Does anyone else feel uncomfortable with this?

[Ilikegreenshoes]

Just that really. I'm quite sure that anyone can find themselves struggling with their mental health in the first few months of parenthood, and of course I sympathise, but I just felt uncomfortable with the term "postnatal depression" being applied in this instance.

Does anyone else feel that way, or do you think I'm being over sensitive?

(Sorry it's just a screenshot rather than the whole article.)

Have read a couple of articles by the guy. Move to another continent with small children will be tough.

But no other dads at Toddler groups? In my experience there's scores of dads at baby and toddler activities nowadays.

His message seems to be that the mean girls excluded him so he had to hand the children over to a little woman so he could get on with his insta career.

This.

As others have said although I appreciate men can be depressed and anxious after the birth of their child its not post natel depression

I was very slighlty post natal with two of my babies - and it felt very, very peculiar - like an imbalance in perception. Not too dislike a very faint psychadelic trip, or come down from one, in the sense that I could very clearly feel I was off-kilter. Thankfully I could recognise this feeling (from having experienced psychadelica in my youth) and I was able to just pass through the feelings and not believe them/attach to them.

My instinct is that it was a chemical or hormonal imabalance from birth. Maybe even a sort of hormonal come-down.

It is such a profound perceptual change, I just don't see how a man could ever experience it, due to the the lack of physiological process at birth.

It just seems daft to pin the very specific title of "post natal depression" on this. Post natal depression-and post natal psychosis-are specific to women (lucky us) Men can have all sorts of mental health issues around the birth of their children. And god knows the pressures on gay men must be hugely complex. But don't let's conflate too many things-I don't think it helps anyone.

It's sickening. They buy two babies, having used a relative for her eggs, go to Australia and then find it all a bit stressful what with the move, two small babies, a lack of family support (bet those female relatives back home would have stepped in to give them a few nights off like the sisters of a certain celeb couple who used one of their sisters to obtain a baby). He's cross because the GP assessed his depression on a form that said Mother and/or Woman. I'm cross about that too. Why didn't the GP use an ordinary depression screening tool? Why did the GP use a screening tool for new mothers?

He did not have postnatal depression.

No doubt he was depressed, what with finding it all rather hard work and being a stay at home Dad in a strange country. But it wasn't post natal depression.
Post purchase regret more like.

amp.abc.net.au/article/everyday/102356928

Thanks everyone for your responses. You have helped to articulate my discomfort with this whole story.

I have since read another article about this bloke, here's a link, hope it works...

Here's the link

I'm gonna be one of those weird people who come in here and share a story before I give my opinion...

I have a friend who has dealt with low T most of his life due to some medical conditions. He's married and has two step children that he has legally adopted. I can't remember what they did to conceive but it was expensive and took years.

So ah what's kinda funny about the whole situation is that he developed a very rare condition that caused sympathy pregnancy. His nipples leaked and yeah his ankles were swollen. There were many jokes... He still took care of his wife though and as soon as she gave birth all his issues disappeared. No, he never compared his symptoms to hers or anything outrageous like that. And after his wife did have post partum depression but he was fine just the average parent of an infant woes.

Honestly, I do believe that both parents go through issues. However, is it the same for both women and men? No. Not at all. Different chemicals... Different experiences... I mean a woman goes through a medical procedure where her body drastically changes. Her skin, her hair, her... Most everything... It's not that I don't have any compassion for the men dealing with depression it's that it's simply not comparable to a woman's.

Also, how long does this last for men? For women it can last years. My daughter is three and I have a four inch separation in my ab muscles. Just to say...

As someone who suffered a puerperal psychosis, I strongly object to the term postnatal depression being used for men rather than simply “depression” or “situational depression”. It’s simply not the same thing at all.

I do believe your story and its similar to the survivor's guilt I mentioned upthread.

But this is all totally irrelevant to the op. The mum is not nearby. The dads used a woman as a surrogate so wouldn't have been present for most of her pregnancy.

These men aren't experiencing a mirrored PPD from their wives. The mum, if she is experiencing PPD, is nowhere near them and they probably aren't aware (or dare I say it, care).

If you haven’t given birth you can’t possibly have PND, the clue is in the name.

What next? Will we see a confidential enquiry into paternal deaths?

Are special antenatal and postnatal checks just for sperm producers going to become a thing.

