Do men need postpartum support?

Being pedantic here, but post natal only means “after birth”
There is no ‘giving’ in there. It is not exclusive to mothers.

Just like the NHS used to say puberty blockers were safe, they used to say that post natal depression only affected mothers.

Things are more up to date now.

Happens to loads of us unfortunately no pain relief after csection expected to get up and get on with it i was literally attached to my bed via a drip i was told off for not getting my baby from the bottom of the bed I couldn't physically reach her I was catheterised drip still numb from the epidural and they said we cant coddle you, you will need to look after YOUR BABY you know my catheter leaked in my bed it was pulled before I even got my feeling back and sat in a chair with numb legs and a drip stand and expected to crack on they then asked me to move back into the pissy bed and I refused it was lucky I had only had a retained placenta operation not a full c-section because they were really in pain

Eventually a senior came in read my notes and said why has she been moved her anesthesia went wrong she is going to get a headache now (i really really did get a headache I was told I could have A paracetamol if I felt I needed it)

Next baby I took my own pain killers in

A man’s role after his partner has a baby is mainly to support the Mum anyway, so I slightly raise an eyebrow about support for the support

Makes it sound like you think men don't need support to me.

I didn’t say that though - I said that men should support other men.

They shouldn’t be getting state funded support before women do though.

The sheer number of responses on here and other threads saying that men cannot get PND, when there is actual peer-reviewed evidence to the contrary, says everything.

The default view that men are of no importance is absolutely staggering, both within the healthcare community and in the public at large.

It's appalling isn't it? It's the kind of disdain on this thread for men who are also going through a huge life change, that gives Mumsnet its reputation for man hating.

I'm sick of reading 'when women get what they need we'll think about men' like is impossible to do two things at once. And the total mockery of men actually feeling something and needing support of their own.

Men who've witnessed a traumatic birth, stepped up in every way they can (when they might actually feel lost and helpless at times) and done everything that can be asked of them, are just being called pathetic.

Yes there are some crummy new fathers, yes there's a minority who walk away. But for goodness sake, let's not totally write dads off as being an irrelevance and whose emotions are of no account

This is why we all struggle.

I have said repeatedly that men 1) need to do this work and 2) are, in some cases, doing it.

And you just want to repeat BUT THE MEN MUST DO THE WORK! Even though people are agreeing with you, you think it's more important to keep pretending they are disagreeing, so you can repeat yourself. And it isn't.

No. They just need to grow the fuck up and take some responsibility for themselves and the family they have jointly created. If that means accessing existing modalities of support then that’s what they should do, instead of being an incompetent, emotionally stunted, selfish prick.

I think there should be paternity support on offer. We hear about the crap fathers and husbands a lot but there are also good ones out there who's life does change as they take on an equal share of parenting, sometimes more than equal and sometimes support wives through PND. We know caring takes a toll on women and they need support, the men who take on caring and supportive roles also need support.

Strong agree.

But more is needed. It can't just be a last-ditch 'let's do some classes during your wife's pregnancy and after the baby is more'. It needs to be a whole structural change. (And yes, I think men need to lead this as well.)

There are quite a lot of men's groups set up by and for men.

I think that, NHS aside, all of the charities and support groups have been set up by women for women. It is possible for men to set up their own groups and charities for anything they need but they haven't. None of them seem particularly inclined to in the near future either. So no, I don't feel that it is the responsibility of women to get involved when men are disinclined to do it for themselves.

Men who have dealt with this should set probably up a support group or volunteer organisation to help with this

They need training. Proper classes that they attend for a few months to teach them how to be supportive husbands and effective fathers. It’s not natural for them so they need to be taught. I’m in my 50’s and I don’t have one friend left who is still married and most of their issues were regarding parenting and their husbands being crap.

I'm thinking about the sort of educational drive that we had in the 90s about safe sex. I know there were issues with that - I definitely think a lot of my generation got the idea that getting pregnant was virtually certain whenever you had sex, and of course in the 90s it was all very heteronormative. But the result was that there's a whole generation of us who had hammered into us that unprotected sex carried risks and it was something we definitely needed to think about and plan for.

You could do exactly the same with pregnancy. Sure, some people will never need to put the knowledge into practice, but many will.

This is a great post and absolutely spot on! Off to Google how sheep are castrated…

I think something akin to antenatal classes but for men/ partners (before birth of child) ran either evening or weekend when most men/ partners could have a chance of attending would be great.

Frankly, though, this is too late. If you're already expecting a baby, it is too late.

I know plenty of first-time mothers do not realise how all-consuming it is going to be, but it's just not something that seems to be discussed by men or amongst men. Even men I know who have lots of sisters or female friends or male friends who've had babies, seem not to have these conversations.

