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Under the radar: Postnatal depression in fathers | HBR Talk 263 · Honey Badger Radio

• 0:00
  Hello, and welcome to HBr Talk two sixty three Under the Radar postnatal depression
• 0:07
  in Fathers. I'm your host, Hannah Wallen here with that adorable specter of
• 0:11
  death prim Reaper to look into a topic we have previously not covered. In
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  fact, until a Guardian article about it was drawn to my attention, I
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  hadn't seen any coverage by anyone, and I think that's because there won a
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  lot of research being done into it up until the research that this article is
• 0:30
  reporting on was done in twenty nineteen, and I think it's just been really
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  recent that they've started looking into it. So we're going to look into the
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  article, maybe the research as well, depending on how well the article covers
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  it. But first, as always, before we do that, we've got
• 0:49
  to do what we've got to do. Honey Badger Radio dishes out a Smorgese
• 0:54
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  where you can find your way to all of our content, as well
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  as a link to feed the Badger dot com in the dropdown menu at the
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  top of the page. And with that, we're going to hear a little
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  bit about something new, not something that's just started to happen, just something
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  that people didn't necessarily pay attention to in the past. Like we've heard a
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  lot about the experience of postpartum depression and even postpartum psychosis and new mothers,
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  and reporting on that has ranged from like sensible discussion to outrageous discussion recognizing women's
• 2:23
  experiences explaining maternal suicide or maternal neglect, or violence against family members with these
• 2:32
  conditions, and you know, there's there's definitely obviously logic to that. You
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  know, if somebody's going through a psychotic break and they engage in violence that
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  they've never done before, you trace it back to this psychotic break. But
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  the consensus has been that this phenomenon is a serious issue. Merit's medical intervention
• 2:53
  to support new mothers to prevent suicide, neglect, violence, and any other
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  problems that come from a serious mental health issue that goes untreated. And we've
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  known about it for more than twenty years now. We've known for more than
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  twenty years mother's experienced this range of conditions, but consideration for father's experience has
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  been pretty much unheard of until now. So there we go. This article
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  is titled postnatal Depression. I didn't even know men could get it. The
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  Hidden impact of postnatal Depression. And this is this is written by I'm hoping
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  I'm pronouncing this right. It's Umar Khalia. And so this is covered by
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  a male writer. This isn't a woman lecturing men about you know this happens
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  to you too, blah blah blah. He's covering research that was done on
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  this topic that you know. I briefly looked at the research and it does
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  look like it was done. It's not like feminist research where they like make
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  up some rule and then try to prove it by using a made up method.
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  They went by existing definitions of depression and existing means of testing for it
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  and so on. So to get into the article, here we go.
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  Sorry, I'm just like scrolling through here, I know. And by the
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  way, I think I got a super chat before we go on. I
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  should probably I think I got too. Yeah, and oh my gosh,
• 4:44
  it's our It's not hiding the first one from me, is it? Okay?
• 4:46
  There we go. So Richard gave us a dollar ninety nine and said,
• 4:49
  primm, hello once again to the primary perb. And that's a funny
• 4:57
  thing that happened with my most recent video where if you if you opened up
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  the closed captioning on it, that's just what when I say, I always
• 5:04
  start every video by saying hello once again from the prim reaper, and this
• 5:09
  time it translated to the primary pervs. So all the other pervs are just
• 5:15
  imitators exactly. It's great. Oh my gosh, that's hilarious. Well,
• 5:21
  you know, it's not perfect, but it is perfect. Yeah, there
• 5:27
  we go. Aenemic Royalty also gave us a dollar ninety nine and said prim
• 5:32
  also Ralph Nader is uncircumcised. Just just important knowledge there. I suppose it's
• 5:41
  like, you know, when you you find out who was born on your
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  birthday, or you know, who is the same religion as you are,
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  you know, or who is in the same political like this person is also
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  smart enough to know or as his parents were smart enough to know to leave
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  his whole body alone and let him make that decision when he was an adult.
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  It's good, thankfully. Yeah. So so there you go. And
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  we've done whole shows about that, so I'm not gonna may guess one about
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  it, but we'll probably do whole shows about it again because the issue just
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  won't go away. But ene means, you know, let's get into this
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  discussion and this this, So we got to two mommies. I'm technically too
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  old to be mommy now because I'm grandmammy. So we got a mom and
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  grandma discussing um, postnatal depression, and men. Before I actually start reading,
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  I will point out, you know, I've seen this and didn't know
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  what to call it, and it's a very stressful time for new parents.
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  Like both parents go through a lot of stress. And that's under normal circumstances
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  where you live the same house and you you know, one or one or
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  both of you has jobs and you're financially stable, you know, and and
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  the baby is now here and your schedule just gets torn to hell, and
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  especially your sleep schedule. And yeah, and you know, the mother's activities
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  change, but the father's Um, the father's normal life activities, he doesn't
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  get a break, right, he doesn't get a lot of times, he
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  doesn't get leave yet a lot of times he's people don't expect him to be
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  as busy with the baby as the mother is, so they don't leave him
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  time to experience new fatherhood. Um. Sometimes the mother shuts him out because
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  you know, so essentially hog the baby. Um. So there's a lot
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  of that to look at. But this goes into more than that. Yeah,
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  well, I mean and know that it's it's very complicated for especially like
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  new fathers right on. You know, it's it's always different with each new
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  one you have. But for for somebody who's gone from being childless to having
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  their first child, I think it's especially jarring um, losing losing your regular
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  sleep schedule, losing like the regular household schedule. Like you know, if
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  like however you were arranging like meals and cleaning and things like that, it's
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  it all goes out the window. And many people are, you know,
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  very reliant on a regular schedule in order to kind of keep their sense of
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  normalcy, in their sense of sanity. So to have it be thrown out
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  the window, like even assuming that everything goes very well, it's it's still
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  quite jarring um. And that's without even getting into all of the other stuff
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  that I'm sure this this fellow is going to start getting in too in the
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  article, So I'll wait to discuss it until. Yeah, there's there's quite
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  a bit and they probably I don't know if they I didn't read far enough
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  to see this, but I don't know. If they get into a lot
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  of men as new parents, like they've never been parents before, now all
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  of a sudden, their parents and their wife's exhausted, especially after like protracted
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  labor or a c section or both or something like that, can be not
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  interested in physical affection. And that's like that's tough on a woman when a
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  man isn't interested for a while, But it's I think much harder on a
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  man because women women. You can give a woman flowers and it has a
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  similar effect to a hug. But I think men are more touch oriented in
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  terms of affection than women are. I've known, I've seen research on that
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  in the past, and it's just demonstrated in everyday life too. Um,
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  but especially when it comes to sex, like that's that's more important to men
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  than it is to women. And when you have a period of time after
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  childbirth that she just can't and she's too exhausted to do other things, it's
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  definitely going to impact his emotional state. I mean, it's we're lucky we
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  don't have one hundred percent rate of postnatal depression in men because of just that.
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  Yeah, well, I mean, like it's it's it's one thing for
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  those first six weeks where you know you physically can't, like it's it's physically
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  contraindicated. But I mean even beyond that, you know, there's there's so
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  many things that contribute to you know, that being less likely to happen.
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  Um. You know, there's there's things that aren't even really talked about all
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  that much. You know, when I became a new mother, you know,
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  I I didn't know the extent to which um and you know, like
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  I hope this isn't a TMI, but like the extent to which breastfeeding just
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  really you know, changes the hormones that basically change the way it feels in
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  general. Right, So it's it's, you know, it's it's challenging in
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  many ways to to kind of get back into it, and especially with these
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  things not being like very publicly talked about. You know, I think that
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  for men, you know, also trying to to get back on that horse.
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  It's it's it's probably pretty jarring to think, oh my god, I
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  am I hurting my my wife by by trying to do this right, So
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  it kind of makes it, Yeah, it makes it more uncomfortable in many
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  different ways that new parents probably had no idea about in the first place.
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  So it's there's a lot going on, and you know, everybody talks about
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  the women's side of things, but it's nice to see people talking about the
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  men's side of things too. It definitely is. So this is where we
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  start. Seventy hours into the birth of his first child, Lewis was told
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  that his wife needed to be rushed into surgery for an emergency C section.
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  That's a long time to go too, like they we were at twenty seven
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  hours when they rushed me in from my c section, But we were also
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  at the monitor, the vitals monitor, registering the heartbeat stopping three times.
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  And yeah, my story is I had a newbie nurse and she was a
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  dipshit, and I'm like, that's the nicest way for me to put it.
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  So she removed the monitor and put it back on, assuming that it
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  was not working properly, like three times, because she thought the size of
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  the baby was indicated by the part of the head she could see crowning.
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  So my poor son was born with a ring imprinted into the top of his
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  head from the cervix because he couldn't get out, and he has a bald
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  spot to this day if his hair is really short where that monitor was,
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  because she tore skin off and everything. But and my mom, you know,
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  God bless my mom. She went out into the hallway and carrind them
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  into getting my doctor there, and as he is coming down the hall into
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  the room, she met him and told him the situation. So he comes
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  in strides right over to the monitor and then this booming voice rings out of
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  my doctor, like somebody inserted the voice of God into this soft spoken person
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  that I'd been dealing with for the previous months. And he goes, who
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  turned off this monitor? Be five four fum, I smell blood of a
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  dumb dumb and the nurse. I felt sorry for her for a minute,
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  like not not thinking about the fact that she almost killed both of us.
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  Um, but she uh went from about five foot six, five foot seven
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  to like two feet tall. And then like ten minutes later I was getting
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  cut open. So oh my gosh. But seventy hours, yeah, I
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  could. I couldn't even imagine, like for my for my second daughter.
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  We barely made it to the hospital in time for her to just shoot out.
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  It was seven minutes after we arrived. She's lucky she didn't arrive in
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  the car. That's I have a friend like that. You know, she
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  had her baby and everybody joked with her that you know, she sneezed and
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  went, hey, oops, a baby. But because my labor story's not
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  the worst one I know. I have a friend that was in labor for
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  a month. She was in the early stage where you have like contractions every
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  thirty minutes for a month and the doctor told her it was Braxton Hicks,
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  which is false labor, but it never stopped, so you know it's not
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  false labor. But like this seventy hours is three days. So this woman
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  was in the hospital for three days going through periodically pushing and obviously her water
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  had broken. And you know, who knows what the procedure or the process
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  was. It maybe that her water broke and then she didn't go into contractions.
