1. Possessiveness - this is my baby - which is hardly new or surprising, for me/to me.
2. A desire for privacy, the strength of which I never quite realised until I was pregnant. A sense that whatever else this is - grandparent-grandchild relationships, a new dynamic for the extended family, a new dynamic for my little family, mother-child relationships - it is still my life. I don't think this is the same as (1), and while (1) has diminished with time, this one hasn't - it's sometimes driven underground by a combination of despair and despondency and tiredness. I think it might be the harder feeling to understand, if one doesn't have it oneself.
3. Flickering gratitude, and resentment of being expected to be grateful, and resentment at being in a position (not put in a position, not by anyone but myself - that has always been clear to me) of needing help and being expected to need help and being expected to be grateful for the help that is given.
4. A fierce love for the baby - a little less fierce now, more tamped-down, though no less strong, than a few days after she was born - or perhaps the ferocity is just less surprising to me now. I see these words a lot, in writings by or about new mothers - a 'fierce love' - the same adjective always - it's hard to get away from cliches, especially when they're apt. Related to (1) but not, I think, the same thing. My baby. This puts all other loves in the shade (be honest: some were true loves, and some were social/moral/familial obligations).
5. A need/desire to be mothered, but in a very particular way, and resentment at being mothered in any other way. Which feeds into
6. Surprise at, and surprise at how much I dislike, many aspects of grandparent behaviour. This comes from (1) to (5), I think, and more besides, especially when I think back to my own childhood. (Not that it wasn't happy, by any account. But not, I think, as so thoroughly enjoyed by my parents? For the usual reasons - I don't remember my early childhood or my siblings' early childhood that well, there are stresses and worries associated with parenting, my parents were much less mellow and there was a great deal more shouting (but only shouting) at points in my life.) Some of it is - the tension between thinking that I'm too old to need parenting, and wanting my child's caregivers to behave as caregivers, responsible and sober and long-term-thinking, rather than besotted grandparents, and, well, (5). You don't stop needing your parents, it turns out, but it's possible - I want to acknowledge the possibility - that they might stop wanting to parent you. In a non-melodramatic way; haven't you left the home, after all? I wanted them to be - oh, friends and (my idea of) parents and my child's co-caregivers, and they wanted to be - grandparents, I guess. And to be helpful; see (3).
