Oh, aren’t all babies cute?

Once again I was standing at the changing place next to a mummy I already knew from her first baby.

There it was this moment again, which touches me again and again. I looked at this little creature full of astonishment and can’t believe that there really is a small, tiny but complete human being lying there. Its heart will now beat for 80 years, it will grow, laugh, love and be sad and at some point it will loose the bond to his parents.

I have already walked this path of de-bonding with my daughter and I sometimes ask myself if this is simply part of our life story, that we first have this incredible bond and then simply have to let it go.

At the end of the day it’s not really a long time in our life that we have with them closely.

None of us regularly call our parents and say “I love you and thank you”, right?

A few years ago I had a conversation about this with my father, who says of himself that he is a person with limited emotional range. In short, he does not like to talk about his feelings, and of course not to show them.

I told him about the process of debonding that I have as a mother with my daughter right now, and how difficult this is for me in many small moments. My father’s reaction was rather unusual because he reacted very emotionally and told me how hard it was for him.

I didn’t have the slightest idea about his feelings.

But this little baby is still lying here in front of me on the changing place and I have to stop for a moment. I say to the young mother: “It is always incredible that you can be such a little person and be so helpless and yet so perfect. It takes so long until you understand what just happened in your life“.

She smiled and said: “Yes, it is unbelievable.

You are pregnant and you can’t sleep, you have worries and then the hard work for the labour. You know exactly that you are having a baby soon and yet it is not real when it is there. We have to get to know each other first, and I have to feel myself in this new life.

So she has those moments too. I have the deepest respect for these moments as a mum, which are not only full of love but also full of doubt.

It’s just an incredible change that you just can’t handle in a snap of your fingers.

After you have mastered the really sometimes stressful time of pregnancy and then the birth, you don’t get a week of a full wellness program including long sleep sequences and a beauty regeneration as a reward. No, there will be the breastfeeding period, restless nights and sleep is not to be thought of at first and in order to have a good time as a couple.

You have to try very hard even you are soooooo tired.

A big shout out to all the women out there. The bunch of flowers  can’t be big enough and sometimes a big hug is enough if you think you can’t manage it all.

And then there it comes again this small moment, where your heart stops for a moment and we have this feeling, of the unreal, the unbelievable.

In the evening I’m standing at a backyard party by the bonfire with two girlfriends, who both have small children and know all about it, when a still quite young woman with a clearly visible pregnant belly joins us.

She begins to tell us frankly how she imagines everything with the delivery and the baby. We listen patiently and I am grateful to them for not telling scary stories about their time at the hospital and about the first weeks when life is so different and new.

It is wonderful to see with what glow in their eyes, with what positive joy and expectation the woman looks forward to what is coming.

I know she will have these special moments too.

Sabine has been working as a midwife for 30 years. Read her stories about life, love, beauty, women and man, babies and the insights of her midwife life. Funny, sad und very real.