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  But this poor guy he had to know that's not standard and he had
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  to be on high alert for three days worrying about his wife. Like no
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  wonder right, and like it was stressful for my husband one day and and
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  then an emergency c section and they told him that he was too big to
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  fit into the room with us. They let my mom. And my mom's
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  tiny, she was like five foot three and just this and she the doctor
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  knew her. She sort of operated as a nurse's aid in there, and
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  so that's kind of why they kind of dragged her in there. And they're
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  like you're coming with us, you know, And then they turned to him
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  and like you can't come with us, and I'm just like I couldn't even
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  say anything because I was throwing up. But but yeah, this, this,
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  this had to be like even worse because he was on high alert for
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  three days and here's this crisis. And as it says here, the pregnancy
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  had been straightforward and full of nervous excitement, but as crisis presented him itself,
• 16:49
  Lewis found himself unprepared. I still can't talk about it properly now,
• 16:53
  five years on, the thirty five year old says it was horrific. I
• 16:56
  didn't know what was going on, and I couldn't do anything except stand by
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  and watch as my wife and the baby's lives were potentially in danger. The
• 17:06
  whole thing was a blur, but it felt like it would go on forever
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  and that like, so that's a traumatic moment right there. Um, and
• 17:15
  my my experience of situational depression is you're you're more likely to have that happened
• 17:23
  to you after a trauma like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely,
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  Um, you know it's it's it's one of the common symptoms following any
• 17:36
  kind of like traumatic stress like that, right is, is depressed mood.
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  So yeah, that's a it's kind of a good starter to recognize that coming
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  up right. So one of the things, you know, guys, can
• 17:52
  you know, like you got buddies that are um, their family is expecting,
• 17:56
  their wife is expecting to go into labor, and you know you hear
• 18:00
  later that it didn't go as planned. You know, just kind of beyond
• 18:04
  the alert, is he having a rough time afterward, because that's one thing
• 18:08
  that can lead to that. It's not a guarantee, like just sometimes you
• 18:14
  know, people get through that and then they move on and they're okay and
• 18:17
  they land on their feet, and other times it really knocks somebody on their
• 18:21
  butt. So it goes on. An hour or so later, his son
• 18:26
  was delivered, his wife was fine, and the baby was healthy, Yet
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  the memory of the traumatic birth kept replaying in Lewis's mind long after the family
• 18:34
  had returned home. My wife was still recovering from major surgery, so I
• 18:38
  was left alone with my child. But I didn't feel that special connection that
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  everyone talks about, he says. I just wanted to make sure my wife
• 18:47
  was okay. My baby became something I had to deal with. Yeah,
• 18:52
  I mean I think that that also is something that's extremely common for men.
• 18:57
  And you know, I think that that needs to be talked about more as
• 19:00
  well, because it's it's very very normal, you know, Like for for
• 19:06
  women, there's a whole lot of um, you know, hormonal compounds going
• 19:11
  on that then may often make that transition easier. Not guaranteed either, but
• 19:18
  there's it's often a lot easier for women to bond than it is for men.
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  And I think a lot of men feel like, oh no, like
• 19:26
  what if what if I always feel this way? Is there something wrong with
• 19:30
  me? Um? And And you know, if somebody is kind of in
• 19:33
  the throes of those feelings, especially in those first few weeks where you know
• 19:37
  this it's more of a lump than it is a human being, right,
• 19:41
  So it's I think that when you're kind of in the thick of that,
• 19:45
  you know, that can really exacerbate those negative those negative feelings, that depression
• 19:52
  after the fact. Yeah, yeah, it really can. Um. And
• 20:00
  I think um that people explain a lot to women about this, right,
• 20:04
  Other other moms will say, you know, you're you get told how special
• 20:10
  and precious and and um, how instantly you're gonna love your baby and everything,
• 20:17
  and then you you give birth and you're exhausted and you're you're you're so
• 20:22
  exhausted, you're just desperate for sleep afterward, and you have this screaming,
• 20:26
  crying alien thing. You know that that is you expected to feel like it's
• 20:32
  part of you, but it's a huge difference. It's a it's a whole
• 20:34
  other person and you don't know them yet, you know um. And so
• 20:40
  some women don't have that instant connection like they have that first with with my
• 20:45
  first daughter, Like with my second it was right away, but with my
• 20:48
  first it took a couple of weeks before that really kicked in. And I
• 20:52
  really understand like men, men who say that they don't connect right away,
• 20:57
  It's like, yeah, it's it's awful, honestly, yeah you don't.
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  You're like what do I do now? And you know you have different circumstances
• 21:06
  too, Like if you're financially stable, it's great, but if you're not
• 21:11
  financially stable. When your first child is born, and you look at how
• 21:15
  vulnerable, Like the most outstanding thing about a newborn baby is the level of
• 21:22
  vulnerability in this human being. Like there's there's complete nutter helplessness, no ability
• 21:30
  to communicate and be understood. Right babies communication is it takes a while for
• 21:37
  parents to learn this cry means food, this cry means cuddle me. You
• 21:41
  know, this cry means I'm bored and stuff like that. So all you
• 21:47
  hear is crying and you don't know what to do. And if you're not
• 21:52
  financially stable, you're struggling, you know, it hits you just how badly
• 21:59
  you can fail to person right, how how phenomenal your failure can be,
• 22:07
  and how painful it would be for the baby, and how much your fault
• 22:14
  it would be if the baby, you know, went hungry or got sick
• 22:17
  and didn't get care or anything like that because you didn't do your part to
• 22:21
  make sure the finances were there. And especially when you're in a situation where
• 22:26
  you can't change that, like maybe you can't get a better job you you
• 22:32
  know you can't you're you're in a recession, you know, in an economic
• 22:37
  situation where there isn't a better job, you know, or or the problem
• 22:44
  is that your wife isn't working because maternity leave, but she's not getting paid
• 22:49
  because in at least in the United States, employers don't pay for maternity leave
• 22:55
  and neither does the government. So there's a lot of stress that can happen
• 23:00
  there and it's gonna again, this is gonna hit men harder because your family
• 23:06
  and your friends if they see your family struggling, your extended family and your
• 23:11
  friends are going to blame the guy. They're gonna blame dad, not mom,
• 23:17
  you know, and he's he's not doing enough. Ra ra. Yeah.
• 23:22
  So there there there's another stressor right there. And in that situation where
• 23:26
  you know, like he had said, you know, the baby just became
• 23:30
  something I had to deal with because he was worried about his wife. If
• 23:33
  you don't have that connection, there's nothing more annoying than having demands placed on
• 23:37
  you by a person you don't have a connection with, over and over again,
• 23:44
  and it's just unrelenting. And babies are very demanding because they can't do
• 23:48
  anything for themselves. They can't even turn themselves over when they're born. They
• 23:52
  can't hold their own head up. You know, Well mine could, but
• 23:55
  he was two weeks old when he was born, so he'd already had some
• 24:00
  development in utero that usually happens outside. Right, Yeah, my first had
• 24:07
  that too, and so but yeah, that was good for me because like
• 24:11
  he was also very heavy. It was a big, big boy, which
• 24:15
  is why he couldn't get out. But like this, this situation Lewis Lewis
• 24:21
  was going on. It says Lewis found himself going through a range, going
• 24:25
  through the motions of parenting, sleeping fitfully each night, changing nappies, constantly
• 24:30
  looking on while mother and child bonded through breastfeeding. But he struggled to connect
• 24:34
  with the child. He began to feel deeply sad, as if there might
• 24:38
  be something wrong with him. So many other new fathers seemed enamored of their
• 24:44
  babies. And you know, again like breastfeeding kind of does. There's there
• 24:52
  is the skin to skin contact, there is it's a particular stimuli also,
• 25:00
  and there's the hormonal connection that takes place because of the feeding, and so
• 25:10
  that kind of creates a natural connection at least to a degree that isn't present
• 25:18
  with men. And if if you're one of those guys that like always has
• 25:25
  a shirt on, you know, even in the home, even when you're
• 25:27
  alone with your family and everything, you might not get the same experience of
• 25:33
  skin to skin contact. If your baby's born in the winter and you're wearing
• 25:36
  sweaters all the time. Like one of the things that I have advised guys
• 25:42
  that I knew when they were new dads and they were having a rough time,
• 25:47
  was you know, take take your shirt off and put your baby in
• 25:52
  just a diaper and cuddle the baby right up against your chest, you know,
• 25:56
  head on shoulder, just pat the back, you know, and everything.
• 26:00
  And it doesn't it's not magic, but skin to skin contact actually does
• 26:07
  make a difference in your ability to bond. Let's see, and you can
• 26:14
  see in the picture he's looking out the window with the baby and he's in
• 26:19
  a sweater. That's a that's a yeah, I think that's right. It's
• 26:26
  not that guy, but like it's just it just fits. Um. And
• 26:33
  you know, I know the UK, the weather's a little different than it
• 26:36
  is where I live. Um, but I like three quarters of the year
• 26:41
  here people are wearing long sleeves. So, as the leader found out,
• 26:47
  he was experiencing the symptoms of postnatal depression PND, which remains largely unexplored in
• 26:52
  men. P and D is well established as a mood disorder that affects women,
• 26:56
  with between ten percent and fifteen percent of mothers thoughts to experience it.
• 27:00
  In the UK, new mothers are monitored for PND during routine NHS health visits,
• 27:07
  and I will say your post natal visits to your doctor, both to
• 27:15
  your doctor and your baby's pediatrician. During the wellness checks in the United States,
• 27:22
  mothers get asked how they're doing and get asked questions sort of probing for
• 27:29
  symptoms of PND as well. And I think that's partly because of God.
• 27:36
  I can't you even remember her name. There was a horrible case in Texas
• 27:41
  where a mother had this. She had actually postpartum psychosis and she was struggling
• 27:51
  with it. She asked for help, and her husband asked for her to
• 27:56
  get help, and the system basically said, oh, you're fine, go
• 28:02
  home, take care of your babies, and she drowned all four of her
• 28:06
  children. Postpartum psychosis is not something that you mess with. It's extremely rare.
• 28:14
  Um I think it's like, I don't I don't remember the exact number.
• 28:18
  I think it was like point point something percent of women get it.
