Postpartum depression in men: A moment of happiness that is not

Imagine you're having a really bad time and everyone is congratulating you effusively. This can happen to you if you have just had a child. That's how it was with me. I felt bad. I was afraid I'd made a huge mistake, was constantly irritable, and all the ecstatic faces around me felt completely wrong. As if none of my otherwise sensitive people could really see me anymore.

Before, I had only ever heard the stories that a new love suddenly filled you with the birth of your child. Never known before. A friend of mine said that I would then enter a “world of love”. He seemed irritated that I didn't feel anything about the world of love. I was really angry with him for lying to me like that. Of course he didn't. He had just generalized his experiences.

People react differently. Some people fall in love straight away, others feel bad and even experience so-called postpartum depression. With persistent sadness, exhaustion and numbness. The whole thing is also so charged that people often don't talk openly about their feelings. On the other hand, those who fall in love instantly terrorize the majority with their romantic ideas about parental love.

In any case, I hardly felt any love. Rather, there was now a screaming stranger who would dominate the rest of my life. It will steal my nights, and I don't sleep well anyway. He won't give me time to write texts like this. He'll eat the hair off my head and I'll have to work even more for it. What a disastrous decision.

And everyone laughs in your face and asks, "Naaa? Are you getting cozy?" CONGRATULATIONS! HOW NICE! ARE YOU ENJOYING YOUR INFORCEMENT? Or they send you WhatsApp messages with lots of hearts and party bags. Even the brochure “Elternmail Berlin” wishes you many “moments of happiness when getting to know each other” and congratulates you on your “little miracle”. There are also drawings of deeply satisfied mothers and fathers who hold their little miracles close to their hearts. However, the brochure later on does talk about postpartum depression. It leaves room for ambivalence.

Yes, I have to. Because it really happens often. If you ask mothers about depressive symptoms, a good 17 percent report them. For fathers, the usual figures are lower. However, depression in men can also manifest itself more strongly through irritability, anger or withdrawal. That was the case with me too. In one study, almost 16 percent of fathers were abnormal when such symptoms were taken into account.

When you congratulate new parents, it's quite possible that at least one of them is feeling poorly: three months after the birth, in a Swedish study, almost one in four couples had at least one parent experiencing depressive symptoms.

And after describing my negative feelings so dramatically: I feel better. Now, after almost half a year, I no longer feel massively overwhelmed. No more stone on my chest. He doesn't seem like my "wrong" feelings have hurt him either. I love how he laughs when I play peek-a-boo with him, or how he chirps along when I play “The Workers of Vienna” to him in the stroller. This is not a given. For many, this can take years.

You shouldn't just imagine the bad feelings in parenthood as something that falls out of the sky due to hormone levels. I'm also doing better because the circumstances are quite favorable. We are lucky that he only wakes up once or twice during the night. He does cry, but only intermittently, and is otherwise a healthy and happy child. The (semi) paid parental leave helped me enormously and still helps my partner. We usually manage to support each other well. And very important: We are not experiencing the stress of poverty right now.

I also immediately sought out a therapist and was generally pretty open about how I was feeling. We both still have the opportunity to do some of the things that are important to us. So I can go to the music booth regularly and write lyrics every now and then.

It's not like that for many people. A friend of mine is having a much harder time with parenting. He only responds to my WhatsApp messages about once every seven or eight weeks. Meetings hardly work anymore. Their cash reserves have now also disappeared because they have to pay for therapies that the health insurance does not cover. That makes you thin-skinned.

It was good but difficult that I was so open about it. Many seemed taken aback when I responded to their joy and questions about what it was like: “Well, not so good.” I felt like I was desecrating something sacred. This was also due to my own feelings of guilt. Couldn't I have thought this through better beforehand? Or have I waited too long? What kind of father am I?

At the same time something strange happened. As soon as I spoiled the mood myself, other people would suddenly tell me their stories. That they also felt terrible after the birth. Or their partners. “I was so bad for two years,” one told me. Another said it took him forever to even find a connection with his child.

However, there was a limit to my openness. I almost didn't write this article because I was worried that my son would one day dig it up from the depths of the taz archive and think I didn't love it. That's why I had to wait until the love was there to write.

I am the father. The pressure on mothers is much greater. A so-called good mother loves her child immediately, is overwhelmed, caring, grateful. She can be tired, but ideally in a way that still makes her shine. But a mother who, after giving birth, thinks she wants peace, her old life back or just gone? The term “raven mother” quickly comes into play. At worst, she feels like a monster because she doesn't feel what a mother is supposed to feel.

I don't want everyone to stop enjoying having children. Children are a great thing. But perhaps we can then ask another question that doesn't already have to be clear what the answer is. Not just: “Well, are you in love?” But also an open-ended: “How are you?” And if the answer is: “Shit, to be honest,” then you can show why you are friends or dear relatives.