On the Maternal Instinct

I am travelling for my dissertation research. I am in a strange city: a city that I actually like very much but that slightly intimidates me. Like almost all places with streets and cars and human beings.

This morning I was having coffee in a café, and reading -- the last third of the last Harry Potter book, as a matter of fact -- and I suddenly heard a baby crying.

At the next table there was an older man, perhaps sixty, feeding pieces of a muffin to a baby sprawled in a stroller. The baby was unhappy. She flailed her small limbs around. The man leapt out of his seat to get something at the counter, and in his absence the baby wailed more loudly, arching her back and balling her fists.

This distracted me to the point that I could not read. I tried to make eye contact with the baby -- to smile at her and lift my eyebrows and mouth the word "hi" -- which usually brings down the house with the under-two set.

But although she seemed to look my direction, her eyes could not seem to focus on mine. At this point I noticed the way her body slumped over in the stroller -- very little muscle control for such a large baby -- and the way her head bobbed around. I wondered if she had been born prematurely, or had some kind of special needs.

Her caretaker came back to the table with his coffee, and continued the process of feeding her the muffin. But she continued to wail. It was obvious that she was uncomfortable, distraught, anxious.The man doggedly tried to poke muffin into her mouth. His expression was blank and unaffected.

Now her despair, and the man's ineptitude at comforting her, was grating at me. Why didn't he TALK to her? What was the matter with this man? Didn't he know how to talk to a baby? You know: quietly, in that dumb sing-song way?

I started imagining scenarios that explained his behavior. I imagined that he was her grandfather, left alone with her for an hour and that he had never taken care of a child before. Or that he was her father, and a jerk, didn't think that talking to a special-needs baby was even worth it. Or that she was a rich person's baby, and he was her kidnapper, holding her for ransom, and he didn't care about her emotional well-being.

How tempted I was to get up from my table, and pick her up, wrap my arms reassuringly around her and pat her back: shh, shh, you're okay, you're okay. Like I have done a million times with my own daughter, my small and dear Lucy.

Eventually he wheeled her out of the café, across the street to a hotel. I hoped they were headed in the direction of someone who would pick that baby up. I mean really.

And why is this noteworthy? It was an experience that confirmed I DO have a maternal instinct.

Okay, an alarming thing for someone who is already a mother to say, I admit. Don't call child protective services, please. I certainly love my daughter madly, and would do anything for her. But I do worry that I am not, well, naturallly maternal. That it is all an act on my part.

I see my female friends fall seemingly effortlessly into nurturing others; I see them throw away their own dreams and comfort for the sake of their children in all kinds of ways I can't imagine. They really do seem to be selfless.

And I worry that wow, maybe I am too critical and self-absorbed and cold for motherhood. To be honest, it is not THAT uncommon that I wish somebody else were taking care of my kid, and I was, oh, I don't know, at a meeting, or at a bar, or out for a run, or on the couch, or really anywhere but reading this goddamn Go Dog Go again.

I worry that someday, in Lucy's autobiography, she will write the sentence: "My mother was not really the kind of woman who ought to be a mother, although she tried."

But in that café, without obvious reason, I actually had the urge to pick up unfamiliar baby. Not a baby to which I am related and thus naturally am drawn to and/or obligated to care for, and not a close friend's baby, but a total stranger baby! It made me ANGRY that the baby was going uncomforted. It actually produced real anxiety.

It turns out I have MATERNAL INSTINCT POURING OUT OF MY ORIFICES. I'm a nurturer leaking all over the place.

This is yet another sign that my judgment of myself is not to be trusted. What else have I been wrong about? Maybe how I look? Do you think it's possible that I actually am a five-ten Danish model with huge boobs?