Will we see handmaid’s tale style wife birthing rituals for men? Will they be offered a pool, entonox, pethidine? I don’t imagine many would choose to have an epidural or major abdominal surgery, probably a step too far.

He can’t have post-natal depression because he’s a man which means he can’t give birth. He has no idea what giving birth can do to a woman’s physical and mental wellbeing so frankly his claim is insulting. Attention seeking.

So really this is just about one man that has some form of depression. I’m 100% confident that 1000’s of men suffer some form of depression throughout their lives.
loss of job, relationship breakup, rejection…..but never from giving birth.

It’s about a man with a book to sell, off the back of being a SAHP blogger, and a media / social media career to promote.

So to sum up, as the pp said: “Attention seeking”.

Hi yes. When we adopted we were specifically warned about the signs of post adoption depression and that it is fairly common among adopters.

Obviously it’s not hormonal, but a reaction to how drastically your life has changed.

One of his complaints is that when he tried to join a mothers’ social group, they told him no, as they’d agreed previously that they wanted a single sex group.

Another complaint was that when he phoned a hospital - not about medical issue with the baby twins they’d brought to Australia from the USA - but to ask to be referred to a parents group, the very busy person on the phone told him to look up the information on the relevant organisation’s website.

I thought his statement in his TV interview that, as a young child, he wanted to be a mum because his dad worshipped his mum was, well, somewhat unsettling. It makes you wonder did he love his mum or was he jealous of her? And if he loved her, why did he choose to create two children and deny them their mother? I guess if he was jealous of his mother as a child then that might explain his decision. I found his philosophising about what it is to be a mother pretty sexist and shallow - it’s all about being the one who does all the boring necessary domestic work apparently.

I concluded that his “depression” was basically shock that the fun role-play fantasy he’d dreamt up turned out to be sleep-deprived, boring, and lonely.

But at least he wasn’t dealing with sleep deprivation, boredom and loneliness whilst recovering from childbirth injuries or PTSD from a traumatic birth. So there’s that for him to be grateful for.

Notice the subtext that GPs should not be allowed to have forms to capture issues that solely affect women. How quickly every trace of our existence as a sex is being erased.

Spot on @LoobiJee

And why did he think the hospital had a duty to refer him to parent groups?

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow is also correct about the erasure of women.

Redefining postnatal to mean after birth rather than after giving birth, may be a more subtle redefinition of language than some. While postnatal depression as currently understood relates to the overwhelming bodily experience of giving birth, this chap relates it to sleep deprivation. Curiously though, he doesn't say the sleep deprivation was caused by being woken up at all hours, but rather that the 'postnatal depression' caused the sleeplessness.

He even mentions his attempt to run away: he "literally" got in the car and drove to the airport to fly away to Mexico. Literally no mention of the babies apparently left without their primary carer. I was left wondering whether they might actually have hired yet another woman to do the day-to-day hands-on caring.

A woman 'donated' her eggs and gave birth in another country. There is of course no mention of her actual postnatal wellbeing.

The problems he mentions with female-dominated parent support groups would be faced by fathers in general. But one of the subheadings declares that 'niched down to a subgroup', parenting is even more isolating than for "the straightest of husbands and wives" (unmarried women and men presumably don't or shouldn't have children).

I sympathise with men who have difficulty coping with new fatherhood, as long as they still do their best to support the baby’s mother. But no sympathy for men who take a child from its mother.

for the mother of these children - the woman who gave birth to the child and whose body was used by these men. I also hope that the egg donor is doing well after what can be a painful and invasive procedure.

I note the men barely mention the sacrifices these women made or show any concern for their welfare.

I'm very pleased to find that I'm not the only one who's finding the whole story very distasteful. It was initially the headline that made me go, "hold on, what???" but the rest of the article, and the other one I posted just made me feel really uncomfortable with the whole thing.

Thanks to the person who posted a link to the actual story, I forgot to go back and do it.

I was not diagnosed with PND after baby #1, but looking back, I suspect I had it. 3 day labour, followed by EMCS, followed by trying to breastfeed a baby with an undiagnosed tongue tie plus the usual hormonal stuff - I was barely holding it together. Really impacted my whole first year (at least) of parenthood.

I think that's why this headline pissed me off. Lots of good points being made about the wider circumstances as well.