I do love my baby, but I always heard it is supposed to be OVERWHELMING and UNBELIEVABLE and INCOMPARABLE. I don’t think we’re there yet.

She’s only 3 months old and just beginning to be able to smile back at me and interact in the smallest ways. I know bonding can take some time with some moms and babies. I mean, screaming newborns are a class all their own. And you do have to get to know each other… Is something wrong when you’re justifying reasons why your love isn’t overwhelming enough?

I like her. I think she’s wonderful. I’m happy she’s around. It hurt me when she cried from the vaccine shots. I am struck by how beautiful she is when I go to her crib to get her. I really enjoy cuddling her. But what is enough?

Honestly, it feels like the love I have for my wife after 8 years – calm, comfortable. It is deep, but it doesn’t consume. The first year together was Overwhelming. Everything was so intense. Every misspoken word led to crying, every touch led to sex, every story led to sharing twenty more, every second apart was sheer agony. We often reflect now how much more we like what we have now. I like being able to be apart and miss her but not so much that I can’t do anything else. I like being able to just kiss. I like the safe, familiar feeling of chatting without wondering what this person I’m newly dating is really thinking.

There is nothing boring or bland about what our love has become. I mean calm in the best sense, like looking out at a beautiful ocean horizon at dawn. Calm, but dazzling and incredible. Something that makes you take pause and go “Wow, I am so lucky.”

Obviously love for a child is different than love for a spouse, but that calm and deep feeling is there. I expected me to feel about my baby a similar way I felt about a brand new love – giddy and completely obsessed. Instead it is sweet, it is nice, it is comfortable. Most importantly, and reassuringly, it is growing. I haven’t felt the “this is like no love you’ve ever known” feeling other moms talk about… yet. But we’ll get there. We’re just at the beginning of a dazzling sunrise.