What is the maternal instinct?

What is the maternal instinct? Is it normal not to “feel it” despite having been a mother? Laura Gutman answers all the doubts regarding the following question:

I am pregnant and I don’t want my baby to have a bad time because I don’t know how to be the mother he needs. How can I find my maternal instinct? I think I don’t have it.

MATERNAL INSTINCT VS THE DESIRE TO HAVE CHILDREN

The maternal instinct, as its name indicates, is instinctive, that is, we have it all female mammals that give birth. In this we are the same as a giraffe, a dog and a human. What does it mean? That when we give birth in good conditions: with love, with respect, without control, without threats… -something that is hardly possible today-, the female mother instinctively has the need to protect, lick, feed and care for the young from predators. That is instinctive.

However, if the female is not in good conditionFor example, all the mammals in zoos, which hardly get pregnant, ignore their baby when they give birth and it is the zookeepers who have to help with the integration. What she tries is to survive, that is, her survival instinct is greater than the maternal instinct.

THE KEY IS THE CHILDBIRTH

I’m going to transfer it to humans. When human women give birth tied to obstetric tables, pricked, shaved, with threats, in a place full of people who come in, who stick their fingers in us, who tell us everything…, when the baby is born -if with luck can do by the low way-, the first thing that appears is our survival instinct and we do not know the creature. Instead, in childbirth -very few and probably very few people of those who are going to listen to us know real stories of women who have given birth very calmly in their own homes-, without anyone’s intervention, without doctors, with a midwifeat most with a friend, with a wise mother, with a woman who knows, in a place full of love, tranquility, with little light and with all the necessary time, Women instinctively have the need to lick and breastfeed that newly born creature. He protects it and does not allow anyone to touch them. That is maternal instinct.

Now, we cannot have maternal instinct, if we have not gone through a birth in good conditions. Saying: “I want to have a child” is not a maternal instinct. It’s full of women who say they don’t want to have children. So it will be that they do not have maternal instinct? No, that’s desire. Wanting to have a child is not instinctive, it is more of a cultural issue. What is instinctive is sexual attraction to the male.

THE MORE CONTACT WITH THE BABY, THE MORE INSTINCT

A woman who is pregnant and who says that she is afraid of not having a maternal instinct is right, because probably for all her history she must already be following mandates, instead of following her own intuition, and not only on the issue of childbirth, but in all areas of your life. She’s probably going to have a medicalized delivery and then the maternal instinct won’t appear, because what will appear first will be the survival instinct.

The maternal instinct is a continuum. The greater the connection with my son, the more connected I will be to perceive everything that the child is asking of me.. However, it is also true that, according to my own life, in one of these I am going to cling again to my opinions, to the mandates, to what feels good to me… There are women who had respected births, who at the time they felt instinctively attracted to the baby, but later, throughout their lives, they kept putting a little distance again. This means that a respected delivery does not guarantee the continuation of the mother’s intuition and of the loving and dedicated bond of that mother to that child. It would be expected, but it is not a guarantee.