I’m talking about oxytocin. That’s a hormone released during labor and breast-feeding, and also apparently during canoodling. Men can make it, too, but they – obviously – don’t do it as much. According to Wikipedia, the effects of oxytocin gushing around your brain include making virgin sheep like lambs and making me forget things, and also it’s just like taking ecstasy.
What it feels like is Bliss.
When my daughter was born, I entered a world of oxytocin highs that can only be described as Bliss. For the first few weeks I was on Bliss all the time – all I needed to do was touch her, look at her, smell her, and I was off on another high.
Three years later, it’s not as intense, but it’s still going on (cuddling up to a sleeping toddler gives me quite a shot of Bliss).A crack addict once told me that he was always looking for a repeat of the first high. You smoke again and again, and it is never the way it was, but you can never stop trying.
That’s the way I am with Bliss. Hand me a squishy little baby and something in my brain starts whispering relentlessly: have another one. More Bliss!
So I’m just a slave to my hormones.
This freaks out my husband, K. Where once there was a fairly rational and intelligent person, now there’s this raving Bliss addict who doesn’t care about any of the rational reasons, pro or con, to have another child (his are mostly con: the money we don’t have, the time we don’t have, the one bedroom apartment we live it, etc.). All the Bliss-out addict wants is babies. More, more, more.
I know some women don’t get this high when their babies are born. I’m sure it’s just a brain chemistry thing, but I feel sorry for them like a proselytizer feels sorry for someone who hasn’t been saved.
It may be a drug, but if I’d never done it, I’d never have known Bliss.
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