Husband depressed after birth of our second child ten weeks ago, says I make him want to kill himself

[AmberMoose]

My husband is depressed, regrets our baby and told me that I make him want to kill himself. I don't know what to do.

First time posting. Not sure what I'm looking for exactly, perhaps some outsider perspective. My husband (41) and I (38) had our second baby 10 weeks ago. We also have a six year old daughter. Conceiving our second was fraught; I really wanted another baby, he was hot and cold. Two miscarriages, two years of trying etc...

Second baby is significantly harder than our first - lots of crying, up 1000 times at night etc - and my husband is not coping. He has checked out and I feel like I am solo parenting our baby. He says he is depressed (post partum depression perhaps?) and is having a major existential crisis. He is so unhappy with our -admittedly, charmed - life and feels like I've been calling the shots over our ten year relationship.

He's recently gotten really into DJing and one of his main complaints is that he is now a servant to our family and has no time for himself. I've been doing all I can to ensure he has free time - I took both kids out of the house when the baby was just a couple of weeks old to give him space when I was still sore and recovering and just wanted to be on the couch. He has taken several trips away to do various things related to his music, I have looked after the kids without complaint, I ask about how he's feeling, listen to him complain (about me and our life), take on additional life admin tasks to take them off his plate... All things he has expressed in the past make him feel loved and cared for.

Two nights ago when I got home after four days away (with both kids to give him space and free time) he says that the key to him feeling better is that he needs to better compartmentalise all his responsibilities and ensure he has enough time for all of them - i.e., more time. For him to have more free time, I need to exchange mine and I feel I have nomore.to give. I am feeling so much resentment towards him. I have been out of the house only twice by myself; I barely have had enough alone time to blow dry my hair over the past two and a half months. I have never asked for help ( I did once and it sent him on a spiral); not even in the middle of the night when I am so exhausted I feel I am about to crack. Never once have i handed him the baby and bottle and begged for an extra hour of sleep. The few times I have told him how hard it is he has essentially told me that ive gotten what I wanted (a baby) and to suck it up. He takes the baby every now and then for like ten minutes, baby cries, husband is like "urgh, no thank you! This baby is hard work!", never once stopping to reflect on what it's like for me during the other 23h and 50 minutes of the day.

He has said once before that he is becoming suicidal. Last night he raised it again and said .. this is a quote " you are making me want to kill myself". I want to say it's the depression talking and I am trying to be compassionate but I am also furious and trying hard not to be. The worst part is that he's not the first person to say that to me, my mum said something similar when I was like 10 (she had significant trauma that was never dealt with I now know and is generally not ok). This morning he hugged me and said he felt like there was a weight of, I hugged him back and we cried but I am left feeling like total shit - a truly horrible person that makes people want to kill themselves.

I am bouncing from rage to guilt to deep shame and I don't know what to do.

He sounds like a selfish twat who wants to have his cake (have a perfect family) and eat it (get to live out his “dreams” but screw what you want) - it’s terrifying that he is a psychologist and he must remember what you said about your mum, how would you forget that important detail about the person you love??

What, that man who said "i want another baby, let's try for one now?"

That man?

Does that sound like op forced him?

Funny how he's not too depressed to take several trips away, and to do his DJing. How very......."convenient".

I have the greatest of compassion for parents suffering mental health difficulties, male or female, who seek help and put their heads down and get on with parenting.

Less for those who don't seek help but instead shirk their responsibilities.

And his wife is not the right person to support him here. She has enough on her plate putting the children first when he is unable/unwilling to do so. He needs to seek any help he needs in a way that doesn't add to her burden.

"Men DO GET DEPRESSED and they DO GET DEPRESSED AFTER CHILDBIRTH even though they don't give birth"

No ones said they don't have they?

And why don't men also get 9 months to get used to it? Is the bump invisible to them? Do some forget their other half is pregnant?

Well, this is a bit of a drip-feed. The adjustment disorder diagnosis when your first child was born is obviously very significant. If the arrival of your first baby triggered a mental health crisis in him, then I don't think it's especially surprising that the arrival of the second has done the same.

