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Back in September, I posted about how your partner reacts to your PPMD. In this post, I asked the question of my readers and got some feedback. My hope is that this feedback will help women to help their partners to help them and that partners who are reading here will be enlightened by what these Survivor Mamas said. Please post your ideas into the comments section or email me. D. shares, "I think I told you once before that one of the most horrific part of having the PPMD was that my husband and mother did not believe that I had it. I have always been somewhat of a hypochondriac, so I think they thought I was making it all up. In fact, at one point my husband told me that there was no such illness as postpartum depression and that people just made it up to get sympathy. I had absolutely no support and I was in such a bad state that I did not know where to turn for help. The two people who I would normally lean on for support, my husband and mother, both wanted nothing to do with me and my made up illness. It wasn't until I found your peer support group that I felt a sigh of relief. There were actually people out there who KNEW what was happening to me and that I was not making it all up! At some point, I think my husband and mother both realized that YES, I was struggling but it was not until many months later." K shares, "1. I think it's important for fathers to make sure that they give their wives time to themselves, to do whatever they want, away from their husband and kid(s), at the very least 4 hours to themselves every single week. 2. I think it is also important that fathers show that they are making sacrifices in their life for their new child, just as the mothers are doing. Both parties should feel that they are having to make compromises with raising a child, not just one parent making all of the compromises and sacrifices." Another K shares, "Gosh it is hard to even really remember those dark days much less how M. responded to me, but........I guess the biggest thing was he remained calm - regardless of what I was saying...He never over reacted, or really even reacted at all to my craziness. He was very supportive toward me with any attempt at care giving I made - he was a cheerleader when I was nursing, but completely left it up to me and supported me when we needed to stop and switch to formula. He took a lot of care of M. and let me sleep (wallow), which was great at the time, but maybe a bit of a double edged sword because I did not have to face reality for quite a while - not sure if that was good or bad, but it is what he thought I needed."  |
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