My Missing Maternal Instinct

The story details the narrator's struggles with her maternal instincts after being diagnosed with stage IV cancer. The paramedics at the ambulance initially thought it was important for her to be with her 2-year-old during a seizure due to being a mother, but she defied the norm and asked her husband to accompany her instead. She explained that she had no faith in her parenting abilities as she had been the secondary parent while her husband took on the primary role.

After a series of fertility treatments, she finally became pregnant and assumed she had the natural instincts to care for her baby, but her experience with the baby proved otherwise. She and her husband initially placed their child in a bassinet near them for ten days to avoid the baby suffocating, and the child seemed to stare at them as if questioning their competence.

The narrator felt guilty and rationalized her overthinking as an issue of being an older parent. Once diagnosed with cancer, her daughter was switched to formula due to her mother's toxic breast milk, and the narrator became a mother in name only. She had to rely on her husband and a nanny for childcare, but still felt the need to be involved in day-to-day decisions regarding her child's health.

The narrator realized that maternal instinct was not a muscle that could be exercised, and she began asserting her role as a mother again as her daughter grew and she recovered from chemotherapy.