realizing that surprisingly early because one of my best friends (when you’re 10 this is a very serious title) was obsessed with babies.

We would sit together on the carpet at our jamatkhane with five girls in a row, talking and chatting and writing letters into the carpet so we could eventually spell out words and carry on full conversations without actually speaking (which felt incredibly advanced and intellectual to us at the time), but one of my friends was rarely interested in our braille-like conversations because she was always distracted by whatever baby happened to be nearby.

And I remember thinking “girl, pay attention! I just wrote “Y” and you thought it was a “T” sure, the baby was cute. Look, gummy smile. How adorable. But then it drooled, and I just was not interested in interacting with it beyond that point.

And honestly, that feeling followed me for most of my life.

Even as a child, I wasn’t into dolls. I liked Barbies, but I was more interested in dressing the dolls than pretending to raise them. I loved outfits and tiny accessories and creating personalities for them and deciding where they worked and who they were dating and what their apartment looked like.

Then I became a teenager, then an adult, and not much changed.

My aunt had a daughter and sure, I loved seeing her, but I never had that itch to volunteer to entertain the kid all day, and even a decade later, when my sister had my nephew, I remember thinking maybe this would finally be the moment where the maternal gene kicked in.

I was married, I was in my late twenties, and surely this is the age where everyone says your clock starts ticking and babies suddenly start looking irresistible instead of sticky.

But even then, while I loved my nephew and loved spending time with him, I mostly just found myself in awe of my sister because motherhood looked *really* hard.

Kinda like when you watch someone climb Mount Everest and you’re deeply impressed by what they’re accomplishing while simultaneously feeling absolutely no personal desire to participate yourself.

And eventually it got to a point where I genuinely started asking myself whether motherhood was even for me. Growing up, I always assumed I wanted children, I just figured the feeling would arrive first. I thought eventually some switch would flip and I’d suddenly become one of those women who melted every time they saw a baby in Target or instinctively volunteered to hold someone’s newborn at a party.

But the older I got, the more confused I became because that feeling never really came.

And I think that’s something women don’t talk about enough because there’s this assumption that good mothers are naturally maternal, that somewhere deep inside of you there’s supposed to be this overwhelming pull toward babies and caretaking and motherhood before it actually happens, and if you don’t feel that way, maybe motherhood just isn’t for you.

And I know the golden rule is that you’re never supposed to compare babies to dogs, but as someone who has both a baby and a dog, I actually think this is the best way I can explain it: I am not a dog person, but I love my dog. I don’t actually think I’m a baby person, but I love my babies.

Because despite never feeling naturally maternal in the way I thought I would, I loved motherhood almost immediately. I didn’t love the sleepless nights or the body trauma, but I felt an immense love for my babies. Not in this tradwife, “I was born for this” kind of way.

I love learning them. I love understanding how their brains work. I love building a life around them. I love figuring out what kind of mother I wanted to be, and honestly, I love how healing being a mother is for me even when things don’t come naturally. I’m proud to do the work to heal myself and not pass on generational trauma to my kids.

I do not think that motherhood is for everyone. But I wish someone had told me that if you are someone waiting for this magical maternal feeling to arrive before deciding whether or not you’d be a good mother, don’t.

For me, motherhood did not begin with this overwhelming biological longing where I suddenly wanted to hold every stranger’s baby at a barbecue. And honestly, whatever love you think you feel for your best friend’s kid or your sibling’s baby, I can promise you it is absolutely nothing compared to the love you will feel for your own children. Nothing even comes close.

So if family is something you want, I don’t think the absence of some magical “maternal gene” means nearly as much as women have been taught to believe it does.

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