Question for the fellas regarding supporting ill partner

Hi there

I was happily married until 2004. We got married in 1998 and had a pretty rough time, losing our firstborn to stillbirth in 2001 then having a high risk pregnancy with our 2nd daughter, who is now a beautiful 5 yr old. When our 5 yr old was 8 weeks old, i developed postnatal depression. All the grief of losing my daughter, the stress of being in hospital for months trying to keep my 2nd daughter alive all came tumbling out. I was pretty ill for quite a while but i always looked after my baby, just didnt look after myself. I was under the care of a mental health team and was seen each week by a CPN.
But instead of supporting me, my (now ex) husband completely turned on me. He treated me like i was a fruitcake, an attention seeker and a rubbish wife. He also turned my family against me too.

I finally had enough in 2004 and left, we got divorced in 2006. I'm at a loss as to why he turned on me when i was at my most vunerable. We managed to pull together after the death of our daughter but not my pnd. Was he being completely selfish or was i partly to blame? If your partner developed pnd, would you support her whatever problems the illness caused? Would see her as being ill or just being a pain in the neck?

I'm happily engaged to a wonderful man now and things have settled down since the divorce and custody battle. But i'll always wonder 'why' he treated me like he did.

What are your thoughts?

thanks

Your not to blame at all. Nearly every woman gets pnd or on the edge of getting it. Your ex doesn't seem very nice and he should of supported you. Least you are getting yourself sorted out, congrates about the engagement. Have you tried talking to your family at all??

I would support my BF and anyone else I knew if they suffered.

im sorry u went thru that hun

men are very hard to work out, i think illness frigthens them, they feel like a spare part, they dont know how to treat you etc.. if they try too hard they think they aint givin u space but if they dont try hard enough we tend to blame them for not caring!


As i dont know ur ex. im not sure why he treated you like that, remeber he was hurting thru the loss of your DD too, maybe he felt u didnt give him enough attention thru it all coz u got ill with pnd and he felt he had to move on quicker then you! Im not sure hun, i hope that makes sense!


lots of love xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Kelly_Cait said:
Your not to blame at all. Nearly every woman gets pnd or on the edge of getting it. Your ex doesn't seem very nice and he should of supported you. Least you are getting yourself sorted out, congrates about the engagement. Have you tried talking to your family at all??

I would support my BF and anyone else I knew if they suffered.

My family turned against me too, my mother, father and just about everyone else. Seems that i wasnt allowed to be ill after having a baby i waited 10 yrs and should've been a total 'earth mother'...

I havent spoken to my mother since the day she put her signature to a court statement accusing me of being an 'unfit' mother due to having pnd... which luckily was blown out the water by the judge but the damage was done...she can rot.

glittergirl said:

Kelly_Cait said:
Your not to blame at all. Nearly every woman gets pnd or on the edge of getting it. Your ex doesn't seem very nice and he should of supported you. Least you are getting yourself sorted out, congrates about the engagement. Have you tried talking to your family at all??

I would support my BF and anyone else I knew if they suffered.

My family turned against me too, my mother, father and just about everyone else. Seems that i wasnt allowed to be ill after having a baby i waited 10 yrs and should've been a total 'earth mother'...

I havent spoken to my mother since the day she put her signature to a court statement accusing me of being an 'unfit' mother due to having pnd... which luckily was blown out the water by the judge but the damage was done...she can rot.

O, sorry to hear that, but your doing the right thing, all you can do is prove to your family that your a good mother, which you are. I don't know what I would of done if that was me. Seems like you've got your life back together and your fiance will support you.

Take care

Hayley said:
im sorry u went thru that hun

men are very hard to work out, i think illness frigthens them, they feel like a spare part, they dont know how to treat you etc.. if they try too hard they think they aint givin u space but if they dont try hard enough we tend to blame them for not caring!

Hi

I agree with this. With my wife leaving me at the moment partly because she felt suffocated by me. I felt that I was doing the right thing by being there, and the few times I did something for myself I felt like it was not approved of. It is difficult to get the right balance especially, when like me, I work away from home a lot sometimes away for a week at a time, so I felt like I needed to make up for that when I was at home.

My wife had PND with the two that we had together and I supported her through recognising that she was not herself. I did as much as I could to help around the home and with the kids even though I was working 12-16 hour days some of the time.

At the same time as my wifes focus, rightly so, changed to the baby it made me feel less wanted/important. Obviously, this is just the way things are after a baby arrives and it is down to the individual how they handle that.

All I can say is that you seem to have moved on and are happy with your new life, so don't spoil it with why's and what ifs! I'm not a good one to talk on that front because those are the questions I am asking my wife at the moment.

I hope it all works out for you.

As someone who lives with depression I find my relatives are clueless about what I go through and can sometimes get quite irate with me. They don't know how to cope with it and in some cases poo-poo it like it's not real. My nan who brought me up gets frustrated as if I'm punishing her because I'm depressed, I think it's because she feels some kind of guilt and that she can't make it better. But it's not atall to do with her and people's reactions normally make me keep it to myself coz it's easier