Expert / 16 June, 2025 / Ellie Thompson
Laura Guckian is a Motherhood Coach, Maternal Mental Wellbeing Expert, and founder of Mind Mommy Coaching. Drawing on her work with thousands of mothers across the UK and Ireland, Laura is on a mission to challenge outdated and unrealistic ideas about the mother-baby bond. In this piece, she addresses one of the most common—and misunderstood—concerns she hears from mothers: “I didn’t bond with my baby… does that make me a bad mother?”
When we think of the word bonding between a mother and baby, we often picture a very specific scene… a mother holding her newborn close, overwhelmed with emotion, crying tears of joy and feeling an instant, all-consuming love. It’s the kind of image we’ve been fed by films, ads, and well-meaning books and professionals. But that’s not the reality for so many mothers-and it certainly wasn’t mine.
Laura Guckian, Maternal Mental Health Expert on bonding with your baby
I’m Laura Guckian, a Maternal Mental Health Expert, founder of Mind Mommy Coaching, and host of the number one podcast Momfessions. I’ve supported over 4,000 mothers across the UK and Ireland. One of the most common things I hear is this: “I didn’t bond with my baby… am I a bad Mother?”
The sense of shame and guilt is so heavy that it lingers for years. I’ve worked with mothers who’ve chosen to have a second baby because they want to redo the experience they feel they got wrong the first time. I know that shame. When I became a mother almost nine years ago, I was told I’d feel a rush of love, that it’d be the best day of my life, and that the bond I’d feel would be instant and extraordinary. But when my baby was handed to me, I didn’t feel that. I felt fear. I felt overwhelmed. I thought, “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
The days that followed were hard. I was sleep-deprived, scared and definitely not “loving every moment”. And because I wasn’t feeling what I had been told I should be feeling, I began to believe I was failing. That something was broken in me. That maybe I wasn’t cut out for motherhood. And that belief? It was a major contributor to my own mental health struggles. But bonding is not a feeling. Bonding is a process. And that process can look wildly different from one mother to the next.
Sometimes, bonding is instant.
Sometimes it does feel like a magical wave of love. And sometimes it’s more like a slow burn. It builds over time. It grows through the hard nights, the feeding challenges, the tiny moments of connection you barely notice in the haze. Both versions are valid. Both are real. Both are bonding.
There is no one-size-fits-all version of love.
When we tell mothers that bonding should look and feel a certain way, within a certain timeframe, we put them under immense pressure during one of the most psychologically vulnerable times of their lives. We forget that a mother’s experience is not a formula. It is not meant to fit neatly into a single storyline. There is no one-size-fits-all version of love.
If we truly want to support maternal mental health and by extension, infant mental health we must start by redefining what bonding is. That means stepping away from the binary: “You either bonded or you didn’t.” It means acknowledging that bonding can happen gradually. That it can coexist with grief, trauma, fear, or even disconnection in the early days. That just because you didn’t feel it straight away doesn’t mean it wasn’t happening.
The truth is, babies do bond with their mothers even when their mothers are struggling.
Even when the bonding process is messy or slow or complicated. The bond may not look like what’s shown on social media or in the leaflets handed out in antenatal classes, but it exists. And it matters.
This shift in thinking is more than just semantics — it’s a lifeline. When we change the definition of bonding to reflect all experiences, we lift some of the shame. We give mothers permission to feel what they’re feeling without panic. We help them understand that just because their experience isn’t textbook, it doesn’t mean it’s wrong. I’m calling on health professionals, policymakers, media platforms, and society at large to stop presenting bonding as a singular moment and start recognising it as an unfolding journey. Because when we widen the lens, we also widen the support available.
You are not failing. You are not broken. And you are not alone.
Looking back now, I know I did bond with my baby. It just looked different to what I was told it would look like. And it took me years, along with the stories of thousands of other mothers, to realise that.
So if you’re reading this and doubting yourself, let me say this as clearly as I can: You are not failing. You are not broken. And you are not alone.
Bonding is not a moment. It’s a relationship. And like any relationship, it can take time. It’s okay if it doesn’t start with a rush of love. It’s okay if it starts with a whisper.
Every Mother bonds with her baby.
Article by Laura Guckian, Motherhood Coach and Maternal Mental Wellbeing expert, Founder of Mind Mommy Coaching (@MindMommyCoaching) and host of the Momfessions podcast. Listen here.
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