• 28:22
  But for those that get it, it's extremely serious and it's it's gross to
• 28:27
  think that they were like, oh, you're just fine. It's it's different
• 28:32
  than baby blues, you know. Baby blues is something that eighty percent of
• 28:36
  new mothers get. Um postpartum depression, like you had already mentioned, is
• 28:41
  ten to fifteen percent. Yeah, and then yeah, psychosis is you know,
• 28:47
  it's it's it's very rare, but it's very serious. Yeah, and
• 28:51
  and it is something that like they know now, Andrew Yates, that's what
• 28:56
  that's what her name was, um and and they know now, Like when
• 29:00
  a woman starts saying, you know, this is happening to me, and
• 29:02
  she starts describing symptoms of postpartum to psychosis, you do not ignore that she
• 29:07
  is not going to be okay. You you take it seriously and you start
• 29:12
  treatment um because it's a danger to her. You know, she may kill
• 29:18
  herself, it's danger to her family. She may kill her children, she
• 29:22
  may attack her husband, and it's it's not something that she's going to be
• 29:29
  able to be like, well, I know that something is wrong with me,
• 29:33
  so I'm not going to act on it. That's not how psychosis works,
• 29:37
  right, And so they they've taken that seriously, and they've taken Baby
• 29:41
  Blue seriously, postpartum depression seriously, all of that for a long time,
• 29:45
  and like just just baby Blues, like that's you know, you get you
• 29:51
  hit this moment in the first few days after the birth, when the baby's
• 29:56
  hungry all the time and you're like, I'm never gonna to sleep again.
• 30:02
  It's yeah, and you know, and and my moobs are never gonna not
• 30:10
  hurt again. But um, but then it gets better over time and it's
• 30:17
  you know, it's it's more likely to be postpartum depression. When that that
• 30:22
  initial you know, I'm never going to sleep again. I'm gonna be in
• 30:26
  pain for the rest of my life. This sucks. Why did I do
• 30:27
  this? Like that doesn't go away, and you don't have any motivation,
• 30:33
  and you know, you don't have that sense of connection that you normally would
• 30:37
  expect have, and then you know, there's other things that start going along
• 30:41
  with that. Um, nobody looks at that and men, so uh,
• 30:47
  the article goes on, UM, let's see, we were at monitoring new
• 30:53
  fathers, however, have no access to standardized care or routine checkups on the
• 30:59
  NHS, just bite research finding it up to ten percent of them exhibit symptoms.
• 31:03
  And there's where there's the link to the research that this article is about.
• 31:10
  And I you know, to my knowledge, like when we took our
• 31:17
  son to the pediatrician for for his um his uh, well, baby checkups.
• 31:27
  I don't I don't think anybody asked how my husband was doing, either
• 31:33
  on the days that he was there or on the days that he couldn't be
• 31:36
  there. Yeah, I know all of my appointments, you know, my
• 31:41
  husband still had to work, right, so it was kind of just de
• 31:45
  facto that it was just me and the kiddos, right. So, yeah,
• 31:51
  I imagine that's the case for for a lot of a lot of parents
• 31:55
  who with the father doesn't get that leave that we were talking about at the
• 31:59
  beginning. So it's yeah, there's just so many things that are getting in
• 32:02
  the way of checking in on how he's doing. You know, so many
• 32:07
  people expect business as usual for men, but it's really not. It's you
• 32:13
  know, his whole life has been tipped upside down, and yet he's expected
• 32:16
  to just act like it's all still normal. Yeah, we were. We
• 32:22
  were lucky in that my husband had, you know, his father and his
• 32:24
  brothers and my brother, my father, they all kind of knew what he
• 32:31
  might be going through. Although my brother hadn't been dad yet, you know,
• 32:36
  he's he had seen friends through ordeals that left them with depression. We
• 32:43
  had a we had a friend who lost his dad when he was sixteen,
• 32:46
  And so I think my brother developed um tools and basically for for understanding more
• 32:55
  of what was going on middle health way is with his friends because of seeing
• 33:02
  a friend through, you know, something like that. And I think a
• 33:07
  lot of a lot of people don't teach their sons that they teach their daughters
• 33:10
  that, But my brother kind of naturally developed it. So I know because
• 33:15
  I can remember my family checking up on both of us, and I can
• 33:20
  remember his family checking up on both of us. But I don't think the
• 33:22
  medical community did it at all. They just checked up on me. And
• 33:27
  I mean, granted, you know this talks about depression, whereas I know,
• 33:34
  the medical community is looking for not just postpartum depression but that rare postpartum
• 33:39
  psychosis. So they're going to check up on mom, but they really should
• 33:45
  be checking up on dad, because depression is a major factor in the male
• 33:51
  suicide rate. And the age group during which most men become fathers is their
• 33:58
  early twenties, which is a time frame when suicide is the biggest killer of
• 34:05
  men. Yeah, if they survived the time when gang violence is the biggest
• 34:12
  killer of men, then the next thing is suicide is m that's why guys
• 34:19
  need their guy time with each other to you know, when women take that
• 34:22
  away, they don't have their support network. Yeah, but yeah, going
• 34:30
  sorry, no, I I was just gonna say, um, just um.
• 34:37
  I I often feel like, you know, when when guys kind of
• 34:42
  become new parents, you know, there's there is often that challenge in getting
• 34:47
  that guy time because I think that there's you know, there's there's kind of
• 34:52
  a stigma. And this can come from both directions, both from the mother
• 34:57
  if he's unlucky, and also from externally where it's like if he's seeing his
• 35:02
  friends, people are like why are you not at home helping the mother?
• 35:06
  Or the mother's like why are you not at home helping me? And stuff
• 35:08
  like that, right, And it's so there's a lot of pressure on new
• 35:14
  fathers and you know they're not maybe not a lot of sympathy because it seems
• 35:20
  like all of the sympathy gets reserved for the mother. Yeah, it does.
• 35:24
  And like once in a while, you'll see somebody turned to the dad,
• 35:28
  how are you holding up? And they'll listen to two or three sentences
• 35:30
  and be like, I'll bet you're not getting any sleep, And then they'll
• 35:34
  go back to talking to the mother and like, well it's not just not
• 35:37
  sleep, you know. But and a big one is is he getting Is
• 35:43
  he getting time? It's like there's also is he getting enough time with a
• 35:46
  baby? But is he getting time away from the baby? Yeah, people
• 35:51
  will make sure the mother gets a little time away from the baby, but
• 35:54
  they don't necessarily do that for the dad. They assume his time at work.
• 36:00
  If his only time away from the baby is this time at work,
• 36:02
  he's not getting a chance to connect with this support network. Because your buddies
• 36:07
  are part of your support network. You know, it's not just your siblings,
• 36:12
  your parents, your cousins, your other kids, your wife. You
• 36:16
  know, you have to have people who are not related to you that can
• 36:20
  look at you from a totally different perspective than your family does. If you
• 36:24
  really want to get a well rounded range of being able to support other people
• 36:31
  and being supported by other people. And also it does help to have friends
• 36:40
  that have had kids too. It's like you're going through something and you're like,
• 36:45
  I feel like a complete failure because this is supposed to happen and it
• 36:50
  didn't, and you know, you might find out from your buddies that you
• 36:54
  know, Actually that's kind of a stereotype that doesn't happen most of the time,
• 36:59
  or it happens for some guys but not others. Or did you try
• 37:04
  this and see if it helps you know, or maybe this might be a
• 37:08
  medical issue. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Try not to be the first
• 37:14
  one in your friend group to have children like we were. If you are,
• 37:19
  you know, you look at your family members, you will talk to
• 37:22
  people you know that you've met online and stuff, and don't just assume that
• 37:30
  you're a failure because something that you thought should have happened didn't. Yeah,
• 37:37
  like that was a women who go through c sections will do that too.
• 37:39
  Like I mean, I knew, like this was a possibility and I was
• 37:46
  okay with it. It wasn't what I wanted, but it was necessary.
• 37:52
  Or you know, like we wouldn't still, neither one of us would be
• 37:55
  here if we had insisted, if I'd insisted on natural. But there are
• 38:01
  women that that's devastating, like they're never going to have the bikini body again,
• 38:07
  and they're upset about that. Um, I never really had a bikini
• 38:10
  body before, but I don't think that would have been on the forefront of
• 38:15
  my mind at the time. Um, but they there's there's women who feel
• 38:21
  like they didn't do it right, if they if they couldn't do it that
• 38:24
  way, and like that's that's something that you know, with with women,
• 38:30
  there's a lot of support from other women that are like, hey, did
• 38:35
  you know this? Did you know that? Did you look into this before
• 38:38
  you decided you're a failure because you you didn't do it right, you know.
• 38:43
  Um, whereas with dads, there may not be a lot of articles,
• 38:49
  there may not be a lot of you know, friend groups going.
• 38:52
  You know, actually it's pretty common to not suddenly feel like, uh,
• 38:57
  this this father child bond where you do everything together. You know, sometimes
• 39:02
  if you're particularly nervous, you know, that might make a big difference.
• 39:07
  But yeah, so up to ten percent of men exhibit symptoms of postnatal depression.
• 39:19
  Both parents, it says, are equally susceptible to mental health challenges during
• 39:22
  and after birth. Says doctor Sharon Baldwin, the Clinical Academic lead for Nursing
• 39:29
  at the London Northwest University Healthcare NHS TRUST. Recent years have seen caring responsibilities
• 39:37
  become shared and there is an expectation that dads need to be more involved.
• 39:40
  That combination can create more pressure on men who want to be good dads but
• 39:45
  might feel as if they're not good enough or that they can't burden their partners
• 39:52
  with their own worries. And I that last one really hits too, because
• 40:00
  Danton men are protective of their wives. Like, so a guy becomes a
• 40:05
  dad, he's going to be protective of his child and still be protective of
• 40:07
  his wife. And if he's worried about something, the last person he wants
• 40:12
  to worry with it is his his wife, who is a new mother.
• 40:17
  He might not say anything, well, yeah, exactly. And you know,
• 40:22
  I I feel like oftentimes, um, you know, they're they're like,
• 40:30
  you know, a new mother is kind of well busy, So not
• 40:35
  all of them are going to have the mental faculties to have that concern go
• 40:39
  in the other direction right right now. I mean, for me, I
• 40:44
  was highly, highly anxious as to how how my partner was doing when when
• 40:51
  our first daughter was born. So that was a major point of stress for
• 40:54
  me. And so, you know, I think it can go either way.
