When your midwife/doctor puts your newborn on your chest, still attached to you via the umbilical cord. What is going through your mind? How happy you are? Are you in shock? Do you feel like you are in a dream? Are you laughing or crying? Are you relieved that it is over?Do you feel this overwhelming love and joy coursing through every cell and pore in your body? Maybe you do.

And maybe you don’t.

You have built up to this one moment in your mind for at least nine months, and probably more. We expect to feel the heavens open and the angels sing as our baby, the one we have long awaited, is finally in our arms. We anticipate the immediate joy we feel will compare to no other feeling we have ever had before. Well, sometimes it just doesn’t happen that way. Sometimes we feel relief that it’s over, or numb from an exhausting birth or none of the above. Perhaps we don’t know how we feel. AND THAT IS OK. It is your experience-you are allowed to feel how you feel.  Experience that moment the way you are meant to experience it, with no judgment and no guilt. There is no right or wrong emotion. It is YOUR first moment. Have no expectation-just let it happen. Your feelings will come as they will and they will be your feelings. And guess what? Whatever you feel is normal. Welcome to motherhood.