“I was relieved by the precence of the doula. “
“After the birth of my second child, my partner had a real slack the day after giving birth. Breastfeeding hurt her a lot, she was crying and asking for my presence. I remember feeling rather helpless. I had to manage the administrative aspect and take care of our 4 year old eldest daughter. I brought her what she asked of me: homeo granules, creams…, but nothing was right. Finally, our doula (who had done the preparation for childbirth) came to the maternity ward. She spent time with my wife and I think it made her feel good. I was relieved because I really didn’t know what to do anymore. ” Matthieu, father of two children, 4 years old and 1 year old.
“She couldn’t stop crying. “
“Two days after coming home with our first baby, I was surprised by the baby blues. My partner kept crying, the slightest problem took on catastrophic proportions. Usually, she’s not the cheeky type. But I did not worry: I felt that she was in a particular state of fragility. Suddenly, I tried to do the maximum to relieve her, that is to say to take care of everything else so that she only had to give the feedings and that she took naps during the day. But even that, it made her cry: she felt like she was doing nothing else! ”
Damien, dad of a 2 year old child.
30 to 75% of young mothers would go through a baby-blues following the birth of their baby. In, “Baby-blues and postnatal depression” Cindy Fernandes 2012
“I held it up for both of us!” “
“My daughter breathed amniotic fluid when she was born. They had to resuscitate her. For ten minutes, no one spoke to us. I didn’t know if she was alive or not. I was terrified, but I didn’t show anything. When I knew she was alive, I burst into tears. In the days that followed, I saw that my partner was not doing well: because of the lack of sleep and the breastfeeding which hurt her. Me, I was holding out for both of us. After a month and a half, when she started to emerge a little from the tunnel, it was I who sank. I had a kind of depression for a year. I think it was the aftermath of the terrible fear I had of losing my daughter at birth. ”
Julien, father of two children, 5 years and 18 months old.
In video: Symptoms of the baby blues
Expert opinion: Dr Paul Marciano, child psychiatrist, doctor in psychology and psychoanalyst.
“We may not say it enough: there is a psychological gap between pregnancy and childbirth. The couple will experience a major upheaval at the time of the birth. The personality of the woman, before childbirth, does not give any indication of what it will be after the birth. This is perhaps why some fathers during the testimonies are surprised by the intensity of the baby-blues. The father at the same time discovers a new aspect of his companion, perhaps more fragile. As for the third testimony, the father was confronted with great anguish which he preferred to manage alone. It highlights the vulnerability of some men to childbirth, which sometimes has an anxiety-provoking dimension. It’s a shame that this father was left alone and didn’t want to meet a perinatal psychologist to talk about what he went through. Generally speaking, I think that childbirth professionals must continue to assiduously prepare couples for what they are going to experience. One of the fathers talks about how helpless he felt. At that point, he stepped back to leave his mate in the hands of another woman, a doula. The woman can also see a midwife to talk about her childbirth again. In short, it is useful to get help from a perinatal professional so that the duration of this baby-blues is contained, like what usually happens. “