• 40:59
  But I think a lot of new mothers, you know, they're they're
• 41:01
  so focused on the baby's needs that, you know, but their partner might
• 41:07
  be lucky to get a good morning you know, let alone checking in how
• 41:12
  how they're doing. Yeah, yeah, and they they are so worried about
• 41:16
  meeting the baby's needs that a lot of times, you know, they don't
• 41:21
  they don't think to involve the father in meeting the baby's needs. And it's
• 41:25
  like, oh, well, you're earning the money, that's sufficient. Well,
• 41:30
  you know, maybe he wants to be the person that comforts the baby,
• 41:35
  you know, when he or she cries. You know, maybe he
• 41:37
  wants to get a chance to feed the baby. Like in our situation,
• 41:43
  my husband and me when when our son was a baby, I was nursing
• 41:47
  and like he was born big and he gained a pound a week for a
• 41:54
  whole month. Um, big, big kid. I mean he's big.
• 41:59
  Now he's oller than me, patch me on the head, like to remind
• 42:02
  me that I'm shorter than he is, which is a weird experience for me
• 42:07
  because I used to be five nine and a half before I shrank and uh,
• 42:15
  but you know, he's like he'll laugh about this, but I mean
• 42:22
  he's like, you know, early twenties and everything. So he's at age
• 42:24
  now where you know, a guy starts to to see his mom as older
• 42:31
  and vulnerable, but when he was a baby, I had to pump so
• 42:38
  that like, but that was the only experience my husband could get feeding him.
• 42:42
  And we were not um fight not only not financially stable, we didn't
• 42:46
  have a household yet, so he had to come visit us like he would
• 42:52
  work, and we lived eighty miles apart like he would work. We were
• 42:57
  struggling to um put away what we could to get settled together. We were
• 43:04
  struggling with child support is shoes and everything, and like having all that take
• 43:09
  place, and then trying to make time in the child's care schedule to make
• 43:17
  sure that I wasn't hogging the baby that was that was another thing like on
• 43:24
  top of that. But if you don't do that, you do end up
• 43:28
  like completely excluding the father, and it's really unfair to him. And he
• 43:34
  was doing everything he could. I mean, you know, I'm I'm can
• 43:39
  talk about lack of sleep as a new mom and everything, but imagine working
• 43:45
  full time and then having a visitation schedule with your two children, with your
• 43:52
  ax and then having another visitation schedule basically impromptu, but still visitation and schedule
• 44:00
  with your wife and child, and like that would just be the amount of
• 44:07
  stress that he handled when we were new parents was just unbelievable. And so,
• 44:15
  I mean, I understand why my parents and his parents, and our
• 44:19
  siblings and and everybody was checking up on him. What I don't understand is
• 44:22
  why our doctors never asked him any questions like how are you doing? You
• 44:28
  know, how is how are you handling fatherhood? You know, this this
• 44:31
  instance of fatherhood because his youngest UM when we got pregnant, his youngest was
• 44:39
  four suld have been four years before he'd since he'd been through that UM.
• 44:45
  But and with a totally different personality of mom too, so his expect he
• 44:53
  didn't have any expectations. He didn't know what to expect from me at all.
• 44:57
  UM. But and this this situation, like you know, you have
• 45:02
  that with with dads. They're they're going through all of those different you know,
• 45:08
  people treat the mom like she's the parent and the dad's like the side
• 45:13
  Parentum. People don't ask the dad how he's doing. The mom might kind
• 45:19
  of hog the baby, or the mom might be so stressed out that she's
• 45:25
  dumping the baby on dad too much. He might be working over time to
• 45:30
  try to pay for things that you know, we're unexpected expenses. There's a
• 45:37
  whole spectrum of stressors that can happen there, and and then you get that
• 45:44
  sense of not being good enough for not doing it right, that you're burdening
• 45:46
  your partners with your stress because she's exhausted, she's dealing with her own stressors.
• 45:52
  The worst thing that can happen is if the couple doesn't talk about it
• 45:58
  at all, you know, and yeah, yeah, exactly, and they
• 46:02
  so often don't. I think that there's so often pressure to act like things
• 46:09
  are are fine, or to just try and put the baby first. And
• 46:15
  I think that's one of the worst things that new parents can do, because
• 46:19
  they just wind up like burning out and feeling more stressed out than they otherwise
• 46:22
  might be. You know. Yeah, and it's important for moms to you
• 46:29
  know, if if we have mostly male listeners, but if we got female
• 46:32
  listeners, that one of the things that really helps a lot with dads,
• 46:39
  new dads especially are dads of young babies, is you know, let them
• 46:45
  know that you're proud of how hard they're working and that the things they're doing
• 46:52
  are valued and helpful, and you couldn't do this without them. You know,
• 47:00
  let them know that they're important, and you know, make sure you
• 47:04
  are doing for them what they do for you, because you know you're hearing
• 47:09
  it from him. I'm so proud of you. You really handled that well.
• 47:13
  I can't believe how hard that was. And you know, he's working
• 47:17
  and coming home and helping take care of the baby, and you know,
• 47:22
  you know that he's dealing with all of the stress of being the breadwinner and
• 47:29
  he's trying to take care of you, and he's probably afraid to tell you
• 47:32
  that he's stressed out. So look for it, ask for it, you
• 47:37
  know, make sure he knows you love him. Yeah, exactly, and
• 47:43
  be affectionate, like, don't don't stop that even if you can't do the
• 47:47
  normal thing, do something, Yeah, absolutely, you know. It's it's
• 47:53
  so important to like remember the fact that you know, you and your partner
• 48:00
  ventured into parenthood together. Right, It's it's not just it's it's it doesn't
• 48:07
  have to just be all about the baby now, you know. Now,
• 48:12
  now your relationship. That's one thing that people seem to not realize when they
• 48:16
  go into relationships these days, that you maintain a relationship and It's somewhat the
• 48:23
  way you maintain a car like it. If you just let it sit and
• 48:29
  you don't attend to it, you don't fuel it with your actions and your
• 48:36
  contributions to intimacy. Um, it it stagnates, it runs out of fuel,
• 48:44
  it stalls, and eventually it dies. Um. But so, so,
• 48:51
  don't be a passenger in your relationship. You know, you guys are
• 48:55
  both in the driver's seat, Like, make sure you're steering together. But
• 49:05
  so, that's one big thing is that them not being able to talk to
• 49:08
  their partners about what they're going through. Baldwin, a health a health visitor,
• 49:15
  is one of the few researchers to study the prevalence of postmail postnatal depression
• 49:21
  in men. Her interest in the topic began when her husband told her how
• 49:25
  he felt excluded by child health services after the birth of their first child,
• 49:30
  with each piece of literature or help for infants seemingly naming only mothers and babies.
• 49:37
  She began a three part New Dad study in twenty sixteen, interviewing twenty
• 49:43
  one men from different ethnicities and backgrounds about their experiences of having children. She
• 49:50
  found a number of themes tied them together. A lot of men spoke about
• 49:55
  their exhaustion with having to go back to work and still care for their children
• 50:00
  when they were at home, as well as the difficulty and being separated from
• 50:02
  them. She says there were also concerns raised about expectations not matching with reality,
• 50:08
  like dad's being surprised that their partner might struggle with breastfeeding and then feeling
• 50:14
  as if they weren't able to help. Ultimately, their issues might not feel
• 50:19
  as important as the birthing partners, and so they often neglect their own needs.
• 50:25
  And you know that's a rough one too. Nursing isn't something that men
• 50:31
  can really like, he can't give it. There's not really a lot of
• 50:35
  advice he can give. There's nothing he can do. It's it's really an
• 50:39
  issue between the mother and the baby. And yeah, exactly, it's not
• 50:43
  like something he can take it take over and help without like you said,
• 50:47
  having pumped milk in advance, right right, And I had I had nursing
• 50:52
  issues and I like, there really wasn't anything. Well, there was one
• 50:59
  thing my husband and could do and that was helped me think through it.
• 51:04
  And it's you know, they want you to alternate breasts when you're nursing well.
• 51:08
  One of mine got crushed by a seatbelt in a car accident. We
• 51:14
  were we were in a Ford Festiva. I don't recommend going anywhere and one
• 51:19
  of those things if you your legs are long. But um, but I
• 51:22
  was in a Ford Festiva and I got rear ended by an old Buick,
• 51:27
  big old metal hunk of you know weight, and the driver she just came
• 51:32
  around the corner at thirty five miles an hour and did not slow down or
• 51:37
  anything. We were stopped and we were a full car link behind the car
• 51:42
  in front of us. Because you know, when you're approaching a light,
• 51:45
  you sort of come to a stop and then maybe you creep up on the
• 51:47
  next car. We had gotten to that point where we had come to a
• 51:51
  full stop and the car had just settled back into that full stop when bam,
• 51:57
  we get hit and we went airborne. So everything else that happened,
• 52:02
  like the whiplash that came with it and all of that, I noticed all
• 52:06
  of that, and it took like a month before we found the lump from
• 52:09
  the crushed um. I can't remember what they're called, but basically the memory
• 52:15
  glance. I had a crushed memory gland in that boob. So it scared
• 52:21
  the crap out of us and everything back then. Well a few years later,
• 52:24
  you know, I have a baby and I'm trying to nurse and he
• 52:28
  will not touch that breast. He wants nothing to do with it, and
• 52:34
  absolutely not right. And my husband finally was like, well, maybe he's
• 52:38
  not getting enough milk out of it. You said you had had one memory
• 52:44
  gland, you know, crushed in an accident. Maybe that one's not producing.
• 52:47
  You just use the other one, just that you don't have to switch
• 52:52
  off every time, Like, maybe that's not going to work for you,
• 52:55
  guys, and at lo and behold, we did just fine on one,
• 53:01
  although I ended up with two different sizes for a long time. Um,
• 53:05
  but it's it's just the way it was. And uh, you know once
• 53:09
  once he talked about that, you know, well a lot of women don't
• 53:15
  listen. What do you know? You're a man, you don't know you
• 53:16
  can't do this, How would you know anything? Like, but it made
• 53:22
  sense. It's and like just not not listening because well, men, men
• 53:28
  don't know anything about breastfeeding. Would have been stupid. But I think a
• 53:31
  lot of women get into this mentality of well, this is between me and
• 53:35
  the baby. I know better than he does, and I'm not going to
• 53:38
  listen to anything he says or they're gonna get offended like I could have been.
• 53:43
  You know, are you saying there's something wrong with my boob? Like,
• 53:45
  well, you know, actually, yes, there was something wrong with
• 53:49
  my boob, like it was damaged. It's never been the same since,
• 53:53
  um, yeah, exactly. And you know, I think that a lot
• 53:57
  of people, like there are so many misconceptions about breastfeeding too. You know
• 54:02
  that it's that it's just an easy thing to do. It's it's supernatural,
• 54:07
  and it's you know, you'll you'll you'll know what you're doing. But the
• 54:12
  truth is is that it's not really so easy for a lot of people.
