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3:22am October 4, 2014

ajax-daughter-of-telamon:

This post suddenly brought to mind all the times my mom’s told me about what I was like as a baby — wouldn’t go to sleep until I had been put in a little swing and rocked for a set amount of time, didn’t like being held, would stiffen my tiny body up and try to get away from her whenever she held me — and I wondered if she knew, at the time, that I wasn’t rejecting her or failing to bond or whatever, that it was just a sensory-motor response that didn’t indicate anything about degree of affection, to use withasmoothroundstone’s phrasing.

I’m pretty sure she figured it out later, but it must’ve been freaky to have her first baby be one who resists being held. Did she even know that was a thing that could happen? Maybe I should ask her sometime.

Yeah my brother was the firstborn too.  I wonder what kind of impression that makes.  As if you’re being rejected by your own baby, when nobody, nobody prepares you for that, and back then all the psych texts would’ve said it was her fault somehow.

It must’ve been a relief to have a third child who tolerated snuggling, regardless of how I felt, or how my brother felt.  I get that they didn’t know how we felt, they just had to guess, and based on data they didn’t know they didn’t have.

I’ve talked to my brother about it though and he says as far back as he can remember he’s always had strong affection for our parents.  He just didn’t show it in typical ways.  And I took longer to develop affection because of sensory-perceptual issues, but I did develop it.  (And in the meanwhile I looked like I had it, so nobody saw a problem.)