However, this doesn't make it acceptable for him to say things like 'you are making me want to kill myself'. You are not responsible for his mental health problems and it's manipulative and cruel to put that burden on to you. He may well be having suicidal thoughts, but that's not your fault.

Given his previous diagnosis it does sound as if he is genuinely unwell - but that doesn't mean everything can revolve around him and his needs. You are also struggling, and it can't just be about him having time to himself. You need that time too. I think he needs to seek some professional help and I think counselling as a couple might also be worth considering.

That really isn't how depression works.

SO much ignorance on this thread.

My husband has severe bipolar disorder, takes a cocktail of medication for it daily and I've supported him for 20+ years, but I still think the OP's husband is a Grade A manipulative dickhead and she'd be better off without him. My DH would never dream of behaving towards me the way the OP's 'D'H is towards her, not even at his lowest.

So, so happy my husband of 20 years and I don't have any.
Full stop.

I do think all the people telling op her husband didn't want a baby, she forced him into it, she ignored him are actually gaslighting her, and so is her husband.

She's told us the circumstances around the planning of baby number 2.

Her husband said "let's have a baby". That is not a man who has been forced into having a baby.

Not only did he agree to try for a baby, he asked when she was fertile and ejaculated into her fertile, unprotected vagina. That is not a man who has been forced into having a baby.

Presumably he wasn't surprised by the pregnancy. He could have suggested a termination if he didn't want the baby.

If he didn't want a baby he should have kept his sperm well away from her, and NOT said "let's have a baby".

I don't think the op can be any clearer that she was reconciling herself to no baby, HE is the one who agreed to it.

He's trying to rewrite history and some posters are jumping all over that and agreeing with him, lumping the blame on her as if it makes what he's doing all ok because "he never wanted a baby".

EXCEPT that he said, and behaved as if he wasn't a baby! He had unprotected sex with her, after checking her fertility window to ensure a baby. How's it her fault that she trusted he was telling her the truth?!

1am when DJing : banging out them tunes, laughing with the ladies : not depressed

1am when baby cries for food : depressed

Who would have thought it? 🙄

He remembers what your Mum said. That's why he's saying it. To hit you hard and make you do all the heavy lifting. Shocking behaviour from the man who is meant to be your rock and the man who actually impregnated you.

Tell him that you think he's depressed because there's too much on his plate. He needs to give up the DJing, speak to HR at his place of work, get counselling and/or medication for his condition. See how he likes those eggs.

This. Call his bluff and call an ambulance. tell him that suicide threats are to be taken seriously. If he's manipulating you he'll soon stop doing this garbage.

I think you'd be far better off without him- he sounds horribly selfish

Why do you think I'm ignorant? Statistically it would seem that it's still a difficult subject for many men to discuss. In 2021 there were just over 5.5k suicides registered in England and Wales. Around three-quarters of the suicides were men and suicide is the largest cause of death for men under 50. So it doesn't feel to me that as a society we have nailed men's mental health.

Absolutely, some men do get depressed.

Some men are also manipulative pricks.

It's a staggering change for a man, women at least get a chance to get used to it, you have to for 9 months, we don't.

Does time work differently for men when their partners are pregnant then?

it's trope that every time a women comes to complain about a man on Mumsnet they get 99 responses saying "leave the prick" but it's disgusting to see it here

Its leave the bastard actually

Its a trope that people moan that women on MN say LTB too often when the reality is that its often used in threads where there is fairly horrendous stuff going on because most people dont post about the minor aggravations

People aren't saying to leave the DH to be cruel. There is a tiny baby in this senario and a small child. They are relying on their parents to look after them, and if that is easier for the OP alone then that is the correct thing to do. Because they are the most vulnerable so they have to be the highest priority. Theres nothing disgusting about that.

"He's recently gotten really into DJing"
This says it all really. Man child

He is incredibly manipulative. He also has a qualification in the tools to manipulate. He knows what he is doing, he remembers the conversation and you are being emotionally abused. He knows your history and vulnerabilities and has preyed on them. He should also well know that only he has responsibility for sorting his shit out. Again, he is manipulating you.

You say you want your children to have both parents at home: do you want your children exposed to this behaviour and abuse? He is modelling this behaviour to your children. Do you want them to grow up and be in similar situations as yourself as teens and adults?

