Many parents who are pleased and proud to be pregnant still find it hard to feel a personal love for a baby they have never held. Love is elusive and means different things to different people. Many parents begin to feel affection when they watch the first ultrasound that shows a beating heart.

For others, it’s feeling the baby move for the first time that makes them realize that there is a real baby developing, and affection begins to grow. For other parents, it’s not really until they are well into the care of their baby. There is no “normal” time to fall in love with your baby. You should not feel guilty if your feelings of love and attachment aren’t as strong as you think they should be. Love may come early. It may come late. But 999 times out of a thousand, it comes when it needs to.

Even when feelings during pregnancy are primarily positive and the expectation is all that could be desired, there may be a letdown when the baby actually arrives, especially for first time parents. They expect to recognize the baby immediately as their own flesh and blood, to respond to the infant with an overwhelming rush of maternal and paternal feelings, and to bond like epoxy, never to feel anything but love again.

But in many cases this doesn’t happen on the first day or even the first week. Completely normal negative feelings often pop up. A good and loving parent may suddenly think that having a baby was a terrible mistake and feel instantly guilty for having felt that way! The bonding process is often a gradual one that isn’t complete until parents have recovered somewhat from the physical and emotional strains of labor and delivery. How long that takes varies from parent to parent. There is no deadline.

Most of us have been taught that it’s not fair to hope that the baby will be a girl or boy, in case it turns out to be the opposite. I wouldn’t take this seriously. It’s hard to imagine and love a future baby without picturing it as one sex or the other; that’s one of the early steps of prenatal attachment process.

Most expectant parents do have a preference for one or the other during pregnancy, even though they are quite ready to love a baby who turns out to be the opposite. So enjoy your imaginary baby, and don’t feel guilty if you learn from a prenatal ultra sound or at birth that baby is not the sex you had envisioned.