Now that I’m done with child-rearing, I find babies revolting

I have spent most of my life indifferent to babies, apart from a few clucky months of adolescence where I spent every day visiting a family friend who’d had a newborn, obsessed with its tiny hands and feet, its mewling, and intoxicated by the baby smell.

When I worked in reception at a maternal child health clinic and saw all the mothers cradling their newborns, I always felt slightly perturbed by their limp appearance. Even when I was pregnant with my daughter, after a frightfully long time attempting to conceive, I was still indifferent and worried about what would happen with my own child.

Babies are not for everyone.Credit: Alamy

When I dared to utter this out loud, other mothers told me it was always different with their own child. That the love a mother feels towards her baby is like nothing I would know. They were right and wrong. While yes, I loved my daughter when she was a baby, I also still felt slightly detached from the motherhood experience. She was so passive, and boring, and it was only as she developed and became interactive and interesting from about six months that I felt my love truly bloom. Then, when she became a toddler and a mini doll-like creature, I truly became enraptured and awed by her adorableness.

Now, as I go through the thralls of perimenopause, my feelings towards babies have changed yet again. Where before I felt indifference, now I feel revulsion. It is becoming pathological, where my whole body reacts, my sphincter clenches, my gag reflex tickles, and I tremble as I recoil. My revulsion is strongest the more unformed the child is.

I often find myself in shopping centres, having to hide behind corners or hover in the next aisle, or turn away abruptly when confronted with the sight of a newborn. I do not want to inadvertently traumatise a new mother with my horrified expression. As my estrogen dissipates, I can feel the slow creep of my body, which is responsible for the feelings of caretaking and nurturing, leaving me less tolerant in general, especially of anyone in need of nurturing.

Like most women, I spent most of my life worrying about the thoughts and feelings of others, bending myself to fit into their shape, elevating other people’s needs over my own. Since the death of my parents, my daughter’s entry in adolescence and her newfound self-sufficiency, and my own menopause journey, I now find myself on the other end of the spectrum: completely uncaring about what others think of me, or how they feel in general. There is a great freedom that comes from cutting myself out of society’s expectations.

I don’t suffer fools anymore, gladly or otherwise. Recently I was telling a friend about how I blocked a former work friend who had wronged me. She was shocked at my brazen act of discourtesy. “What if they ask you why you didn’t receive their message?” I shrugged. “I’ll tell them I changed my phone number. Me not adding them to my new contacts should be message enough that I don’t want them in my life.”

I know that my newborn revulsion is symbolic of this newfound nonchalance towards humanity. I have flashes of panic sometimes, worrying that I will stray too far from social etiquette and become too much of an adult in the wild.

Then I speak to friends who are still in the thrall of caregiving and nurturing. Who are in the midlife sandwich and torn between their own children and caring for parents who are dependent on them, not only for practical life needs but as their only social outlet. One friend told me a story about working from home when her mother came over and started talking to her, then her daughter who was home on school holidays came down, and as she walked the tightrope of caregiving and working, her frustration built. Somehow, she tamped it all down and played the role of the good mother and daughter. “I admire you so much,” I said, and patted her arm, relieved that I am now free from this painful tribulation of midlife.

When I see a baby, I will continue to hide and evade. It’s a small price to pay for the freedom it brings.

Amra Pajalić is the author of young adult novels Sabiha’s Dilemma and Alma’s Loyalty.

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