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| I Love My Infant So Much |
All I can suggest to fathers is, try to bond with the baby. At the heart of many fathers' postnatal depression is a feeling of detachment from the whole process, which itself may come from a feeling of detachment from the baby. Fathers who instantly click with their babies seem to be immune from the nastier manifestations of PND, while those who look upon this tiny stranger with disgust and/or the obscure feeling that they have somehow been conned are most vulnerable.
The fact is, the baby is here to stay; it is going nowhere. Fathers are more mobile. Men are more likely to leave the marital home in the first three months after the birth of their first child than at any other time. It seems reasonable to assume that most, if not all, of these fleeing dads have some form of PND. If anyone even acknowledged this, let alone tried to help, maybe fewer would leave. But when you are depressed, one notion you simply cannot accommodate is that things will get better. One of the main themes of this blog, I hope, is that things do get better. Eventually. If you stick it out.
And then one day it dawns on you that fatherhood is a good thing, that it*s worth all the sleeplessness and the endless cooking of pasta and the agonizing lack of sex. That you wouldn't be without this child, or (in time and with luck) these children. Which brings us neatly onto ...
THE LOVE
Mothers are, to a greater or lesser extent, hard-wired to love their infants. Fathers are not. A few of us - and I think we can justly call them 'lucky bastards' - fall instantly in love with their new babies, as though floodlights have been switched on. I can't say this happened to me, and I don't think it's as common as people think. This indifference, or apathy, or absence of something you expected as of right, may come as a disappointment, and not just to you.
Your partner may be enraged. She may think that it is only you who has not fallen in love at first sight with your progeny, that it is your specific, individual failure, and possibly further proof of your fundamental worthlessness. Not that she will say any of this, because she is too busy cooing over the baby, but her eyes will say it, and so will her body language. Mothers are also hard-wired to identify totally with their babies. Love me, love my baby.
You can see why so many new dads run. Who needs any of this? But love does come, in time. It's a strange and wondrous thing, impossible to explain. Gradually, this infant intruder creeps into your affections. The floodlights are turned on, but they are on an unfeasibly slow dimmer switch, over which you have no control. As babies are learning to live, so their fathers are learning to love. And the strangest aspect of all this is that the love does not seem to be at the expense of anything.
Think of your life as a view out of the window. Your vista represents everything that you do and enjoy, your friends, your pleasures, your life. When a baby comes along you assume that some of this vista will simply disappear, to be replaced by baby. There isn't room in the vista for everything you used to enjoy. You have read that a new dad will give up 2,200 hours in pubs and restaurants in the first 16 years of his child's life. The bright colors of fun will be blotted out by the drab grey clouds of parental responsibility. To find out more, you can check out I Love My Infant So Much.