Feelings

I've been reading some blogs the past little while and felt I should write some of my feelings down. One of the blogs was a recent birth story that reminded me of my own, and the other was a friend being candid about her feelings after she delivered her child. And I want to do the same. I don't want this to come off in a negative way, but my feelings weren't all good. And now that I'm pregnant again I've been thinking about them a lot.

When Taegen was born I put my birth story on here. I just read through it and there was only a few sentences of what I felt...
"This has all been a pretty traumatic experience. It all seems a little surreal. Almost like it's not my baby and he's a nephew of mine or something. I'm sure this feeling will pass when we get to hold him a little more."
I remember after he was born I called my sister Stephanie and was telling her what happened. When I first started the conversation I started getting teary eyed, but held it back. Then from then on out I felt like I was just spouting facts. "they had to take him down to the NICU. Jon got to go with him, but I'm still in the delivery room".  She asked me how I was doing and I said I was doing ok. For some reason I felt like I shouldn't cry. That it would be over reacting or something. Looking back on that I know that thats ridiculous. It was my first baby and a scary situation. I should have felt comfortable crying, but for some reason I didn't. I remember being glad that at least Jon was able to go down to the NICU with him. I was also really jealous. Shortly after Jon and all the doctors left with Taegen, my midwife (who stayed with me through the whole delivery) got a call and had to leave. This left me all alone just minutes after seeing my son hauled out of the room with problems that were practically unknown to me. I remember feeling a whole different range of emotions. lonely. sad. scared. shocked. angry. overwhelmed. It was then and only then that I shed some tears. It all felt very surreal. This was not the birth I had wanted. Why did things have to turn out this way? I don't feel the way I expected to feel. I felt bad for having these feelings. Everything I had read talked about feelings of bliss and happiness. I was happy, don't get me wrong, I just felt like things weren't right and almost like I was having someone else's experience with their child, not mine. The feelings went away after I was able to go down to the NICU to see and hold him (this wasn't for a couple hours. The epi had to wear off enough for me to be able to move before they would let me go down).

I know a lot of these feelings were because of the situation. I really feel like I would have "enjoyed" everything a lot more if I would have gotten the home birth that I wanted, if Taegen didn't have to go to the NICU, if I was able to hold him immediately afterwards, etc. I don't feel like the connection between mother and child came until the next day. It was then that we were able to be more "parents" to him and hold him whenever we wanted. I still loved him, but I didn't really feel like he was mine until the next day.

I don't know if any of this is making sense but I felt that I needed to "journal" my feelings even though they weren't 100% positive or happy.
***I love my son with all my heart. None of the things I was feeling were negative towards him. More so towards the situation. I am in no way saying I didn't love him or want him. I just want to make that clear.