help me i havent bonded with gc number 7

I suspect that if you treat him as though you do love him, don't ever make him feel that he is second best, and enjoy him for his own character as he gets a bit older and develops it, you will bond gradually with him and come to love him just as much as you do the first baby.

After all, not every love affair starts with a knockout strike at first sight, some grow steadily and creep up on you. They are no less deep than the instant ones.

I guess it depends what you mean by bonding - I don't think it is for us to bond with them - that is for the parents. We just need to be in the background, doing what grandparents do.

Once you have spent a bit more time with this little chap I am sure you will develop appropriately grandparently feelings. Give it time.

I don't understand why "bonding" seems to be held in such high esteem either. Obviously mothers (maybe fathers) need to for nurturing reasons, but grandparents?

Just another pressure imho.

Bonding is a natural process that happens when you have close contact with a child and look after it. Somehow it has come to be regarded as an active exercise, which you have to engage in deliberately and plan for.

It is a bit like treating a weekend in Paris with a new lover as a calculated plan to bond with them - er, excuse me?

These posts are all interesting to me and glad it came up. I think our first 18 month old DGD is lovely, but I don't feel the butterflies my DH does. The father is his adopted son, and I'm the stepmum who first met him when he was 21 (their mum died 6 years before). Now 25 years later and we are 'all family', but I think of both stepsons as more of mentored-friends. But as I never had my own children, I wonder if that's why I don't have those grandma butterflies like her grampa gets.

I absolutely love holding her and giving her her 'nap bottle'... she pulls at my fingers and looks straight at me. The rest of the time I am busy on the day we have her, picking her up from nursery and getting the 'report' from the staff, getting food ready, changing her (with lots of giggles as she likes to throw her legs up in the air to 'help'), whilst grampa does most of the playing and fun stuff. Even though it's me who buys the toys 'they' play with LOL.

It's getting better... maybe I need to get down on the floor and play with her more!?

It'll come, Lewlew You enjoy her company - the process has started. Even if it gets no better than that, she is still another "mentored friend" for you.

Love for grandchildren is very strange. When my eldest granddaughter was born 19 years ago I loved her from the moment I first saw her at just a few hours old. It took longer with her sister now 15 but it did come. Bizarrely I fell in love with my grandson from the first scan - I think this might have been because they had by then emigrated to NZ - when we finally got to meet him 2 years later the bond was there for us but obviously not for him as he didn't know us. His little brother was the same as my second GD but he is such a little darling and so like his daddy that although he was only 6 weeks old when we met himI also love him to bits now.. Give it time as everyone has said - it will come at some point.

Everyone is different, and your feelings (or lack of them) are just the way you are. The only aspect I would caution you about is the adverse effect on the younger child if you make the mistake of clearly favouring the elder one. That is most certainly to be avoided...

I have GCs in their late teens and been involved with them from birth although one DIL always favoured her M for babysitting. Now I have a two yearold GS who I have seen only three times. A new baby is due in the new year and I dont know if I shall ever see that one. It is all in laws for when mum works birthday Christmas etc. In laws live locally to me so a pop in would not be out of the way. I am so upset and hurt at being ignored and have had counselling to cope. I also have 3 GGC whonlive at the other end of the country but see them more often. Dreading the birth in the New Year and trying to bond.

OP, I think you're experiencing something that's quite common. We invest so much in our first grandchild that it's hard to see where there is room for a second. However, even if it doesn't happen straight away, this little boy will melt your heart.

I think you are being a bit hard on yourself. Give it time! Boys and girls are so different there will be something you see in one that you don't see in the other. Make it a fun thing. Don't forget the little boy needs love too as well as his sister. Don't leave him out, try and keep in touch, ask for photos if you cannot actually see him. I know it is difficult when you cannot hug in person, but try skype so that you can see him growing up. The bonding will come eventually.

