Post-partum Depression?

The first week and a half of my daughter’s life I felt feelings I never anticipated would accompany the birth of a child: I felt loss. At first, I didn’t identify it as such. I was really weepy and emotional each night of those first few days. I figured it was fatigue or overwhelming joy at having her here. After a few nights, the feelings were markedly sad, accompanied by a subtle sense of loneliness, like someone was missing. It was so powerful one night that I had to get up from the dinner table with my parents and husband to check on her in her crib—just to make sure she was still there. I literally broke down in tears when I saw her, I was so relieved to discover she hadn’t left.

Over the next few nights, I realized that I was mourning something. I missed those early days of her life. I missed how she smelled in the hospital—a smell that matched the smell coming from my body every time I went to the bathroom--a smell of fresh, clean, life-giving body fluids. That smell was gone, replaced by her baby bath soap or lotion. When the time came to throw out the medicines I had been placing on the stitches holding my tear together, I didn’t want to. They were another sign of her birth, of her entrance into the world, of the fact that she used to be inside of me.

I realized that I was mourning the loss of my pregnancy. I had lost something. I had lost an incredible closeness with my child. I had lost a presence inside of me. Ironically, when I was pregnant, I rarely felt a sense that there was a personality inside of me. Of course, I felt her move all the time; I felt like I had someone with me all the time. But a lot of women describe feelings of connecting personally, emotionally, perhaps spiritually with their children while they’re in the womb. I never felt anything like that. I was so anxious for her to be born, because then she would be present. Now that she was present, I felt I had lost her—or if not her, something.

The feeling has largely passed. But sometimes I even miss feeling that sense of missing something. She’s almost a month old now and my days are full of trying to figure out how to get her to sleep, when I should feed her, how to get those tiny diapers to actually stay on her small hips. Those first few days of her life were so glorious—sublime in a way—a cocoon (to quote Michelle) of soft colors and quiet sounds inhabited only by us. And that sense of loss was part of that brief time. So I miss it.

Has anyone else felt this? Or heard of this? Is this, in any way, a typical part of the post-partum experience? Has anyone had other experiences with post-partum depression?