I never felt the urge to hold someone else’s baby. The cooing infants of others always seemed too fragile to be worth the hassle; I suppose I always worried I would accidentally drop one. When I became pregnant myself, on purpose but rather late, I was rattled by my resentment of the way my life and my increasingly scrutinized body morphed to accommodate this new stowaway.
I could not predict that the moment I met my son, I would weep with primal gratitude. In the face of this 8-pound, 10-ounce reality, no longer an abstract source of dread, all I wanted was to hold him close and snuggle.
What the heck happened to me?
