
As told to Shona Hendley.
Two years ago, my wife *Ally and I welcomed our first child into the world – a beautiful, healthy baby boy named *Billy.
To say we were smitten would be an understatement; Billy absolutely stole our hearts and changed our world forever.
Because Ally had an emergency c-section, she stayed in the hospital with Billy for just under a week, but each day I would go in and spend from 8am – 8pm with them, I just couldn’t keep away and I didn’t want to miss a moment.
Watch: Facts about postnatal depression. Post continues below.
When they arrived home though, everything changed.
While my absolute adoration for my son of course was there, I noticed with the interrupted sleep at night that I was becoming overwhelmingly tired. It hit me quite fast.
While Ally managed to be up to feed Billy and then get back to sleep, I often struggled to. I would hear every noise that he made and then I would worry if he was okay, if what I was hearing was normal. I just couldn’t switch off.
Despite being tired as well, Ally managed to take everything in her stride. You would never know she was up three or four times a night with a newborn – she remained able to focus, to give Billy her energy and she was so happy.
I, on the other hand, was becoming increasingly the opposite.
After about three weeks of feeling exhausted, I was also incredibly irritable. I had very little patience with anything, which is unlike me. I also started to eat junk food that I normally never had, I stopped exercising, I just had no motivation to do anything and the realisation that I was going back to work the following week seemed too much. I was absolutely dreading it.