A Husband's Reaction to Postpartum Depression

I am a senior manager at a technology company and pride myself on my ability to juggle multiple tasks, projects, and staff with ease, but nothing could have prepared me for what was going to happen in my life. I was in the middle of a meeting at work going over deliverables for upcoming projects with one of my staff, and my cell phone rang.

"Hello is this Krish?" the woman on the phone asked.

"Yes it is." I responded

"Hi, I am your wife's counselor, and we need to talk NOW."

"One moment." I exited the meeting room.

"The only way I can convey the urgency is by being blunt. Your wife is having serious suicidal thoughts, and I can either release her to you or call 911. Your wife wanted me to call you. She is shutting down and unresponsive so you need to take her to emergency and have her assessed now! "

"Ummm..." (shocked) "OK..... ummm. I'm on my way..." I ended the phone call.

I looked at my staff member (still shocked), "Ummm... can we do this again?... I need to sort ... ummm... sort... ummm... sort some things out... I gotta go."

I obviously looked frazzled and not the calm, collected, confident person I normally am. I grabbed a cab to the counselors office a few miles away. I was in sheer shock the whole drive over. I calmly walked in and asked for the counselor. I sat and waited. It seemed like an eternity. My mind raced as I wondered what was going on. Sure, my wife was working through issues, but is it that bad right now? We have excellent communication. My wife tells me everything. Surely, this is an exaggeration or something like that.

"Hi Krish, this is the situation. Your wife has informed me that she was planning on committing suicide. She had a plan and wrote a note. It was clear and thought out. She needs to be admitted to hospital and assessed. I have the notes from the meeting for you to give to the psychiatrist on shift."

I immediately began to tear up and was losing my composure. "How could this happen? Why is this happening? My poor wife... why does she feel this way?"

"OK... Krish... listen, now is not the time to deal with your issues. You need to focus and take care of your wife. You need to get her to emergency. We need to decide if we are going to call the ambulance or if you are going to take her."

I sobered up and wiped away my tears.  Now was not the time.

"I am OK. What do I need to do?"

That was 6 months ago. Our son was 18 months old, and my wife was struggling with a plethora of emotions/reponsibilites of balancing life, marriage, and her job. A while back she had stopped taking the anti-depressant medication after she started feeling better after her postpartum depression. She struggled at being a new mom and often was impatient with our baby son. That caused tension in our relationship. We put him in daycare a few days a week to give her some time to herself. We both felt it was best to get her back to work, and things for a short time seemed like they were stabilizing. Except what went on was she was not coping. She had enough of sleepless nights, difficulty caring for our son, arguing with me, panic attacks, and she decided it was better off to end it.  She had finally crashed.

She made a plan to hang herself in the entrance way of our home. She wrote a note and had it all worked out. She thought I would be better off without her and that it would be better for our son to be without her. She felt she was a terrible mother, a terrible wife, a bad daughter, all of it was bad. She did nothing well, and it was better this way.
 
My God! My wife, my lover, my best friend, the one person that I trust unequivocally... the person whom I bear my soul and heart to... open up myself to... to be vulnerable in every way possible. The one person that I will cry in front of, who will support me in any endeavor, to whom I can bounce any idea of, who does not judge me. Who has given birth to the most beautiful baby boy you could ever imagine. The person I cherish, the person I promised to care for in sickness and in health... wanted to leave me and abandon my son. Kill herself in our home. Make her body dangle from the second floor railing while I slept. She planned it night after night, researched her method, all the while encouraging me to buy a boat and enjoy life. While I slept, she was awake thinking of ways to kill herself.

I was upset. I am upset. What would happen if my son saw his mother hanging from the railing? If she died, wouldn't he ask for Mama? What would I have told him? How would I have taken care of my son on my own? How could I live without her? Doesn't she know I would do anything for her, that I would give up everything for her?

Before the suicide atttempt, we were a team; we did everything together and shared our responsibilities. I tried to provide everything for my wife. I was attentive, I listened, anything she needed or wanted I provided. When we were pregnant, I tried my best. I attended all of the prenatal classes. I calculated the fastest route to the hospital. I went out and bought a new house for us to enjoy for when my wife was on maternity leave. I upgraded our car. I learned everything I could to be prepared to care for our baby. After he was born, I woke up with my wife during the nights, fed her food while she breastfed him. I sterilized the bottles, changed the baby, washed the breast pumps. I held him so she could rest. It was my duty, and I loved my family with all of my heart. I believe I was supportive and the best possible husband and teammate I could be.

After my wife was admitted to hospital, I had to step it up, I had to care for my son and be there for my wife. I burned up all of my sick and vacation time at work with appointments and visits and trying to care for my son. I could not afford to take more unpaid time off. I began to crumble; things felt like they were falling apart at the seams. I felt my life was in shambles. It was harder and harder to get up in the morning.

I needed assistance, and my parents were there, taking care of my son while I worked and visited my wife. But I was exhausted, emotionally and physically, and I had nothing left at the end of the day for my son. I could not care for him. He started acting out, scratching and biting and was inconsolable. I felt I was a terrible father, that he hated me or blamed me for taking away his Mama. I needed my partner. I needed my family to be together.

The days that I did not visit my wife were bad for her. She was generally upset and looked forward to my visit. I tried to encourage her and support her, assuring her that we were all strong and that our son was being taken care of, but it was exhausting, every day. And it killed me to see my wife in that environment in the psychiatric ward, medicated and drained. My wife missed our son, but she could not see him, as he was a major contibutor to the depression. He missed her; she missed him. It broke my heart all over again, every time. I had to choose between my wife or my son on a daily basis. That was torture. I needed them both... I needed to be there for both of them. I was being torn apart at the seams.

Since the day I was called by the counselor to take my wife to the emergency room, I have not had the time to deal with how this affects me. It has been 6 months since she was admitted to the hospital. Today, my wife is on the road to recovery, but I am struggling against some sort of depression myself. I find it difficult to focus at times; I am constantly exhausted and find it extremely hard to get my day started. But she isn't better yet, so we really cannot afford me being down for the count as well.

As much as I need to take the time off, as much as I need to figure out how to deal with my range of emotions, as much as I need focus on myself and my health, now is not the time to deal with my issues.

.....now is not the time.

Bitter Sweet Chick blogs at Bitter Sweet Chutney.