A lot of first-time parents struggle after having a new baby, and those struggles can take on many different forms. For example, one dad recently shared on Reddit that his wife is having a hard time letting go of their 2-week-old daughter — literally.
He writes that his wife says she's dealing with a lot of anxiety right now, which means she's not comfortable with anyone besides her holding the baby.
He says his wife barely puts their daughter down.
"No matter how much I tried to reassure her, she just wouldn't let up," the husband explained. "I practically begged her just to let me hold her so that my wife could shower, eat, and care for herself but nothing worked. I felt like I was losing precious bonding time with my daughter so I did what I thought I had to do. My wife fell asleep on the sofa with our child, I took her, went to the guest bedroom and locked the door."
His wife had a complete meltdown.
"My wife woke up shortly after, very upset of course that our daughter wasn't with her. She soon realized I was in the guest room and begged me to open the door. She was crying, kicking, and screaming. I didn't open it though, and spent a good couple hours with our daughter in there."
Now his wife isn't talking to him.
"Apparently my wife had called her mom, because I got a call from my mil cussing me out, saying how I shouldn't be taking a newborn from her postpartum mother and other things like that. My wife has been furious with me and won't speak and I'm just so frustrated because I really just wanted to spend quality time with my child but maybe that wasn't the way to do it."
People were very concerned about his wife.
Plenty of people focused on his wife's actions, pointing out that they are not typical of postpartum mothers.
"Your wife needs help ASAP," said a commenter. "From an actual therapist or doctor, not you. You both need to come up with coping strategies if she has PPD or severe anxiety. You should not antagonize her by locking yourself in a room with your child."
The dad even said he should have thought it through.
The dad was quick to agree: "I wasn't thinking it through. Just super frustrated. I'm also having a hard time handling all of this. It's not like it came out of nowhere, she's gone to therapy for previous stuff, but I didn't think it would affect us to this extent when we had the child."
Some people were quick to reassure the dad that he's only human, too.
"You don’t think something so serious can really happen to this person you care about," noted a commenter. "And that’s in normal conditions — [the original poster] is also a brand new father with an obvious ton of stress on him. He has no experience with any of this and we have people in here who DO have experience calling him an AH for not knowing what they do."
Note: If you or any of your loved ones are struggling with suicidal thoughts, you can always reach out to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by calling 1-800-273-8255. They are available 24/7 by phone or online chat.
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
