Ā Tātou Kōrero | Our Stories

John’s story

I was 32 years old when my wife and I had our first baby. I wondered what had struck me, when the first 9 months of living with the new baby became sheer hell. We had moved house, I’d started a new job, and now the baby had colic for the first nine months

The 9 months dragged on and on with my partner and I not sharing any meals together, always taking turns holding baby. Despite feeling exhausted, sleep eluded me and my life felt out of control.

I felt overwhelmed with stress and worry. I felt a huge responsibility being a father who should financially support the household and keep things together.

While my GP tried to help and put me on medication, I didn’t improve. Finally, I went to a psychiatrist and I remembered feeling a huge sense of relief. The psychiatrist seemed to understand how I was feeling. I felt I had come to the right person. With new medication and new hope, I noticed a turnabout. Within a few weeks I was improving and more in control.

I found weekends were worst when there was no schedule in place. Simple tasks like buying milk at the local dairy could become a huge ask. My partner and I partner resolved this issue by planning some tasks to begin straight away upon waking in the weekends.

It was confidence eroding, relationship-testing time. I had panic attacks, and experienced a very fine line between being well and being unwell. I remembered the advertisements of John Kirwan admitting he had depression and felt relieved that other men felt as he had. I admired John Kirwan’s courage to admit this so-called ‘weakness‘.

I now believe that most people don’t recognise that men can get postnatal depression and how serious this can be, and I feel that it is largely undetected and untreated.

Finally I’m able to talk about his my PND and have found that there are many more men like me. When I was sick I had difficulty admitting that I was unwell and now I am more open. I realise that it takes time to recover but it is worth the long hard journey and that personal strength can be gained.