• 54:15
  You don't, even if it does go um, you know, relatively smoothly,
• 54:21
  there can still be all kinds of challenges involved with it, And so
• 54:23
  that's a whole extra layer of stress on top of everything. Yeah, and
• 54:29
  the baby gets stressed out too. And if you go back and forth between
• 54:31
  breastfeeding and bottles, that's difficult as well, especially if you also go back
• 54:37
  and forth between breast milk and formula, which has a different taste to it
• 54:42
  because it's got added sugar. But yeah, so there's like all kinds of
• 54:46
  things that can be stressors like that, and you have to talk about them
• 54:50
  and you have to be open, like women in particular don't do this very
• 54:52
  well, but you have to be open to criticism, like maybe don't do
• 54:55
  it this way, Let's do it this way. Let's try something new,
• 55:00
  you know. And and instead of being like, what what you mean,
• 55:02
  I'm doing it wrong, you're like, Okay, well let's see if that
• 55:06
  works, because if it works, it relieves the stress. Right um,
• 55:12
  before it disappears from the page. From other chats, I want to read
• 55:15
  mister Rogue's super chat. He gave us two dollars and said prim gave us
• 55:23
  three emojis, the heart, I smiley face, the hug face, and
• 55:28
  the sparkly heart. So there we go again. Everybody's always happy to have
• 55:34
  you on um, not just me, sorry to have been a stranger.
• 55:39
  It's it's hard with the both of them, and also with especially now I'm
• 55:45
  studying for the my licensing exam. I'm writing pretty quick here, and yeah,
• 55:51
  it's very stressful because they only get three attempts. Yeah, like at
• 55:55
  least though, we get to have you on tonight, so there we Yes,
• 56:01
  hopefully it'll be a little bit easier as the girls get older. Yeah,
• 56:07
  yeah, it does. It does. Um. The older they get,
• 56:09
  the more independent your kids become. And that that's tough on both parents
• 56:15
  too, because you're, like, you're you have a massive instinct to protect
• 56:22
  them from everything, and it operates in different ways, right You're you want
• 56:27
  to give them the tools to protect themselves, but as a mom, you
• 56:30
  want to surround them in a in a bubble, you know, don't touch
• 56:34
  my kid, you know, that kind of thing. And that's a conflict
• 56:38
  that arises between mom and dad in that dad wants the kids to strengthen their
• 56:46
  ability to stand on their own two feet as much as humanly possible. And
• 56:51
  it's it's his instinct because that's what's protected him in his life from harm,
• 56:55
  is being able to defend against it or outrun it, or a sidestep it,
• 57:01
  plan ahead and plan a pathway that doesn't include it, you know,
• 57:06
  things like that, and those challenges come up, but the kids themselves,
• 57:13
  like you get to a point where they can come home from school and fix
• 57:19
  their own snack and you have time while they're at school. If you're not
• 57:22
  at work, um or it lets you you know, it gives you a
• 57:27
  time when you can work. And as they get older and older, you
• 57:31
  know, they eventually start doing things like picking up on chores around the house
• 57:37
  and and you know, by the time they're in junior high in high school,
• 57:42
  they can fix meals and things like that. So you know, they
• 57:45
  contribute to the being members of the household like a little adults. It's kind
• 57:51
  of fun to watch. Um. But in any case, like it does
• 57:55
  get easier, and and then you get to the empty nest part and you're
• 58:00
  like, where did the time go? I blinked, like that was hard.
• 58:07
  Yeah, I hear about that a lot. But yeah, you say
• 58:12
  for every minute and um, and it's fun. But but even if it's
• 58:17
  hard. But going on with an article, Lewis felt conflicted when he went
• 58:23
  back to work after two weeks of parental leave. The office was really tiring,
• 58:28
  but I needed the break from being at home. He says. I
• 58:30
  felt so guilty when I got back from missing out, as well as sometimes
• 58:36
  relieved. I didn't want to make life harder for my wife by telling her.
• 58:40
  And again there's that that difficulty, like it doesn't when you when you
• 58:47
  are working and you have a small child at home or a baby at home,
• 58:53
  and you know you're expected to give every waking moment to time with the
• 59:00
  baby into experiencing everything new that the baby does and all that, like if
• 59:07
  you miss the first word or you miss the first step, or even just
• 59:12
  the day baby switches from an all liquid diet to something with cereal in it,
• 59:19
  like it's it feels like you failed, but you didn't fail. You
• 59:27
  can't do everything, and I think a lot of dads feel pressure today to
• 59:35
  do everything. You know, um, that's just not it's not fair to
• 59:42
  them. And there's also that that guilt element that was mentioned in this paragraph
• 59:49
  now, like needing the break from being at home because you know, you
• 59:53
  feel you feel both guilty for like the in finger quotes a bad in tending
• 1:00:00
  your your spouse and child, but you also feel guilty for you know,
• 1:00:06
  being at work and enjoying the time away from home. So it's like there's
• 1:00:09
  there's guilt from all sides. And I really wish that you know, there
• 1:00:15
  could be less of that that you know, for for a partner to say
• 1:00:20
  no, please, like enjoy that time like it's and and and not in
• 1:00:25
  a sarcastic, passive aggressive way like legitimately, don't feel guilty about it,
• 1:00:31
  enjoy that time. It's nice that you get a chance to feel restored,
• 1:00:37
  you know. Like I I have been working like very very part time hours
• 1:00:42
  as a provisional psychologist with my second you know, even though I'm on maternity
• 1:00:50
  leave technically from another job. I have been working you know, like eight
• 1:00:53
  to ten hours a week and that time away, you know, it it
• 1:01:00
  helps to connect me back with myself. And it's also working with male clients,
• 1:01:06
  which is what I've always wanted to do, right, So it's it
• 1:01:08
  connects with something that is very important to me. That's something that I've been
• 1:01:13
  working towards, you know, for the last decade of my life. So
• 1:01:16
  it's it's important for both parents to be able to, you know, have
• 1:01:22
  that time where they can dedicate to whatever it is that they're working on,
• 1:01:28
  and to have it away from the child. Right. It sounds awful,
• 1:01:31
  but it shouldn't sound awful, And that's the point I'm trying to make well.
• 1:01:37
  And the kid needs time with other family members too, you know,
• 1:01:42
  kid needs time alone, time with dad. The kid needs alone time with
• 1:01:45
  mom, and the kid needs grandparent time, you know, if there are
• 1:01:50
  living grandparents. And you know, this was something that it was easier to
• 1:01:54
  do with my parents because we live with them. We had to make time
• 1:01:58
  to drive. We were eighty miles from my husband's parents, and so we
• 1:02:05
  we had to make time and find you know, money in the budget to
• 1:02:08
  go up there. And it was rough. So he was born in February
• 1:02:13
  also, so you couldn't just like be well, you know, let's go
• 1:02:15
  out and and just get out and get out of the house and get in
• 1:02:19
  the car and go, like you had to really bundle up. February and
• 1:02:24
  Ohio is not a warm time. You know, it's not as cold as
• 1:02:27
  it is in some parts of Canada, but it's it's not you know,
• 1:02:30
  Florida. It's not nice weather. And you know, Ohio turns into a
• 1:02:36
  giant slushy in February. So driving with a newborn, like, we didn't
• 1:02:42
  go anywhere for two months after he was born except his well baby visits because
• 1:02:47
  the idea of putting him in the car and driving around in a giant slushy
• 1:02:53
  it was just too scary. And so that was that was that. Um,
• 1:03:00
  but you need to do that for your health and and his health and
• 1:03:07
  um, for the baby's health and everything. Gotta have bonding time with with
• 1:03:10
  grandparents. UM yeah, but uh. And then the other thing is,
• 1:03:16
  you know people, people don't recognize it as well with the dad as they
• 1:03:20
  do with the mom, like and moms will do this to themselves too.
• 1:03:22
  I did it. I took no time off from my son. I didn't
• 1:03:25
  have a job at the time. Um. I was recovering actually from another
• 1:03:32
  car accident I have been. The joke at the time was that I had
• 1:03:37
  a magnet in my ass. Um. But I have been injured multiple times
• 1:03:43
  in rear ending accidents when I was a passenger in other people's cars. I
• 1:03:47
  don't get rear ended when I'm driving. I don't know what what the deal
• 1:03:50
  is there. Um. But but in any case, like and I don't
• 1:03:55
  speed either, so that's not why. Um. In any case, So
• 1:04:00
  I spent every waking moment with the baby, and my parents called my friends
• 1:04:10
  to come get me and kicked me out of the house for a whole evening.
• 1:04:14
  After I switched from writing I used to my comedy used to be writing
• 1:04:19
  parody lyrics to pop music like I turned. At one point, I turned
• 1:04:26
  I am coming out to the party song, Pink's party song. I'm coming
• 1:04:31
  out, so you better get this party started too. I'm passing out because
• 1:04:35
  I drank too much as someone's party m It wasn't even a drinker, just
• 1:04:40
  did it anyway, right. But at that point, I was writing parodies
• 1:04:44
  to parody lyrics to the Telly Tubby song and I thought they were funny,
• 1:04:49
  and my mom was like, you're you're going out with your friends this weekend.
• 1:04:55
  Like that was the end of that. But you know, and if
• 1:04:59
  if my husband had been in the home at that point, I think he'd
• 1:05:03
  just said the same thing out here. And I'd have done the same thing
• 1:05:09
  to him too, if he'd have been at that level. But in any
• 1:05:14
  case, you just have to You have to have time. Everybody has to
• 1:05:16
  have some time for themselves and you don't. That doesn't stop because you have
• 1:05:20
  kids. You just now have another person in the house that also has to
• 1:05:26
  have some time away from you. Yeah, and it resolved with him,
• 1:05:34
  he says, I felt I felt so guilty when I got back. I
• 1:05:40
  didn't want to make life harder for my wife by telling her. Nonetheless,
• 1:05:44
  she noticed his apathy in his fluctuating mood. She encouraged him to seek health,
• 1:05:48
  which is the right thing for a woman to do. She told me
• 1:05:51
  that if I didn't sort this out now, it would make it would affect
• 1:05:55
  our son's life and our relationship, he says. She didn't want me to
• 1:05:59
  work myself to the bone and not be present anymore. And you know,
• 1:06:06
  if you're if your wife worries about your house and stuff, you're not doing
• 1:06:12
  her harm by making her worry. That's part of her loving you, is
• 1:06:19
  worrying whether or not you're okay, and she should do that just as much
• 1:06:26
  as you do that for her. You know, if you are in a
• 1:06:30
  relationship with someone who doesn't do that, doesn't care whether you're okay, doesn't
• 1:06:35
  get worried if things change, that that person has something missing from them,
• 1:06:44
  or the relationship has something missing from it, and that's something to either work
• 1:06:48
  on or a reason that maybe the relationship shouldn't go to the next step.
