When Postpartum Depression Stole My Husband

I thought only new moms could get mood disorders. But dads like Rob can get it, too.

In 2014, just a few weeks after we returned from our sailing trip across the Pacific, Rob began suffering from insomnia, paralyzing indecision and panic attacks. I was six months pregnancy, and didn’t understand what was happening. Rob had always been the even-keeled one, the one singing aloud in the grocery store and keeping his cool in crises. Neither of us had any previous experience with mental illness.

I attributed Rob’s symptoms to the fact that we were adjusting back life in the United States after spending a year abroad, both of us stressed as we searched for jobs and prepared to become parents.

I had hoped that everything would get better after the baby came, that seeing his son’s face would reset the broken parts of Rob’s mind. Instead, everything shattered into finer pieces — he became sullen and suicidal, convinced that he was doomed.

Although Rob was eventually diagnosed with general anxiety disorder and severe depression, the psychiatrist never linked the illnesses to the changes associated with becoming a father…even though research has shown that up to one-quarter of American dads are afflicted with postpartum mental illness.

This month I shared our story in The Washington Post. Although I don’t go into the backstory of Rob’s illness (our year footloose and fancy-free, hitchhiking on sailboats in the tropics!), our experience sailing the Pacific is forever juxtaposed against the following year, spent in a sea of mental anguish. My memoir details both years, and I hope to find a publisher for it soon.

Meanwhile, I hope you’ll read the short version of our story here, and share it with other families who might be suffering from parental mental illness in silence.

In lighter-hearted news, I’ve started a new blog called Adventure Families. If you’d like to continue reading my stories about exploring outside with kids, sign up here to receive posts in your inbox. This blog will be dormant for a while as I focus on the new one 🙂