This isn’t blame or meant to be hurtful - I am desperate for you to see what he is doing here. I am so sorry you are in this situation but please, please get some help for yourself and ask him to leave

Massively true.

OP, my husband is quite infantile and i only really discovered how much when I had my daughter. He also has depression/anxiety so I have taken over everything since birth. She is nearly 6 now.
He was also not exactly indifferent to her, but almost. When she was 3 I was putting her to bed and made a comment like "mummy loves you so so much" and hugged her. She looked up to me and asked "and daddy?" it broke my heart because I realised that she had noticed the difference between the attention I give her and the attention my husband gave her. You really need to think about whether you want this for your child.

I do think that with recognising large life changes as a mental health trigger, you both should've put more thought into having a second child as well as having a post partum plan to support both you and him.

It doesn't seem that any of this was unexpected for either of you.

I'm glad to hear he is getting help and wish you the best OP, do you checks and make sure he maintains and figure out how get some extra support for yourself as well.

i agree with this. You don’t mention his GP.. or yours. I think you need to tell someone irl about this- honestly I feel it could escalate into abuse - and he needs medical help. Do you have any close family you can go and stay with or he can go and stay with? You deserve a million times better xx

Please don’t call an ambulance.

He can call the samaritans

Agree. If he's threatening suicide and is having a severe crisis due to ongoing diagnosed "Adjustment disorder" and a bit of low mood in-between his DJ sets then call an ambulance so he gets the serious help he obviously needs.

OP this reminds me of my ex when we had our son. I was different in that we were a bit older and he really wanted a child. I was the one who wasn't sure worrying that we were on the older side but he talked me into it and painted a very rosy picture of parenthood would be.

So we had IVF which failed but very luckily got pregnant naturally and I had a baby at 43and DH was 47. The first year was difficult for all the reasons a new baby is hard but it was also wonderful but then as it got into the second and third year of parenthood things got harder, our son was no longer a portable little baby but a small child who needed constant attention and activities and who could be a handful at times just a normal little boy. When I stopped breastfeeding and wanted my odd afternoon out to see a friend or go round the shops it became apparent that my husband just wasn't up for looking after our son on his own for more than about half an hour. I'd come home to find him raging about something our son had done and began to feel it wasn't safe to leave him with his dad at all, if I did have to pop out at all I'd be anxious the whole time to get home and make sure all was ok.

My husband started making up rotas of how time should be spent and how long the evening routine should be so as to give him time in the evenings to decompress and do his own thing like go to the gym, and work on his side hustle project. Our son was to eat his dinner in a set amount of time have a fixed wind down time and then go to sleep on schedule and sleep right though every night. This was his version of compartmentalising his life so that our child would interfere with it as little as possible. Things only got worse when our boy started nursery and he and we got sick a lot for the next year. DH was miserable, he was 50 and he complained that both of us were ageing rapidly due to lack of sleep, being sick all the time and the stresses of parenthood he said at that point hat having a child was the worst mistake of his life.

I think we both had an unrealistic rose tinted view of what parenthood would be like and I think it was a shock to both of us but I felt like I was more able to accept the reality and just be grateful for our boy and ride out the tough bits and focus on all the lovely bits even I I knew parenthood was having a negative effect on my friendships, my career, my health and my looks. He on the other hand seemed to feel angry that it wasn't what he imagined, he'd had this idea that fatherhood would be an idyll and that everything else in his life would fall into place when we'd had a child that he would suddenly have the motivation to achieve all his dreams and life would be perfect which is pretty much the opposite of what happened.

In the end we separated and I became a single mum my ex and our son have a better relationship now but he is a very part time father which suits him. Looking back I can see that he was always someone who thought doing this or that would be the thing to finally make him happy and fulfilled but nothing ever does, he's just an unhappy man.

A man who has dreams of being a DJ at 41 while shirking his parenting duties is pretty pathetic in my view.

I think a lot of people on here haven’t seen mental health difficulties irl

also, if someone with MH difficulties refuses to take responsibility for themselves and is making your life hell, their MH doesn’t excuse it.