• 1:06:56
  Of course, obviously you don't want to find that out after a bait.
• 1:07:00
  Be we want to find that out before you you make your relationship permanent.
• 1:07:03
  But yeah, don't, don't guys, shouldn't necessarily um hide to everything.
• 1:07:14
  I know that a lot of guys will not tell women about deep worries and
• 1:07:16
  stuff, but you know, there's there's you got to talk to your your
• 1:07:20
  partner about some things at least because it's it's normal and natural for her to
• 1:07:26
  worry. Women have like this giant worry gland in the back of our head
• 1:07:31
  that will explode if we don't use it, and then suddenly we're worried about
• 1:07:41
  problems that don't exist, you know. I mean, I feel like the
• 1:07:45
  best way to deal with that is is not to try and hide that there's
• 1:07:47
  a problem, but to just you know, tell us about it and like,
• 1:07:53
  yeah, maybe let us know how we can help. Then you know,
• 1:07:57
  it's it can be used as a as a proper bonding moment rather than
• 1:08:00
  you know, you having to feel like you have to hide all of your
• 1:08:03
  burdens from the world. Yeah, and again to our female listeners, just
• 1:08:08
  a just a quick note on this. This is not material for later arguments.
• 1:08:14
  You know, guy comes and says he's worried about something or is having
• 1:08:16
  a problem. It's so you can help him, not so you can throw
• 1:08:20
  it in his face later. Never do that yes, never throw it in
• 1:08:26
  his face. Only assholes do that, right, right, so right,
• 1:08:31
  So if you're not planning to fart with your mouth later, just keep in
• 1:08:38
  mind that it's about showing love and and you're helping, you know, just
• 1:08:45
  like you expect him to help you. After being put on a waiting list
• 1:08:49
  for NHS counseling, Lewis decided to pay for private sessions. Waiting list.
• 1:08:55
  I'm having a crisis. Okay, Well here's a waiting list that helped yeah
• 1:09:01
  jeez to pay for private sessions so that he could start immediately a few months.
• 1:09:09
  Then I began to make sense of my feelings and realize that the birth
• 1:09:13
  had been hard for both of us. He says it really helped being able
• 1:09:17
  to talk about it and the weight lifted. I could begin to feel unconditional
• 1:09:26
  love for my boy. I wish I'd known earlier that even though there might
• 1:09:30
  be a lack of connection initially, it would come. Baldwin says a P
• 1:09:36
  and D can affect men who have adopted children as well as those who in
• 1:09:41
  same sex couples. There can be an expectation to parent without complaint after going
• 1:09:48
  through a lengthy adoption or a surrogacy process. Support is really important, She
• 1:09:54
  says. If men don't have a social network within which they can talk or
• 1:09:58
  share their feelings, they might feel cut off and then things can get worse.
• 1:10:03
  This is another thing like if there's instances where people don't feel an immediate
• 1:10:12
  bond or they don't identify an immediate bond with a child that is their biological
• 1:10:17
  child, why wouldn't we expect that to happen with adoptive parents and surrogate parents
• 1:10:26
  or parents of children that where they've had to use a surrogate where they weren't
• 1:10:32
  able to go through the whole pregnancy experience. Maybe they're not biologically related to
• 1:10:39
  the child. Why would why would there not be a different experience than what
• 1:10:46
  is expected, and why would they not need extra support? Yeah, I
• 1:10:55
  don't know. I would hope that that would be seen as kind of an
• 1:10:58
  obvious one, but yeah, um, you know, and and then kind
• 1:11:04
  of just touching on the previous the previous paragraph, I really feel like the
• 1:11:11
  lack of connection thing, you know, for for it being such a common
• 1:11:15
  problem, it's brutal that it's not like a more obvious thing, like it
• 1:11:19
  should be something that's you know, maybe in a handout given before, Like
• 1:11:25
  when when you go to your regular checkups while you're expecting, you know,
• 1:11:30
  be given a handout. It's like, this might not happen immediately for for
• 1:11:33
  both of you, And that's okay. You're not a monster parent, right,
• 1:11:39
  No, I mean, like your baby, for all intents and purposes,
• 1:11:44
  Um, your baby is the most closely related stranger you'll ever meet.
• 1:11:49
  And you know, I mean even even when you're carrying your baby, like
• 1:11:55
  the only personality you get to know is how much the baby moves and how
• 1:12:00
  the baby moves. You don't really get to know a lot of other things
• 1:12:03
  about your baby. And so after immediately after birth, you have your relationship
• 1:12:12
  with your baby as a complete blank slate. You have no history, you
• 1:12:15
  have no understanding of each other. You don't you know nothing about the baby,
• 1:12:19
  and the baby has literally knows nothing like at all. So it's it's
• 1:12:27
  silly for society to just expect there to be this instant bond. And you
• 1:12:33
  know, I mean, there's there's a there's a norm. Right, All
• 1:12:39
  babies are precious. Beautiful babies are precious. Ugly babies are precious. Uh,
• 1:12:44
  you know, babies that are unremarkable in how they look. Are still
• 1:12:47
  babies and they're precious, but there's a difference between recognizing, you know,
• 1:12:53
  a precious, vulnerable human being and having an instant bond. And it's very
• 1:12:58
  disturbing to people when they spect the ladder and all they get is the former,
• 1:13:03
  Like they look at that their baby and they feel the same as they
• 1:13:05
  were looking at any other baby. Yeah, and you know, I,
• 1:13:12
  uh, I was just glad he was alive, and then I passed out.
• 1:13:18
  Like you know how they always I didn't have that moment where immediately after
• 1:13:25
  birth they placed the baby on the the exhausted mother's chest and that that bonding
• 1:13:29
  is supposed to take place. I passed out and I was out for like
• 1:13:34
  eight hours before I even woke up. Um My, my, my baby's
• 1:13:42
  first feeding was formula. And then you know they always are like, oh,
• 1:13:49
  you know, nursing, if you're gonna nurse, you need to you
• 1:13:54
  know, get that started right away. In the hospital, well, he
• 1:13:57
  was dehydrated from the exhaustive labor, and they weren't sure that was not an
• 1:14:03
  infection, so you know, we had to you know how, babies when
• 1:14:09
  they're newborn and they don't have the protection, the blood brain barrier protection that
• 1:14:16
  you have now as an adult. So they're really worried if there's an infection
• 1:14:23
  that it can get into the brain. Like they don't allow any nursing during
• 1:14:28
  that time till they know you don't have an infection and what's going on with
• 1:14:32
  the baby and where it's come from and everything. So I went a whole
• 1:14:35
  day without being able to feed him. So his first whole day's feedings except
• 1:14:42
  for the one he had that we used to determine the fever because he just
• 1:14:47
  wouldn't stop, that was all formula. And then I just switch him to
• 1:14:56
  the breast after that and all of that. If I didn't have people,
• 1:15:01
  they are going, it's okay that this isn't going the way you planned.
• 1:15:05
  It's still gonna you know, he's still gonna be okay, and you can
• 1:15:11
  still, you know, go the way you planned from here on out.
• 1:15:15
  It's not going to damage him for life. That he had formula on his
• 1:15:18
  first day. And you know, even my mom had to sit and say,
• 1:15:23
  you know, just you don't have to do everything all natural. You
• 1:15:26
  know, it's it's okay. Lots of kids are raised on formula and they
• 1:15:30
  turn out just fine, you know, And and I had lots of support
• 1:15:35
  through that whole thing. At no point was anybody like, oh, geez,
• 1:15:41
  you know, your whole early parenthood is wrecked because this didn't go the
• 1:15:46
  way you guys had planned. This didn't go the way you talked about with
• 1:15:49
  a doctor, you know, and all of that. And I think a
• 1:15:54
  lot of times when it's a dad and things he wanted to and were expected
• 1:16:01
  to have happened, or to do for the baby with the baby, for
• 1:16:05
  the mother with the mother don't happen, people just expect him to take it
• 1:16:10
  in stride and they don't have that discussion of you know, maybe this isn't
• 1:16:14
  going to necessarily feel the way you pictured it, but you can still take
• 1:16:18
  joy in it. And if you are really having difficulty, if there's really
• 1:16:24
  a sense of malaise around this, then let's talk to somebody professional about it
• 1:16:30
  and see if you're experiencing, you know, a health condition. Like nobody
• 1:16:36
  does that for dad's like they do for moms. Yeah, and it's it's
• 1:16:42
  such a shame because it really should be you know more obviously it can't be
• 1:16:47
  equal because you know, the mother has just gone through a massively difficult physical
• 1:16:55
  thing, but it should be certainly more equal than it currently is. Yeah,
• 1:17:00
  yeah, it definitely should. The next example they give when James thirty
• 1:17:10
  eight became a father, he felt extremely isolated after he and his partner had
• 1:17:15
  gone through two unsuccessful rounds of IVF he uh and began to look into adoption.
• 1:17:24
  She became pregnant naturally in twenty nineteen and gave birth to their miracle baby
• 1:17:29
  at the height of the COVID pandemic. What a time to go through all
• 1:17:34
  of that And no kidding, it's it's weird, but this is not the
• 1:17:40
  first story that I've heard, either aware or like, the couple can't have
• 1:17:45
  a baby when they're trying to have a baby. They can't get pregnant.
