I have never been a baby person. It was with the greatest delight, therefore, that I discovered when my oldest daughter was born, that it’s possible to be a good mother without being a baby person.

Babies have always been little aliens to me. I don’t say that with any hard feelings; I’ve just never had any interest in babies. Oh, I played my share of dolls growing up, and I even had siblings born when I was 16 and 21. That made no difference to my interest level. They’re so small, I remember thinking. And, They don’t DO anything, was another thought that kept me away. The small, trusting weight; the sweet smell of baby; the personality packed into less than ten pounds of person – none of these things did anything to win me over to the ways of babies. Besides, I didn’t need to be interested in babies. I didn’t need to know anything about them. I was never going to have any.

Isn’t God wonderful? Even though we do our best to crash the car in the ditch, he has no problem taking over, just as soon as we’ll give him the wheel, and make everything right again.

It’s by God’s grace that I have had two babies, have held them and cherished them and nursed them. And I’ve even enjoyed it, which I wasn’t even sure about until I held the oldest in my arms. She won me over the minute I saw her. I couldn’t believe my eyes – she was born with personality! Why didn’t anyone tell me about that? Oh, wait, maybe they tried…

I’m still not a baby person, not in the proper walk-across-burning-coals-to-get-my-hands-on-that-baby-across-the-room sense of things. But when I’m nursing my baby in the middle of the night, or when I’m changing my baby in the middle of the day, or when I’m thinking about the three special boys who changed my worldview – then, maybe, I am a baby person. How could I not be?