What is Love? (Baby Don't Hurt Me)

When Bub was nine months old, I spent several weeks anxiously asking myself, "How do I know that I love my baby?" To be sure, hormones were a factor in this mental state: I was in the process of weaning, and a decrease in the milk supply always wreaks havoc with my emotions. By the time Bub was fully weaned, the doubts and fears that had driven my inner debate had magically melted away. But I’m not certain that my feelings (or lack thereof) were purely a chemical reaction to a temporary hormonal imbalance. There is something profoundly strange about the way we love our babies.

Loving a baby is not, for instance, much like loving a grown-up. Key symptoms of romantic love are an overwhelming desire for the beloved’s presence and a sense of euphoria when the loved one is near. There are women, I know, who feel this way about their babies. But I did not: what I felt, far more often, was an overwhelming desire to escape, even for a few minutes, from my baby’s constant presence. "How can I miss you if you won’t go away?" I used to quip. I was only partly joking.

I have always loved holding babies, loved the feeling of lassitude and contentment that would sweep over me when someone else’s baby fell asleep in my arms. Having my own babies has pretty much cured me of that. My arms are stronger now than they were, but my wrists still remember the abuse they endured when the Bub was a fifteen-pound ten-week-old demanding to be bounced during his every waking hour. My shoulders have a long memory, too: I can recall the curious, weightless sensation of returning to work for the first time, clacking across campus in wedge-heeled sandals, a tasteful purse occupying the shoulder that was usually weighed down by an overflowing diaper bag. It was a pleasant sensation, familiar, free.

If loving our babies is not about euphoria, it is equally distant from that second measure of love: enjoyment of the beloved’s personality. Words are what fuel my adult relationships: my love is never fully separable from the affection I feel for my friends’ humour and intelligence, their insights and their quirks. Rarely do I feel more loved in return than when my close friends laugh at my own verbal quirks: my tendency to refer to furniture items by their Ikea names, or my habit of placing undue emphasis on the first syllable of any proper name: Swiss Chalet, Loblaws Superstore, New York Fries.

Babies are, undeniably, poor conversationalists. But more than that, their personalities are so rudimentary, so unformed. We find out quickly about our babies’ temperaments: we learn that our babies are intense and negative in mood (for example), and then try to convince ourselves that they are far more interesting than the blank, lumpen infants yawning placidly in their carriers. Their real personalities don’t truly emerge until months later. How do I know that I love my baby, I asked myself back then, when I don’t even know if I like him yet?

When debating the meaning of love, I always think of Lois Lowry’s The Giver, a children’s novel set in a futuristic dystopia where emotion has been eliminated. Families have been replaced by temporary nurturing arrangements that are dissolved when the children turn eighteen and the parents move to the Residence for Childless Adults. At a pivotal point in the novel, Jonas (the protagonist) asks his parents, "Do you love me?" and they respond by correcting his imprecise use of language, proposing more accurate alternatives: "You could ask, ‘do you enjoy me?’ The answer is ‘Yes,’" his mother suggests. His father offers his own substitution, suggesting that Jonas ask, "‘Do you take pride in my accomplishments?’ And the answer is wholeheartedly ‘Yes.’"

This is meant to be a devastating moment, a revelation of how impoverished this society is, despite its surface pleasantness. Every time I read the novel, though, I become less convinced that "love" is better than the kind of support Jonas’s parents describe. I was married, once, to a man who claimed to love me but didn’t like me very much, who frequently verbalized his wish that I were athletic, outdoorsy, and housewifely, though I had never shown the slightest inclination or aptitude for any of these things. Likewise, a friend of my mother’s used to complain that she wished her daughter were more like me (read: more like her): bookish, studious, high-achieving. Her daughter was depressingly normal: pretty, popular, more interested in hanging out at the mall than excelling in school. I’m sure that this woman loved her daughter very much: but if she didn’t enjoy her, or take pride in her accomplishments, how much was that love worth?

As my children have grown older, I’ve been able to relax into the love I have for them. There are moments, now, when I’m flooded with love for my children. Sometimes that love feels like joy or contentment; at other times, it feels like a punch in the gut. My favourite moments, though, are the ones when I am struck by how much I like them – when I see Bub’s brow knit in concentration as he works on a puzzle, or witness the way the Pie self-medicates her hurts with the toddler equivalent of a tub of Ben and Jerry’s and a chick flick (barking out orders through her tears: "up! kitty! book! cookie!"). I love his precision, and her exuberance, the glimpses of real personality beginning to emerge from their generic toddler traits – glimpses that make me look at my children in surprise and delight and say, "Oh! It’s you!"