• 1:17:48
  The whole time, they're trying really hard. But as soon as they're like,
• 1:17:51
  Okay, this isn't gonna work, we're just gonna adopt, and they
• 1:17:55
  start ignoring, you know, the stress of trying to have a baby goes
• 1:18:01
  away. You know, they start ignoring all that process. All of a
• 1:18:05
  sudden, they're pregnant, and like, stress can actually really be a prohibitive
• 1:18:12
  factor if you're trying to get pregnant. It is by no means guaranteed birth
• 1:18:15
  control, you know, unless you really want to have a baby, and
• 1:18:19
  then often it is yes, weirdly, so yeah. The lockdowns meant that
• 1:18:26
  we were almost entirely alone, which became really hard. He says, we
• 1:18:31
  had gone through so much to have a child, and I was so excited
• 1:18:35
  for her arrival that I wasn't expecting how tough it might be. It felt
• 1:18:40
  awful sleeping only four or five hours a night. James became deeply affected by
• 1:18:45
  his daughter's screams anticipate, anticipating their arrival, and sometimes hearing noises when there
• 1:18:53
  were none. It felt like there was no escape, especially since we couldn't
• 1:18:58
  even really go outside. He said. Everyone else was having their own difficult
• 1:19:01
  experiences of COVID, so there wasn't much space to share how I was feeling.
• 1:19:06
  I kept everything inside and began to dread the long nights and this again,
• 1:19:14
  like the sense of everybody else has it worse, or everyone else has
• 1:19:17
  their own problems. Mine don't matter, and I shouldn't talk about them,
• 1:19:25
  Like that's a thing society tells men all the time. Every you know,
• 1:19:29
  everybody else's problems are bigger or as big as yours. Just you know,
• 1:19:34
  tuck them underneath the rug and keep right on going, suck it up and
• 1:19:40
  drive on. Um. But in a situation like this, there's there's a
• 1:19:45
  need to actually have a discussion about this. There's a need to actually step
• 1:19:49
  up and say, you know, I'm having a really rough time here.
• 1:19:54
  Is there something that can be done to help? You know, can can
• 1:19:57
  we get some support, even if it's just being able to tell everybody this
• 1:20:03
  is what I'm going through and having somebody say, gosh, you know that
• 1:20:06
  really that sucks, and you know, if you need to talk about it,
• 1:20:14
  I'm here to listen, you know, ventum or you know, I
• 1:20:18
  can, I can take the baby for a few hours so you can have
• 1:20:21
  a nap. I know that during the COVID crisis, there wasn't a lot
• 1:20:28
  of you know, permission for people to go visit, permission for people to
• 1:20:31
  go outside. But I think in a situation where um, you know,
• 1:20:36
  somebody could could experience a mental health condition because of it, perhaps a doctor
• 1:20:42
  could have prescribed some some alone time and that might have made a difference,
• 1:20:48
  maybe a little bit. It's a and that's another one dividing the time right
• 1:20:58
  if if um, it's hard to if the husband is working outside the home,
• 1:21:06
  it's hard to find a time where the wife can sleep because she doesn't
• 1:21:15
  want to take away his night's sleep before work, and and then she doesn't
• 1:21:20
  want to take away his only recreation time, relaxation time when he gets home.
• 1:21:27
  But there has to be some point during the day where she can get
• 1:21:30
  a solid you know, like six hours or so of sleep where the kid
• 1:21:34
  isn't waking her every every couple hours to eat or something. And then you
• 1:21:41
  know, then it's the same thing with the dad, like he's constantly understressed.
• 1:21:45
  There has to be somewhere along the line there has to be a solid,
• 1:21:50
  you know, five or six hours of sleep at night where he doesn't
• 1:21:55
  hear the baby cry. And it's really tough if you're stuck at home.
• 1:22:00
  Yeah, yeah, and I mean during that time, you know, not
• 1:22:04
  having access to like parental assistance, that would be a big challenge. But
• 1:22:12
  yeah, you know, when I was a new mom, i was living
• 1:22:17
  in a two story house, so I could at least go take a nap
• 1:22:23
  on a different floor than while my mom sat with the baby. Or you
• 1:22:30
  know, when my husband came for the weekend. You know, we could
• 1:22:34
  we could do that as well, like where I could go take a nap
• 1:22:38
  upstairs and he would have the baby downstairs, and he could take a nap
• 1:22:42
  upstairs and I could have the baby downstairs. But I think a lot of
• 1:22:45
  times people don't have that. You know, when you're in a new relationship,
• 1:22:49
  you probably have if you're fortunate you have a two bedroom home and you
• 1:22:57
  know our apartment and your baby's not sleeping in the same room with you,
• 1:23:02
  um, but a lot of young couples do have the baby sleeping in the
• 1:23:06
  same room with them for the first year, and you don't get sleep under
• 1:23:12
  that circumstance because you know, especially if you're like me, I was paranoid
• 1:23:15
  about SIDS, and yeah, asthma runs in my family too, so I
• 1:23:20
  was paranoid about that as well. Every noise woke me up, and yeah,
• 1:23:28
  that's it's not an easy thing to be going through. And I think
• 1:23:31
  like, once you start getting on edge, you know, that happens to
• 1:23:34
  a lot of people because you start hearing every little thing, and even then
• 1:23:39
  you know when you're not hearing anything. Sometimes the not hearing anything, it's
• 1:23:43
  like, are you okay? Are you okay, I gotta go get up
• 1:23:45
  and go check on you. Oh yeah, yep, And and it it
• 1:23:51
  is um one of those things you have to really work on. Like,
• 1:23:55
  you know, you have done everything that you can possibly do. You know
• 1:24:00
  you've done everything right. You have to trust that it's going to work,
• 1:24:04
  and like that's that's. Uh, you can't not sleep because the baby needs
• 1:24:13
  a parent that's awake when the baby's awake. Yeah, but yeah that having
• 1:24:19
  COVID, the COVID crisis on top of that, and you know what we
• 1:24:24
  know now makes it even worse. But Ian Coleman, a therapist with the
• 1:24:31
  Counseling Directory, describes the doom loop that he encounters with new fathers who come
• 1:24:38
  to him for help. Men can have these traditionally masculine notions of needing to
• 1:24:43
  cope, which means they don't talk about their feelings, and then they feel
• 1:24:47
  guilt at not doing well, which makes the depression worse. He says,
• 1:24:53
  caring for yourself can be seen as selfish, but it's necessary. Men often
• 1:24:58
  don't have a road map for fatherhood, and they might not want to repeat
• 1:25:02
  how their own fathers were, so they need perspective to understand that their lives
• 1:25:06
  are objectively difficult in these moments. And I think it's not just traditionalism that
• 1:25:13
  is a problem there, like the man's own traditionalism. People ask women how
• 1:25:19
  we're doing, People check on us, people give us advice, often unsolicited,
• 1:25:29
  sometimes unappreciated even but we get to connect with the people around us over
• 1:25:36
  a communal like a community partnership around our child rearing experience and making it as
• 1:25:47
  effective as possible, you know, in terms of maintaining the welfare of the
• 1:25:51
  child and also making it a positive experience. And yeah, we also run
• 1:25:57
  into criticism. You always have the overly iCal female family member that thinks you're
• 1:26:02
  not doing it right because that's not how they did it, or that's not
• 1:26:04
  how their mother did it or whatever. But for the most part, we
• 1:26:10
  have a pretty positive experience with people around us offering us help, doing you
• 1:26:16
  know, the advising, listening to what we have to say about our experiences
• 1:26:20
  and everything. People don't ask men how they're doing, or if they do,
• 1:26:29
  people ask, but they don't intend for men to give an honest answer.
• 1:26:35
  And that has to change. It can't just be on the guide to
• 1:26:38
  talk about his feelings. It has beyond people to listen. It has it
• 1:26:42
  beyond people to intend to know, like that's a big deal, especially if
• 1:26:51
  his answer isn't. Everything's great, Like even if all you can do is
• 1:26:58
  listen and and maybe say gosh, you know that sounds really rough and refer
• 1:27:05
  him to somebody else or at just confirm, just validate that, yeah,
• 1:27:11
  that that seems pretty rough. Um, you're not You're not wrong, Like
• 1:27:18
  listen, be ready to listen, be ready to you know, ask how
• 1:27:23
  he's doing, yeah, exactly, Actually actually care about the answer that you
• 1:27:29
  get. Don't just do the generic how you doing okay by yeah, and
• 1:27:35
  you know, don't treat him giving you an honest answer like it's a weakness
• 1:27:42
  because that was hard for him, and you know, doing something that's hard
• 1:27:48
  doesn't indicate weakness ever. James says his father was largely absent, busy at
• 1:28:00
  work when he was growing up. He was determined to be more hands on
• 1:28:05
  with his daughter, even if he was struggling. I didn't even know men
• 1:28:09
  could get postnatal depression. But as the lockdowns lifted and I reconnected with friends
• 1:28:15
  and family, I asked the other dads I knew about their experiences, and
• 1:28:18
  they began telling me how hard it had been for them too. He says,
• 1:28:26
  this is something but my dad went through because his dad was absent and
• 1:28:32
  like for the first five years of his life, he did not have a
• 1:28:35
  dad at home, and then he had a Stepdad says, this is during
• 1:28:42
  a time when divorce was really unusual too, and he grew up in a
• 1:28:45
  blended family. And my dad his way of handling that was every day was
• 1:28:54
  take your daughter to work day. Like, he showed me his career,
• 1:29:00
  his careers because he had two simultaneous ones. Taught me photography from the time
• 1:29:05
  I was two years old, you know, and my brother had different things
• 1:29:10
  that he wanted to do with Dad. He didn't want to learn photography,
• 1:29:13
  but he wanted to learn baseball, he wanted to learn football, he wanted
• 1:29:17
  to learn you know, supporting activities, and that's really like Dad really put
• 1:29:25
  a lot of energy into that, and he was exhausted a lot, and
• 1:29:30
  I think if he'd had a different wife than my mom, he would not
• 1:29:32
  have survived it. Mom knew that was important to him, and she put
• 1:29:36
  a lot of energy into making sure it could happen. Yeah, you know,
• 1:29:44
  it's so important to kind of support the you know, that the father
• 1:29:48
  in getting time to do those things for himself, right, and a notice
• 1:29:54
  what's important to him about his relationship with his kids and facilitate that. Yeah.
