Hi Anita

Thank you for being gentle with me. Your questions are fair, you are just trying to better understand the situation.

My understanding of her is that she is known to have a bit of a temper.

My husband empathised with her feeling attacked because I reached out to her instead of letting him handle the situation. He was upset that I didn’t let him handle things, which I can understand. I’ve never done that before. I shouldn’t have.

He never used to say mean things before the baby.

It has been difficult for a while, not just because of the baby, post postpartum depression, lack of support and sleep deprivation. The baby was unplanned and it took him a while to adjust to the idea of being a father. At the same time as the pregnancy we had to deal with a lot of stressors. A visa, homelessness, moving to a new house, a pet dying. At the same time, I was having a breakdown.

For most of my life, I was afraid of having a baby because of trauma. During the pregnancy, I was afraid of breastfeeding, I was afraid of seeing infant nudity in a parental care role, I was afraid of labour, I was afraid of being a bad mother.

Because of his beliefs in Traditional Chinese Medicine, he took on this idea that he was not allowed to argue with me or it could affect the nature of the baby. He resented not discussing his feelings during the pregnancy.

Then after the pregnancy, the birth was quite traumatic. Which caused conflict and the arguments began. Then my IUD failed and that caused more arguments because he was afraid of having another baby. We argued about general stuff like sleep, childcare and housework responsibilities. I had difficulties with intrusive thoughts in my son’s early life that caused difficulties too. It took me a long time to recover from the birth too. My husband was upset because he felt left out of the decision making process with our son too.

They say that 90% of couples argue after a birth and 50% of relationships fail because of one. It has just been a lot of stress to deal with all around. If your partner has postpartum depression, you are more likely to get it too. I think that we both have it.

We are both just very fed up. Life has been hard for a while and the arguing makes things even harder. He misses his family a lot. Even more so, now he has a child. He wishes that they could help. He wishes that they could have more of a relationship with his son. He misses his friends.

I was inspired! ❤️

That is a good tip that thinking keeps you awake. I will have to try to calm my mind and go back to sleep too. I hope that this new discovery makes sleep a lot easier for you!

Love and best wishes, always! ❤️🙏