Dad's get sad too

PERINATAL MENTAL ILLNESS AND FATHERS

I came across a blog by Dr Andrew Mayers about men and post natal mental illness recently and was so glad that I found it.

For a long time I have thought the first time I became psychotic all those years ago (27 long years ago) was because I struggled with the birth of my son. I have to sound my usual health warning here. I am not sure I really was psychotic, I think I became aware of my reality in a new way. But for the sake of ease of reference I had an experience which everyone around me sees as a psychotic one and I can see how this might be the case.

So much changes when you become a father. It was so long ago now but I can remember the lead up to my sons birth still; my wife’s excitement and need to find out everything she possibly could about what was happening to her baby and her body and my squeamishness at all the changes and illustrations in the books she got. Somehow a reluctance, amongst the wonder, to celebrate and accept what was happening.

My main memory was the relief that I got my first ever proper job a couple of days before my wife found out she was pregnant. If we had not had that security I don’t know what we would have done. Another memory was my fear that I would damage the baby if we had sex which however much my wife told me that this was a needless worry, I couldn’t get out of my mind.

We had been a couple for a few years; living a care free existence; travelling in Europe and Morocco, Sailing in the Far East, skiing in the Cairngorms, tramping up hills, going to pubs.

I was mainly unemployed and had few qualifications, apart from a Radio Operators certificate and the theory part of the Yacht Masters exam. I vaguely thought of being a writer, but was more attracted to its image than any skill or yearning desire to write.

I was a part time activist in the world of mental health, busy looking to change the world. A half hearted vegetarian macrobiotic. A disorganized and quiet young man; delighted to be married and in a loving relationship.

And suddenly we had a baby on the way and everything changed. The vague meandering life, where we might take off to wander in another country, or sail across an ocean finished. We needed to think about finding a house to live in, rather than renting rooms in friend’s houses. We needed to think about an income, we needed to become responsible and caring. We needed to look after someone else other than ourselves.

And although it was some years since I had been actively distressed and incapable of coping with life, I was still odd, still thin as a rake, quiet as a lamb, intense as I don’t know what and, to my shame, still deeply angry at my parents, especially my Dad, for my childhood.

Starting work in the very new field of advocacy was wonderful but equally, it was an incredibly steep learning curve for all of us.

Somehow I had managed to convince an interview panel that my job as a yacht skipper, my volunteering with a collective advocacy group and my wandering around the world gave me the transferable skills to become the first and, at the time only, community development worker in a brand new charity which we fondly hoped would transform mental health services.

I had no idea what community development was and the concept of advocacy was in its infancy. Despite being directed to libraries to get up to speed with what other people might think I should be doing; I just zoomed into work and a culture of work that was alien to me.

I hadn’t a clue about renting offices, employing admin staff, buying computers, developing policies or constitutions.

All I was conscious of was the need to energize other people with mental health problems into a collective effort to make our world a better one. In that, I was sort of successful initially. But I remember that I had no idea of the conventions of normal work. I worked the hours I needed to not the hours I was paid to do, I had never heard of time off in lieu, I did not know how to accept supervision or support and much of the language of the people around me was alien and confusing.

There was a huge expectation on us too. Being the worker for one of the very first advocacy organizations in Scotland; charged with changing the way we, as people with a mental illness, were seen and accepted in society. People were keen to see what we might or might not achieve. There were all the debates about creating management groups run entirely by people with mental health problems and all the endless political issues when you are employed to challenge ideas and realities around power.

And at the same time there was the looming prospect of the birth of our son. I remember we were very committed to share the responsibilities.

Initially we wanted to both have part time jobs so that we could take equal responsibility for bringing up and nurturing our baby. We talked of having real nappies, expressing milk so we could share the feeding, talked of natural organic foods to feed the baby; all these things.

My wife had a protracted labor and ended up having to be induced. I remember the labor vividly, trying to help my wife, trying to be supportive. The midwifes talking about how my wife had to ‘give it laldie’. That moment when they did the episiotomy and cut my wife and that river of blood tumbled out. Cutting the chord of my son and being shocked at how tough it was. Holding my son and exposing him to all the bright, bright, lights of the room; being worried that I had blinded him and deciding not to tell anyone.

And then the excitement of going home; driving tentatively through Holyrood park, having at last mastered the baby seat. Learning how to put nappies on and being so frightened that I would stab our son with those huge safety pins.

Deciding that after all, I would carry on working full time because our son needed his mum and she wanted that time with him.

Having our son besides us in the bed and worrying I would roll over and smother him. All that crying; that sleeplessness.

Finding myself wheeling him in his pram along the cobbled streets at three am on so many mornings because the motion often settled him; sent him back to sleep and then getting up to go to work in the morning all bleary eyed and shaky.

I was overjoyed, in awe, excited, proud but, as the months went by, I did not really adapt. I still carried on working far too hard. I didn’t get enough sleep, even though my wife now did most of the night feeds. I felt slightly jealous of my son, now that my wife devoted her every moment to him and we no longer had those moments that we had been used to; to go for a walk or to the pub or just to cuddle.

I resented the brown stinking water of the real nappy tub but yes it was the lack of sleep I think and that shift…

I was no longer carefree, I was no longer a naïve and idealistic rebel, I was a wage earning, world changing worker, a responsible dad who wanted to share the baby looking after equally but never really did and who felt guilty that he wasn’t as good at being a dad as he had hoped to be.

Now many years later I know what lack of sleep does to me. When I stop sleeping my world goes haywire and I usually end up sectioned.

In those days I had no idea about that, but like many parents sleep was elusive and my mood dropped and from seemingly nowhere, the idea of self-harm came back into my life, became an obsession.

I saw my GP who made a referral to psychology but in the intervening weeks before I was due to see a psychologist, it was like a switch snapped in me. Far from feeling sad and in need of some sort of talking treatment, I now knew that I was possessed by an evil spirit or devil. I knew that the bright reflections of the sea or lights were spirits beaming thoughts into my mind, altering my consciousness.

I became convinced that my blood was toxic and infected and that touching or being near to people that I loved would serve to infect them and damage them.

And so one night, when our son was finally asleep and we were relaxing with a glass of wine I announced that I was infected with evil spirits and needed to go to the woods, which were sacred places, to get rid of my toxic blood.

I think that must have been one of the worst ever moments in my wife’s life. I don’t know how she managed that short hour when away in the woods I only made superficial cuts to myself and I don’t know how she managed the following weeks and months after I was sectioned, put on constant observation and kept in hospital.

She visited me every day with my son and for the first month or so I refused to let either her or my son near me for fear of what it would do to them.

And then I recovered and then I didn’t and over the next couple of years was in a strange place, became a stranger to my wife as she said later; even smelled differently and was diagnosed with Schizophrenia.

If I forget what I believe myself to be; it feels to me that it was the sudden change in our life; that shift from footloose care free people to home owning, full time working, responsible people that caused a massive change in me; altered my life and my sense of myself fundamentally.

Also, much as I hate to say it, my jealousy that my son was getting all the attention now, that our sex life had more or less stopped was also an issue but mainly I was tired. I was so very, very, tired.

I think that is what did for me finally.