Postnatal Dad

This week's Mr. Perfect Blog is written by David Graham.

Depending on how you count it, Dave is embarking on his 3^rd or 4^th career. After completing postgraduate research in mathematics he spent the next decade working for Defence, which included deployments to Afghanistan and the Middle East. He’s now a junior doctor, a research fellow, a fiction writer, and loving life as a second time Dad.

I started writing this Mr. P post the day my son was born. I thought I’d write about postnatal depression and anxiety, as well as postpartum psychosis, in men. I thought I’d write about how the baby blues is so common that it’s normal. I thought I’d write about how depression, anxiety and psychosis are less common with the second child, but that relationships start to suffer.

Good stuff, good thoughts.

There’s familiar landscape with the second child. The same challenges re-surface, but thrown into the mix are shifts in family dynamics. And young children are faced with some big existential challenges that you need to help them navigate. My daughter has met these challenges with grace and with humour, but she’s had some difficult days.

One thing was certain: I’d be more valuable this time around. As a first time dad, the first 6-8 weeks are spent on the sidelines as mum and bub are playing the main game. I found it lonely and exhausting. There wasn’t much I could do but spectate and cheerlead. And change nappies and do loads and loads and loads of washing.

Then the smiles come and you take on the vital role of “the Other.” Then being a dad is really fun.

As a second time dad, you get to play primary caregiver for your firstborn. On the one hand I was mentally prepared for the realities of a newborn son. On the other hand I was able to spend more time caring for my three year old daughter and help her navigate her new life as a big sister. Dad to a newborn has joyful relief.

The post would write itself. Simple.

As prepared as I thought I was, reality was I was kidding myself. Babies may come with a rule book, the problem is they can’t read. And toddlers and pre-schoolers are learning to re-write their own rule books.

The sleep deprivation of a newborn can be so relentless. We were reminded of things that we’d forgotten the first time around. But this time we couldn’t sleep when our son slept, we had to care for our beautiful daughter as well. Throw into the mix my own career has leaped forward (and we’re both a little older than last time) things started to pile up quickly.

After I returned from paternity leave, I started working difficult 60 hour weeks in the ED, running on 4 hours fractured sleep laced with caffeine and chocolate. The demands of my medical registration meant that I couldn’t take any more time off if I’d wanted to. I had reviewer comments for a paper to address, another one under review, and a couple of systematic reviews to work on, and another degree to start. There was also my novel, but it was always a slow cook.

I desperately wanted to relieve the pressure on my wife. She’d just delivered a baby and was exhausted from breastfeeding. The hormonal rollercoaster she was riding looked frightening. She was amazing and inspirational and exhausted, it was all that I could do. I wanted to do the lion’s share of the housework. I wanted to be full-time dad to our daughter. I wanted to feed our son when possible so that she could have the sleep she desperately needed.

I was trying to be everything, I was trying to be Mr. Perfect.

But I was conflating physical presence with emotional presence, and I’d achieved neither. I left me frustrated and burning out.

I was frustrated at the pileup on my To Do list. Frustrated at my lost opportunity to bond with my son. Frustrated when everything we’d try to console my son wouldn’t work. Frustrated by the lack of time I had to play with my daughter. Frustrated by resorting to use Netflix as a babysitter. Frustrated by the terrible and frozen meals that we were eating. Frustrated at my lost sleep. Frustrated at my lack of exercise. Frustrated at having no opportunity to debrief difficult days. Frustrated at my frustration.

There were moments when my son would cry for no apparent reason other than he was a newborn. We’d lay him down for a nappy change and he’d scream like a pterodactyl that you’d think we were abusing him. His world is a world of unknown experiences. It’s big and it’s scary. All he wanted was comfort and to be reassured that he was safe, he’d give such warm good cuddles in return. He simply didn’t have the frontal lobe development to break his stress-response at being laid down.

My mounting sleep debt was eating away at my own frontal lobe function. So my own stress-response system would be activated. My ability to gently soothe him was negated and I’m sure he could pick up on my stress. I can’t tell you how many times I had to hand him off to my wife or put him down on the bed to walk away so that I could breathe.

At my wife’s insistence, I reached out to PANDA.

I don’t normally talk things out. I like to write and I like to cook and I like to work out. I think that’s why I (guiltily?) struggle to find time to make it to Mr. P meetups, yet I find it so easy to write for the Mr. P blog.

While I was thinking about writing this piece, Sanil Rege published a fantastic post about postnatal depression in men on PsychSceneHub. In fact it was the day after my son was born. He opened with the pointed observation that “depression has a lower prevalence in men than in women [but this] may be due to the gender biases in seeking help.”

Guilty.

I found it hard to talk at first. But just sound-boarding with the PANDA counsellor for an hour gave me the clarity that I needed. As with most men, I felt the burden of the patriarchy writ large, it’s demand for sacrifice: my role in society is to be both provider and protector, to be a rock. Rocks don’t talk. This magnified my own perceptions of securing my career by taking on additional research as well as enrolling in yet another degree.

The PANDA counsellor was delightful. She so deftly reflected a lot of what I’d opened up about, but one thing she observed knocked me for a six: some of my thoughts and fears were typical of a primary caregiver. I wanted to nurture this little boy. I wanted to care for my wife and my daughter. And I’d forgotten myself in that equation.

Being a father is another expression of caregiving. Part of this expression may indeed be to provide and to protect, but these are just consequences of caregiving, not the goals of fatherhood. My ballooning sleep debt and my burgeoning frustration were short-circuiting this expression of caregiving, deepening the frustration. It’s so easy to retreat into work under to banner of providing for my family.

I felt as if I was Istanbul, standing astride two continents of parenthood.

I knew what I had to do. I needed to prioritise. I needed to bond. I needed to reflect.

The next day, my wife took our daughter out while I stayed at home with my son. We smiled. We cooed. We slept. I sang. He pissed on me. We bonded. With bonding came a deepening of my empathy and my love for my son.

With better sleep rostering, things are much clearer. Those magical smiles and the delightful coos give life a special sheen, and it’ll get brighter.

Sound-boarding my frustrations has also unearthed a number of my own issues with my father. I have a son now. The tone of my relationship with him is so coloured by my relationship with my father that I can already see the difference in my style with him compared with my daughter.

Some subterranean part of me has me hold him like a six pack of beer, whereas I held my daughter like a flower. So I know there is something. I don’t want to psychoanalyse myself on a page, the awareness is enough at the moment; I have time to untangle it and deconstruct it towards a more positive expression for my children.

One thing is clear to me: while we are certain to make mistakes with our children, we can only learn from those of our parents and fold in the things they did right and set our own tone. This I can only do from the small flat patch of ground that I stand on; my son and my daughter will be the judges of what I will do well and how I will fail them.

All we can do is grow together.