I have just had a new second GC too. Can't say I have bonded with him yet, I am leaving him to Mommy while I concentrate on helping with my adorable 2 year old GD. I know I will be hooked when he starts to sleep and feed less and smile and look around more !

for you Marnie and a sympathetic hug. I have found this thread very interesting and perceptive - one of our GC is much loved but not a particularly easy child. I am trying to regard him as an interesting challenge/project to try and develop a strong bond/relationship (rather than look negatively at his behaviour/attitude). He will be a teenager in 5 years and I don't think that is going to be an easy ride! Sorry this is a bit off topic but what I am trying to say is the little ones are always innocent, my attitude is what I have to try to change.

Don't try to 'bond', just accept a new member of the family. He's here, he's real and just as deserving of love, care, and protection as any other newborn baby. It's all about this new little life, not about how us older people feel.

Why should we expect love to be immediate, erzulie? I always say the fun time is 'once they get their batteries in' (at around 6 months) and then their character shines through. I do hope it will be that way for you.

It will happen in time. I bonded with my own 3 children at different tines for each one. One was instant yet one of the other the took several months. Now all 3 are grown I am equally devoted to them all. I'd give my life for them. So if it's like this for your own, it's surely the same for your grandchildren.

Fake it and fake it well, my mother made it very clear that she never wanted me to have a second child and then when it turned out to be a boy!! She ignored him for quite an age, doting on my DD and although she is long dead I still resent her for it! Hopefully you won't have to fake it for long, once his little personality begins to shine through things might well change for the better

I have to confess I am not mad about my 1st GD. Having said that I am not alone as she was a very difficult baby & even more difficult toddler/child. At 8 she is still a handful- very wilful. I always thought it was because I wasn't used to girls but my 2nd GD is a sweetheart.
Not all children are perfect angels although she is very good at school apparently. Let's face it there are some people you just can't take to.
Don't get me wrong I LOVE her but I find liking her a bit of a trial at times.
Don't beat yourself up about it- as they get older it is easier to find things you can enjoy together.

The issue of 'bonding' is relatively modern, I believe. I have no idea if it occurred to either of my Victorian grannies that they should 'bond' with any of us. One granny lived round the corner so was often involved with us as children, but I'm sure that none of us or our cousins felt specially 'bonded'. I met each of my GC on Day 1 and was privileged to be able to hold and cuddle them. I adore them all. No-one suggested that I should bond with them.
If the OP obsesses about this issue, perhaps it won't ever happen. Stop being anxious about it. After all, he is just new born.

All the theoretical talk about "bonding" strikes me as a reflection of the amount of inward focus there is at the moment.

It is there in art exhibitions - all exhibitions seem to come now with a long explanation by the artist of all the inner turmoil and angst they feel which is being expressed in their work. I don't think Van Gogh or Rembrandt or Picasso felt it necessary to write a monologue to accompany their paintings. The works themselves conveyed the emotions, verbal explanations were superfluous.

It is in interviews with the survivors of disasters - the microphone shoved under the nose and the breathless "How did that make you feel?" "How the hell do you think I felt?," is the only possible answer!

You can love a child, like a child, tenderly look after it, rejoice when it thrives, worry if it doesn't, grieve if it is one of the thankfully few who don't survive, all without going to the intellectual process of studying a textbook by a psychologist on the necessity of bonding. Just DO it.

Pretend, act, it won't take long before you don't need to. I fostered 27 babies, not all of them were important to me when they arrived but they all had a place in my heart by the time they left, they all took some of my heart with them and each one was loved and missed.

Lovely post SallyDapp you have a good heart.

I was adopted and my maternal grandparents would have nothing to do with me because I was born illegitimate. Thank goodness tines have changed.

I remember a friend talking about her two gc both boys she said the eldest is my favourite I felt quite sad about that, why do some people have to have a favourite surely you treat them all the same. I only have a gd so she is the light of my life but if I had more I would feel the same way about them.

I thought I could ever love another child as much as my first grandson - still adore him and he's 15 (not a lovable age really!) However his gorgeous sister arrived 11 years later and I just fell for her hook line and sinker. I still feel a special bond with my grandson though.
As other posters have said I'm sure it will come in time, though you may always feel that special bond with your grand daughter.

Erzulie Do you have other grandsons or is this the first male grandchild I adore the girls in my family and often wonder if I had a grandson how I would feel.