FATHERHOOD
Imagine holding your newborn daughter for the first time and feeling… nothing. It happens, even to the most enthusiastic of expectant parents. One such father tells his story
Postnatal depression doesn’t just affect mothers, as this new father can attest
My girlfriend Lisa was eight months pregnant when we said ‘I do’ at a register office in Glasgow in 2010. After six happy years together, during which we’d always talked about parenthood, we were feeling more excited than apprehensive checking into a hotel for our first night together as husband and wife. An hour later, we checked out.
Lisa had gone into labour, and our healthy baby girl, who we named Alyssa, was born the next morning.
But I didn’t really feel as though she was my daughter at all. When the midwife passed this writhing miniature human to me, the surge of life-altering paternal affection I was expecting never came.
It was a huge blow to me but, looking back, the signs that I might struggle mentally were there. I wanted to be a father as good as my own – one who provides emotional and material support. Over the preceding six months, I’d felt as though I’d failed at the latter, having struggled to find work after being made redundant from my job in sales. And now I was an unemployed loser who couldn’t even do the most natural, primal thing in the whole world: love my child.
Over those first days and weeks at home, I blamed the lack of sleep and other stark disruptions to my routine for my plummeting mental state and lack of bonding with Alyssa. Then things became increasingly strange; I believed Lisa was conspiring against me to stop me playing the role of father properly. I was envious of her doing night feeds and annoyed when she’d insist on changing the nappies. Why was she withholding these crucial responsibilities from me?
I took my anger out on her; pointing out when she’d messed up to give myself a cheap shot of rueful self-satisfaction. Instead of comforting my wife when she was panicked and racked with guilt after Alyssa rolled and slipped off the bed, I had a huge go at her. How could she turn her head for a second and put our child at risk? What kind of mother would leave her newborn unattended like that? In my mind, if I was failing at being a father, she needed to feel like she was awful at parenting, too.
A health visitor came after two weeks and asked Lisa questions to screen her for postnatal depression: Are you feeling low? Do you struggle to laugh at jokes? While Lisa replied in the negative, I was a silent ‘yes’ to each one. Before she left, I asked the health visitor what it meant to feel the opposite way to my wife. She wasn’t sure, but suggested I see a GP.
Days later, I was recounting my experience to a doctor, and unearthing details of my teenage episodes of depression and subsequent self-harm. She spotted straight away that I had male postnatal depression. I left with a prescription for antidepressants and – because I thought only women could get PND – the sense that I’d plumbed new depths of unmanliness.
It was months before that warm rush of love finally came. But when it did, it was unmistakable. I remember walking into the kitchen where my wife was holding Alyssa and just wanting to hug and be around her.
But this love wasn’t an instant tonic for the damage done to my relationship. The healing process was slow. At times, during that first year, Lisa wanted to leave me as I wasn’t always a kind, stable or financially responsible partner. My depression manifested in out-of-control spending and I became reckless. It’s taken until the past year for her to fully understand what I was going through, and I don’t blame her. Almost losing her when a debt collector came to the house pushed me to get my act together.
After we had our second daughter, Summer, the depression reared its head again – albeit in a milder guise. Before the birth of our youngest, Erica, I was made redundant from a struggling radio station and feared the similarity in circumstances to Alyssa’s birth would mean the PND would return. But it didn’t; I felt that unbreakable connection with her straight away.
I’m in a good place now: I’m a children’s book author, a business owner and an adoring dad. But I still wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t been present when my wife was screened for PND. In all honesty, if I hadn’t spoken up, I might not be here. That was how bad it got.
But this isn’t about me. Weighty stigma surrounds postnatal depression. For men, it’s amplified by society’s stubbornly pervasive message that men should just ‘man up’. Accusations that men like me are trying to take the experience of PND away from women truly hurt. Opening myself up to that is uncomfortable, but I’ll continue to speak out. I want the NHS to screen new fathers. I want partners to be able to spot the signs. Most importantly, I want other dads going through this to know that the love is there; it’s just hidden.
For more info and help, contact Fathers Reaching Out; reachingoutpmh.co.uk