Prenatal depression can completely dismantle a person’s entire personality before the baby even arrives, and it’s not as widely talked about as postpartum depression.
He watched it happen to his wife in real time, did everything he could think of to help her through it, and still somehow ended up losing her.
This 28-year-old man and his 29-year-old wife have been together for close to five years in total, and they tied the knot a bit more than two years ago.
He adores his wife, and she means everything to him. All along, they have discussed having children together, and they began trying four months ago.
After a month, his wife’s personality changed. She cried constantly for no reason, she was dejected, and she was temperamental, too.
“It was like she was a completely different person than the one I married. She had no motivation, no desire to go out and socialize, and no willingness to do anything,” he explained.
“She stopped exercising, her work performance declined drastically, and she often called out sick due to depression. About a week of this, and she took a pregnancy test, and it came back positive. She wasn’t excited about the pregnancy or anything else.”
“She was training for a half-marathon, had a strong work ethic, and had a vibrant personality, but it all changed drastically and did a complete 180 after she got pregnant. Her appetite wasn’t high enough, and when she did eat, it was junk food, which was also very out of character for her. She spent hours lying in bed crying.”
Suspecting prenatal depression, he secured a psychiatrist for his wife to see who specialized in that. His wife did go to her therapy sessions, but it didn’t help her at all.
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She was put on an antidepressant that caused his wife to turn into a zombie. When his wife reached 10 weeks of her pregnancy, she went behind his back and terminated.
He was crushed, as his dream has always been to be a dad, but he did see that his wife couldn’t live the way that she was anymore.
Terminating the pregnancy was the only thing that alleviated his wife’s symptoms, and little by little, she morphed back into her old self.
Two weeks after terminating the pregnancy, his wife moved out with all of her belongings while he was away at work. She hadn’t said a word to him about wanting a divorce.
The only thing she has mentioned is that he didn’t support her enough through her prenatal depression, but he did everything he could think of; she just couldn’t see that.
“She said she doesn’t think she’s ever going to be able to have kids, and she didn’t want to have a husband. The truth is, I would love her and want to be with her even if we never had kids, and I told her that,” he continued.
“I also told her I’d be fine with a surrogate and we had the money to do it. But she said no, the damage had been done, and she didn’t want to have kids ever, including from a surrogate, because she would feel ‘guilty’ for not being able to carry them.”
“I’m beside myself. The divorce papers just said ‘irreconcilable differences.’ I’m trying so hard to fight for this marriage, and it was all so sudden, and she never even gave me a chance after 4.5 years to try to be there for her.”
It’s sad and scary at the same time that the person he married vanished, quite literally, before his eyes. He lost his wife, he lost the child he wanted, and he lost his marriage. His wife pulling away painfully does make sense to me, but he did all the right things.
He found his wife a professional to help her and said he was still happy to be with her without adding kids to the mix. But sometimes love isn’t enough to save a marriage, and I don’t think his wife’s decision to leave has anything to do with him at all, even though that’s not exactly any consolation.
What advice do you have for him?
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By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
