TW: brief mentions of suicidal thoughts and postpartum psychosis

“Our kid just has more life force than all the other kids,” my husband tells me, after volunteering in our daughter’s kindergarten class.

“Seriously?” I raise my eyebrows to remind him he’s kind of being an asshole. “More life force?”

“You know what I mean. The other kids are alive, but she’s like… more alive. They’re all great, but she’s like, brighter and funnier and just, more.”

“So your solipsism has grown to encompass your offspring?”

“What’s solipsism again?”

“When you think you’re the only one who’s real.”

He blushes. If this conversation had a winner, it would surely be me. But the truth is, I know what he means. I feel it too. My kid feels like the best kid. The best human. The best any- and everything.

Comic artist Lunarbaboon’s comic “Perception” perfectly illustrates this phenomenon. Adoring parents gaze at their cross-eyed, unibrowed, buck-toothed baby and say, “Everyone thinks their kid is beautiful, but ours is actually the most gorgeous,” which prompts another parent to say to his child, “I wonder what you actually look like.”

I see my child through rose-colored glasses, and it’s impossible for me to take them off. In the midst of this deep, intoxicating love, I might never know what my special, perfect angel is really, objectively like.

We can’t be objective about our kids, but maybe that’s okay.

Everyone deserves to be loved. But does this mean everyone needs to be loved equally by everyone?

When my daughter was a newborn, postpartum depression and anxiety took me over. I was lucky to love her fiercely, but I also felt like a constant failure. Every day, I fought off the impulse to abandon her — she’d be better off without me — whether by driving away until no one knew my name, or by ending my own life.

One day, I was nursing her, worrying about how she wasn’t growing, how maybe my insufficient breasts were killing her, when a friend with two older children confessed, “I’m still struggling to love all children equally.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“I feel so guilty. I love my kids more than anyone in the world. But why? Objectively, I know they’re not more important than anyone else. I want to love everyone equally. Everyone deserves to be loved.”

Wait, we need to worry about loving our kids too much? This was the first I’d heard of this idea.

I hadn’t admitted it to anyone, but I was terrified my depression was really postpartum psychosis. I didn’t want to hurt my baby, but for the first time I felt sympathy for parents who abandoned their babies, or worse. My pain and fear were large and constant, so I understood anyone even considering horrible things must be experiencing infinite anguish, with the relentlessness of sleep deprivation. They needed help but were afraid to get it, because they didn’t think they could admit what they were feeling.

I certainly didn’t feel like I could admit what I was feeling, my desire to abandon my baby, to give up on living. My mental priority was convincing myself loving my baby meant sticking around to love her.

I was afraid these thoughts meant I didn’t love my child the way I was supposed to, the way she needed me to.

And now my friend was suggesting I also had to worry about loving my child too much?

She was right: everyone deserves to be loved. But does this mean everyone needs to be loved equally by everyone all the time?

Through my life as a parent/human, and my work with children age 0–5, I’ve come to love so many wonderful children. I love them when they’re brave and kind; I love them when they’re struggling and mad. But the fiercest love I’ve ever felt is the one I feel for my daughter.

When you feel fierce feelings of love, let yourself love fiercely. If we all do that, there will be more than enough love to go around.

Loving your child doesn’t take love away from others. In fact, it does the opposite. Love multiplies, blossoms, and spreads, because love is not a finite resource.

When you actively love your children, you teach them to love.

When you feel fierce feelings of love, let yourself love fiercely. If we all do that, there will be more than enough love to go around.

When I was afraid I didn’t know how to love my baby, I finally opened up, and got help: medication and therapy. Objectively, my kid’s not perfect. I’m not perfect either. But I worked through my depression, to a place where I love myself and I love my child.

My heart tells me my kid is the best, but I don’t need (or want) other parents to agree. I hope all of them think their kid is the best.

My kid doesn’t have more life force. I know it. I think my husband knows it too. But if we feel that way sometimes, it’s okay. It’s just love, and everyone deserves to be loved.