• 1:30:00
  Yeah, um, and I think a lot of dads it is hard
• 1:30:04
  for them because nobody asks and nobody accommodates. The pressure James had been feeling
• 1:30:15
  began to subside as and he felt as if he could parent on his own
• 1:30:18
  terms. Looking back now, I can't believe there isn't more awareness about the
• 1:30:23
  issue and that there aren't more resources available since it seems so common, he
• 1:30:29
  says, Yeah, the the go on, I was sorry, I was
• 1:30:35
  I was going to say, I think that, you know, like I
• 1:30:40
  as for many, many, many men's services, I feel like there there
• 1:30:45
  needs to be more resources allocated to them because they're you know, there there's
• 1:30:50
  so much care and concern dedicated to women's needs in pretty much most spheres of
• 1:30:57
  life, and this is just yea to another one where you know, even
• 1:31:01
  though you know naturally this is uh like, there are special concerns that need
• 1:31:09
  to be afforded to the mother in this case, of course, but there
• 1:31:12
  should be more focus put on the father. So yeah, and honestly,
• 1:31:17
  it's it's it's in everybody's best interest, you know, it's especially it's in
• 1:31:24
  the father's best interest. This might save a life. It's like I said,
• 1:31:28
  in the age group that is most likely a man is most likely to
• 1:31:32
  be in when he becomes a new father for the very first time. Like,
• 1:31:38
  that's that age group. Suicide is the biggest killer of men. And
• 1:31:45
  so we're learning about a type of depression that men experienced. It has been
• 1:31:49
  ignored up till now. There definitely need to be This is an area where
• 1:31:57
  there needs to be resources. And I wouldn't just trust the government for it
• 1:32:01
  because you know, you think about it. You know, you call for
• 1:32:04
  help and you get put on a waiting list, Like what the hell,
• 1:32:06
  how's that going? How's that going to help? Right? But you have
• 1:32:10
  community services that are not government related. You have your friend groups, and
• 1:32:16
  for people who are religious, they have their church groups. Um. One
• 1:32:21
  of the things that the church that I grew up in did, and this
• 1:32:26
  was you know, like you know the megachurches and the I guess you could
• 1:32:30
  say chain churches where they're all really connected with each other and everything. This
• 1:32:35
  was a little country bumpkin church, right. Um, we had if we
• 1:32:42
  were lucky, Like we had a really busy Sunday off. Fifty people showed
• 1:32:46
  up and we had um you know, fathers organized activities together with the fathers
• 1:32:56
  and the church and their kids, and you know, my dad went to
• 1:33:00
  those with my brother and me. But that was dad's working together to support
• 1:33:05
  each other's parenting. And I think that's kind of unheard of anymore. It's
• 1:33:12
  fallen by the wayside. But I think it was very important to a lot
• 1:33:15
  of the men in my church when I was growing up. And I think
• 1:33:18
  a lot of a lot of people don't recognize just how valuable that can be
• 1:33:28
  to individual dads, especially if like my friend who when we were kids,
• 1:33:34
  his father passed away when he was sixteen years old. When he had his
• 1:33:40
  kids, he could not go ask his father for advice. He couldn't talk
• 1:33:45
  to him at all about it. He could only remember, like I can't
• 1:33:50
  count how many times I went to my parents for advice when I was a
• 1:33:55
  new parent, right, I asked my parents for advice. I asked my
• 1:33:58
  husband's parents for advice, you know, like that was I asked my friends
• 1:34:02
  who were parents before me for advice, Like I you you just do.
• 1:34:09
  It's you're not. It's even if you're an arrogant asshole like me about everything
• 1:34:14
  else in life, when it's your child you want advice, I guess there's
• 1:34:19
  no other way for me to put that. And having that network, like
• 1:34:24
  you know, my my friend had friends that he went to, He talked
• 1:34:28
  to his mom, you know, he talked to his brother in law,
• 1:34:31
  but he didn't have his dad. And having a church network. It's not
• 1:34:36
  a replacement for dad, but it's a support that you might need if you
• 1:34:43
  can't go to your dad. My dad really couldn't ask his dad for advice
• 1:34:46
  either, but he had a family member that he was very close to,
• 1:34:50
  an uncle that he did ask, you know, like he asked his brother
• 1:34:57
  as well. You know, that was something that you know he was able
• 1:35:00
  to do. But yeah, you just have to have something. Yeah.
• 1:35:08
  And incidentally, um, speaking of relevant relevant situations, UM, I know
• 1:35:17
  that the father of my children is going to be requiring my own assistance here
• 1:35:24
  pretty shortly in getting getting my two girls ready for bed. So I'm gonna
• 1:35:29
  have to be leaving right away here. But that's okay. It's nine o'clock,
• 1:35:33
  so it's about well, it's nine oh six. Holy crap, it's
• 1:35:36
  about twenty minutes till we would normally want to start them the after show.
• 1:35:44
  I'm gonna I'm gonna read like these last three paragraphs really quick, but I
• 1:35:48
  think what we've what we've done, and I'm not going to like go through
• 1:35:53
  and comment on all of them, um, but it's it's sort of a
• 1:35:58
  conclusion and then I'll end it there, So we should be done in like
• 1:36:01
  two minutes here. The P and D support charity PANDAS has seen its private
• 1:36:09
  Facebook group for new fathers grow to eight hundred members since it was established in
• 1:36:14
  twenty twenty. There has been a slow but steady increase in people reaching out
• 1:36:18
  to as support services specifically for men, says Annie Blasco or that's Belasco,
• 1:36:26
  who runs the charity. She says the mental health of new dads is often
• 1:36:30
  overlooked, with twenty five percent to fifty percent of fathers experiencing anxiety or depression.
• 1:36:34
  When the mother has also has a pre perinatal mental illness, the demand
• 1:36:42
  will only grow. Baldwin agrees, noting the need for more resources. We
• 1:36:46
  need national guidance to assess fathers routinely. Health visiting numbers in England have dropped
• 1:36:51
  by forty percent since twenty fifteen end. With this disvestment, we struggle to
• 1:36:59
  identify fathers who need more support. She says. Between eight percent and ten
• 1:37:04
  percent of fathers might experience p and D, but those are the only ones,
• 1:37:10
  or are only the ones we know about. The real figure could be
• 1:37:14
  higher as research into men's mental health develops, the studies finding that fathers go
• 1:37:19
  through hormonal changes, or with studies finding after birth, it seems clear that
• 1:37:26
  awareness of the realities of fatherhood needs to be increased. The stigma is still
• 1:37:31
  prevalent, as evidence by the fact that each man I spoke to about their
• 1:37:36
  experiences did not want to share their full name. It's difficult to admit that
• 1:37:43
  something as natural as fatherhood has been so hard for you, but it feels
• 1:37:47
  important to do it, Lewis says. US dads need to look after ourselves
• 1:37:51
  as well as our partners and kids. Five years after that emergency C section,
• 1:37:56
  Lewis's son has started school and Lewis and his wife have had an other
• 1:38:00
  child. I love them both so deeply, he says, even though it
• 1:38:03
  has been really tough at points, they are the best parts of my life.
• 1:38:09
  And that is it. That's the end of the article. So it
• 1:38:11
  does help to know that there are social media resources. But I think that
• 1:38:17
  this is something new, a new area that the men's movement can also step
• 1:38:24
  into. Yeah, absolutely so, and thanks again Prim for coming on.
• 1:38:30
  This is a moderately long sausage, not too bad, and hopefully we can
• 1:38:35
  have you on again sometime soon. I know your life is kind of upended
• 1:38:41
  right now with all that, but I'm hoping that after the the the exam
• 1:38:45
  which I write and hopefully pass in two weeks, so after that, hopefully
• 1:38:53
  things should free up a little bit. So everybody send Prim well wishes for
• 1:38:58
  the exam, and we will definitely I'll definitely be in touch to try to
• 1:39:04
  make sure we get you on again after that. Sounds good, all right,
• 1:39:10
  and we will talk to you later. I'm gonna stay on because I'm
• 1:39:12
  going to be going through some looking for super chows, so but I know
• 1:39:15
  you have to go, so I will do you later, all right,
• 1:39:19
  Thank you so much, and by everybody, I'll try and be back again
• 1:39:23
  soon. Bye. Okay, and I am just going to a really quick
• 1:39:31
  look. I don't know if I actually have any um super super choose.
• 1:39:39
  I've gotten to the end of the super Chats and I'm going we our discord.
• 1:39:46
  We were just talking about this before the show. Our discord is it
• 1:39:50
  just seems like it gets bigger every time I might try to scroll through it.
• 1:39:56
  Um, there we go, super Chow Channel. So we do have
• 1:39:59
  something here. Hopefully if there is anything I need to pass on to PRIM,
• 1:40:04
  I will, But here we go. Okay, so we got Meredith
• 1:40:12
  g gave us five dollars and said, HBr Talk two sixty three, Thanks
• 1:40:15
  for the great conversation. Nice to see Prim. She's been missed. Um
• 1:40:20
  and uh teflon. Saul also said, nice to see Prim on for another
• 1:40:25
  show. And that is all the super Chows And I don't know if we
• 1:40:29
  have anything, but I will pass both of those on to prem Um.
• 1:40:33
  I don't know if we have anything on Rumble. We don't get a lot
• 1:40:38
  of Rumble comments. We do have mhmm uh yeah. One one commenter,
• 1:40:53
  um, I think that's pronounced ave Hun said fifty people. My current church
• 1:40:59
  hasn't broken passed fifteen in attendance in about twenty years. L ol. I
• 1:41:02
  don't know how they haven't close. Actually, that sounds like a good,
• 1:41:05
  close knit church. Um, I believe it or not. If you have
• 1:41:10
  people dedicated people going to that church even though it's that tiny, it's they're
• 1:41:15
  probably they probably are a really good church family. When I got married to
• 1:41:20
  my husband, um my my in law, my uncle in law. If
• 1:41:30
  I if I just say my uncle, everybody thinks it's on my mom's mom
• 1:41:32
  or dad's side of the families. My husband's uncle technically performed the wedding and
• 1:41:39
  his church is tiny and most of the members of the church are family members.
• 1:41:45
  Um, so it's it's similar to that. And we got married,
• 1:41:54
  like we got married on a Sunday morning, in between between the church ceremony
• 1:42:00
  I think, and the an activity they had afterward. So it was just
• 1:42:05
  kind of a really quick when we made it legal. But yeah, little
• 1:42:12
  churches, it was a very comfortable place to be and people who just were
• 1:42:18
  there for the activity after the wedding, you know, came and watched us
• 1:42:25
  get married, and then you know, came up and congratulated us and hugged
• 1:42:28
  us when there were some people there we didn't know. Little churches are great.
• 1:42:33
  But in any case, I think that is all the really neat chats
• 1:42:41
  that we have, although mister three or three did say prim everybody is happy
• 1:42:46
  this year and hopefully like I'll be able to get her to come back more
• 1:42:51
  often after her schedule freeze up a little bit. We've missed her on here
• 1:42:56
  too, But with that I will thank everybody for listening and thank everybody who
• 1:43:01
  works in the background to make HBr talk happen and good Idol