Yes! Men are also affected by childbirth in general…

https://www.nct.org.uk/information/baby-toddler/caring-for-your-baby-or-toddler/science-behind-dads#:~:text=being%20a%20dad.-,Hormones,(Fleming%20et%20al%202002).

on top of that, they may have seen their significant other go through a serious situation and had all that fear and worry and not knowing what to do but also had to look after us and being men, not had anyone to talk to.

it can be an awful time and both mum and dad need support but in different ways. My DP thought I was dying and was terrified and then he had to do almost everything for us after. He did a great job and never got the praise he deserved. It was only after he looked after himself.

helping the dad shouldn’t take anything away from the mum. We all need support.

I think men should get advice about how their partner might get PND and what to do.
I also think they should get advice about how to help a partner during labour etc.
It really isn’t the same for men though is it?
They don't have to suffer pregnancy and labour the same as women do.
I also think fathers need to step up and take responsibility.
One recent example of them not doing:
A manager I know had a request for someone to take 6 weeks off over the summer school holidays. This isn’t allowed. Anyway they spoke to the entire team and all the men said it was fine, they did not want any annual leave at all during the 6 weeks school holidays. The team is predominantly male, and the majority of those asked have school aged children.
I queried the fact that not one single father had any intent of spending time with their own child during the school holidays! The manager said no, that’s correct. He then said, well I suppose they just leave it up to their wives and girlfriends!
How shocking is that?
That is not the behaviour of a caring father at all.
Compare this to mothers and I know from experience that 100% of the mothers I have worked with all want time off during school holidays.
Therefore the only conclusion I can find is that the majority of men just do not care enough.
Let’s be reminded that a man is far more likely to sod off and leave an ill wife than the other way round.
So, yes I think men should be told about PND and told how to step up, but I think deep down they don’t want to help a lot of the time.

I think something akin to antenatal classes but for men/ partners (before birth of child) ran either evening or weekend when most men/ partners could have a chance of attending would be great.

Something that focuses much more on what a partner can do to support post natal. What the post natal period will realistically be like. The fact that there is a huge hormone crash and how to deal with that. How to assist with wound care and that it is more than likely your partner will have stitches somewhere. What to look out for regarding maternal mental health and what services to reach out to. What they can do to support the new mother, they may not be able to feed if mum is breast feeding but they can do other things. That the last thing the new mother wants to do (possibly for a long time) is have sex of any kind. Setting realistic expectations around sex and intimacy, I have so many friends whose husbands literally counted down the days to the 6 week check when their partner would be "cleared" to have sex again. One particularly monstrous man in the hospital when I had DD last month, actually asked the midwife and then the consultant (when he didn't like the answer the midwife gave him - which was absolutely not) if his wife would be able to have sex with him when she was discharged (said woman in hospital bed opposite me had had a traumatic birth, had lots of stitches, was suffering from blood loss and was in obvious pain with her stitches and on lots of pain relief and under lots of monitoring from the Drs and midwives). How that man did not end up castrated by anyone in the ward or indeed the midwives is a miracle. Listening to him drone on the phone for an hour complaining about how his sexual needs are not been met was most infuriating, I'm pretty sure had I not been bed bound post C-section I would have castrated him myself, preferably the same way they castrate sheep. I seriously hope that the woman has been marked as possibly not safe at home and is been checked on because her "DH" only cared about his dick.

How to manage relatives and relatives visiting expectations. That managing relative expectations should be their job. No the newly post partum mother does not want your mum, dad, 3 aunts, mums neighbour, half of the bloody knitting group your mum attends on a Thursday afternoon, uncle Gerry who we only see at Christmas turning up at the hospital or the next day. Same with social media, the partner needs to manage expectations around social media posts and ensuring that everyone the mother wants to be are informed of the babies birth before some relative plasters it all over bragbook.

A lot of men do benefit from the obvious spelling out for them. So they directly need telling that they should be doing the lions share of the housework, stopping on top of washing bottles/ pump parts ect (if appropriate). That they should be taking on the lions share of looking after any older children. That the house needs to be kept tidy for visitors. They should be doing the cooking. That it is NOT 2 weeks off where you binge watch the football and go out with your mates, nor is it prime time to start redecorating the house or taking on huge garden projects.

Of course the support needs support. You can't pour from an empty cup! That's like saying mums job is to support the children, why would she need support from her husband when she's the support person? Everyone rightly calls out that bullshit.

What I observed when my daughter was born was that my husband looked after me for 9 months, and my horse because I struggled while pregnant despite knowing nothing about horses, then he watched me go through surgery, looked after me and baby afterwards and horse until I recovered enough to do it myself, watched me sob uncontrollably while trying and failing to breastfeed, wringing his hands and looking worried to death saying I don't know how to help with this I want to alleviate your suffering and I can't, he woke up and changed baby every time she woke up at night for a feed, then after a few weeks had to leave his wife and newborn to go to work for hours on little sleep and missed us like hell worrying the whole time he was gone. And nobody gave a shit. Not one person asked him how he was feeling, how he was coping. The midwives totally ignored him they were only interested in me. He was completely ignored by everyone while going through the most major thing in his life and pouring from an empty cup for me and our daughter. He was carrying the world slon his shoulders and no one gave a fuck. And the prevailing attitude here in he should just put up and shut up and why should anyone care. It's horrible.