The Treasure of Newborn Time

Really, it was postpartum depression that I expected.

I waited for my first baby to be born, wondering if I had what it takes to love a baby, worrying that I'd lose myself in motherhood. I was going to be depressed -- I knew it!

What I actually felt in the days and weeks after my son's birth was a surprise that changed the course of my life. It sent me on a quest to know more about other people's experiences, and I learned that the postpartum period is far richer, more interesting and varied than we've realized. It's more than the "blues," and it's more than "postpartum," for the bonding time can bring amazing changes to fathers and adoptive parents as well.

I want to describe one of these changes, one that many of us have known and yet few of us have talked about. As I look back now from beyond my childbearing years, I see it as something so precious and powerful that it can hold the world together. Though our experiences in newborn time are as unique and personal as our fingerprints, over and over again one word comes up. The same image glows at the center of many parents' postpartum memories:

"I felt connected..."

We may have heard of bonding; we may have assumed that we would feel something special for our own baby - and yet the power of the actual experience takes many of us by surprise. "The first unusual thing I noticed," says one mother, "was a feeling of 'connectedness' with my baby. I hadn't expected this." "To be truthful," says another, "I never knew such contact between human beings was possible!"

Sarah was unconscious at the time of delivery, nearly dying of a hemorrhage. She didn't meet her newborn daughter until twelve hours after the birth. "My husband was in the room with me," she recalls. "He says he will never forget the look on both of our faces when my baby and I saw each other for the first time. He says we were locked in a gaze that was so strong, so committed. I remember feeling that I was seeing someone I knew already in the most intimate and personal way. It was like a reunion, and from that moment on I was 'in love' with her in the deepest sense."

Fathers may be more hesitant to put their emotions into words, but they too can be swept up in the intensity of bonding. Richard was amazed to feel a close communion with his baby right from the moment of birth: "As soon as I caught him, it was as if we were one person. I thought that I was feeling what he was feeling. We were communicating on a telepathic and empathetic plane."

Adoptive parents may be even more surprised by such reactions. Before adopting her baby son, Lisa feared she would "lack some sort of cosmic connection" since she hadn't given birth to him. But instead, she says, "I couldn't believe how aware and how connected to him I felt." Another adoptive mother marvels, "The connection feels so deep... I am knit to my child."

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