New dad Michael Bublé -- famous for crooning about love and romance -- was eager to experience the next stage in his life, but fatherhood didn’t start out as joyously as he had hoped.
The singer, whose son Noah was born on Aug. 27, has revealed that seeing his baby for the first time wasn’t what he expected.
“I didn’t have that overwhelming feeling of love. I’m being honest with you,” the singer said last week on The Social, a Canadian talk show, according to People.
“I’d heard all of these stories about how this moment was life-changing, but it wasn’t like that for me. I was nervous for my wife, and I was happy that he was healthy … but, that day, it was like meeting a stranger.”
Bublé is bringing up something that’s not that uncommon, said Dr. Iffath Hoskins, director of patient safety and quality in the department of obstetrics and gynecology at New York University School of Medicine. Informal studies show about a third of new parents say they didn’t feel immediate joy when they first saw their newborn.
“It’s not unusual, it’s not shocking, it doesn’t mean that the parent… will not be a good parent,” Dr. Hoskins said.
“It’s not all going to be rainbows, and butterflies and joy…I reassure my patients that they may have mixed emotions. It can vary from feeling nothing, feeling scared, feeling stressed, to the pure joy of holding your newborn in your arms.”
Bonding with a baby is nature’s way of making sure a parent will nurture the child, so what’s really important is that a new mom and dad provide for the needs of the baby, Dr. Hoskins said. Parents who don’t feel that attachment right away will likely do so within a short period of time, she added.
It’s vital to watch the baby’s cues, such as smiling, gurgling, and curling his hand around your finger – all these things are geared toward enhancing the parent-newborn attachment, Dr. Hoskins said.
For Bublé, a day made all the difference.
“That next night (after the baby was born), it really clicked,” he told The Social. “I was looking at him and all of a sudden, I got it… I sing to him all day and all night. When he’s crying with somebody else and I hold him and I sing to him, he just stops. It’s really cool.”