A mother's touch of love

Note: When I see posts of different blogs that I read and theirs is as long as this one that I have written, I have to admit that most of the time I save them to read later but then I never actually read them because I forget. If you have a hard time expressing your love to your child(ren), then please read this post. It is written for your encouragement and it is very personal. I know it is long but I feel that it will be worth a reading.

My daughter Grace is very emotionally attached to a stuffed animal that we call Bunny (because that is what it is, a bunny). I have nothing against having a lovey or whatever you want to call it. Now Grace does this special thing with her mouth to one ear (and only one ear) of her Bunny. I cannot describe how she does it so I will call it kissing (even though that is not what she is doing to her Bunny's ear).

Now that I have explained her Bunny I am going to explain something about me, but keep reading, this will all make sense , hopefully, in the end :).

My Love Language, the way I show love and the way I know others love me, is Words of Affirmation. This means I show others that I love and appreciate them by encouraging them or complimenting them on something that they have done and vice versa. There are five love languages, and everyone, including little children, has some degree of all of them. My degrees of the love languages are as follows (in order from the highest degree to the lowest) 1. Words of Affirmation, 2. Quality Time, 3. Gift Giving, 4. Touch, and 5. Acts of Service.

Next I will explain the birth experiences I have had with my three children.

I had Josiah in a Birthing Center. I had a long labor and spent 3 hours learning how to push him out. I had a midwife that I did not like and she always seemed to be uneasy about everything. After Josiah had finally come out he, of course, was exhausted and needed to be put on oxygen right away. This took place across the room which, I realize now, could have instead taken place in the warmth and comfort of his mother's arms rather than on a cold changing table. After he was cleared from the oxygen tubes I was to breast feed him, but because he, and I, were so  exhausted he would not latch on and the nurse told us that my husband needed to go to the store (after a long labor and hours of helping me push) and buy him some formula because he was STARVING (what I found out later is that the placenta gives the baby an extra boost of food just before it comes out, so they can survive awhile with out being fed). After he was finally "fed" the nurse would not leave and kept talking to us and did not let us enjoy our new addition to our family. Three months after Josiah was born we found out that we were going to be expecting our second. I was devastated. I had JUST done this!! I wanted to enjoy my baby that I had just had! Grace's labor and delivery (at the birthing center again) was a total of six hours. When I arrived at the birthing center the nurse was late so I had to sit in the  waiting room that was full of other patients for an hour, In active labor mind you, and try to not be noisy with my labor noises. I had a midwife that I had never met before (because I went into labor on her shift) She was nice but it's kind of weird to allow someone that you have never met before help you with something this personal. After I had birthed Grace I was starving and my husband went to get us some food. While he was gone I didn't hold her or talk to her or anything. And this I regret very much now. Grace didn't gain very much weight when she was a baby and even now she is still small for her age. I hardly ever wrote in her baby book. Now Autumn's birth was absolutely AMAZING! I had her in her bedroom in a blow up kiddy pool in three hours. I had a Christian midwife who was SO encouraging through my whole pregnancy. She helped me become a thinking pregnant woman. She let me do things MY way and she let me be in charge of my labor. She believed in me. She let my husband be my husband by letting him help me with everything. Oh I could go on and on about how much this woman meant to me. But one thing she told me to do, as soon as Autumn was born, was to hold my baby close and love on her. And I think because of this positive and absolutely wonderful experience of a birth I have come to realize how I am to love a child. I feel that I, Josiah, and Grace were cheated out of this beautiful connection of touch immediately after birth. And that  lack of connection still affects me to this day in the way that I show my love towards them.

Now that you have all this background information I will tell you about my experience of learning how to love.

Grace's love language is touch and I have a hard time expressing love to her in her language and don't really know how to speak her language to her because it is almost the last thing on my list of languages. I am not saying that I don't love her. I do love her so, so dearly. But I do not know how to express my love to her in her language, rather than in mine, so that she will know and understand it. I think, because of how my attitude was towards her pregnancy with her and not touching her after her birth, it is hard for me to show her that I loved her because never could and didn't know how.  After realizing that her love language was touch I have slowly become aware of what her Bunny means to her. Her bunny is the replacement for the touch of love that I am to show her. Because of my lacking in  showing affection towards her in her language  she gets the touch that she needs from her Bunny and is satisfied. What an error I have made. I am so glad that I was able to experience a birth like Autumn's because if I didn't would Grace have grown up and still be kissing her bunny at the age of 16? I doubt it. But I do think, if I hadn't noticed, she would have gone looking for the touch of love that I was supposed to give her in other dreadful places. Bunny now sits on Grace's dresser and is only for her to have in her bedroom and when she is sleeping. I notice now when she needs to be touched, because she will get grouchy and mean towards her brother and sister. The first day I took her bunny away she cried so hard for it. But I knew that moment was my opportunity to love on her and touch her because that was what she needed. I am now slowly learning how to love with the sense of touch and am realizing that a mother's touch cannot and should not be replaced by anyone or anything.