'Like most people (including most of my colleagues), I didn’t realize that men could experience postpartum depression, too. Until I experienced it myself.' One pediatrician shares his experience with postpartum depression:
When my first child, our son Zachary, was born in 2013, I was as in the dark about postpartum depression in men as anyone else.
When I went back to work, I started making snide comments about how difficult he was. When I would come home and hold him, he would start crying and I would hand him right back to my wife and say mean things like, “He’s going to screw up our lives.” It sounds so harsh to say now, but at the time, I didn’t want anything to do with him.
Finally, one day I just couldn’t keep it to myself anymore and I blurted out to my wife how sad and mad I was. She had known I wasn’t happy but had no idea how tangled my thoughts had become. But she never once got mad at me. I just remember her saying, “We need to get you help. You need to talk with someone.”
Then Zachary hit the 3-month-mark, when babies just naturally start to sleep better and become more playful and smiley - around the time I was scheduled to take another month off of work. That combination of events no doubt deepened my connection with my boy and calmed my concerns. I’m not going to say I was perfect after that – I would still sometimes flare up with anger or frustration – but I no longer thought anything was wrong with him.
Now I screen every single parent that comes into my office with a newborn, no matter their gender or how they became parents. I also screen using an official depression scale now, and I’m on a mission to get more pediatricians to do the same. We’re the only doctors who see both parents during this critical post-delivery time, and while we can’t medically manage adults, we can certainly refer them to professionals who can give them the help they so desperately need.
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