"Being a Daddy has been without a doubt the greatest experience of my life. I have three awesome kids who I love unconditionally, they are aged 7,4, and 1. We play together or dance together every night and sometimes we play video games together, whatever hits our mood. Life is good. But not always easy or smooth. I’ve had my fair share of tribulations raising three kids. Thinking back on the tribulations, the worst moments have been the nights.
Our first kid and our last didn’t sleep, and my wife and I were constantly getting up in the middle of the night. When I become so sleep deprived, it affects my mood and mental state. As it would anyone. As my first got older, things got easier, I got a new job, and my depression went away. Years later my wife came to me telling me she has realized she had postpartum depression and wanted me to go on a walk with her with a group advocating for the awareness of postpartum depression. At the walk they had a few quick speakers and one mentioned that men also suffer from postpartum which made me realize that I had suffered from postpartum depression. The depression, lack of sleep, terrible thoughts, things I had gone through but just thought I was either a terrible person or a weak man. Not realizing what I was suffering from at the time.
"I found out that we were having a baby the day before everything was shut down. The moment we waited for, would suddenly be changed drastically. I would miss my grandfather’s funeral, my husband would miss all the rest of my doctor’s appointments, and I became isolated at home. I knew what postpartum depression looked like because I had it after the birth of my first child (Although, I didn’t know that it was happening then until months later). This time, it started while I was still pregnant. I didn’t want pictures of myself, I didn’t want to celebrate, I just wanted it to be the end of the pregnancy. But even then, with a pandemic still at a high, there were many scary unknowns that lay ahead. I thought the depression would go away after the birth of my son, but unfortunately the actual birth was the only hour of joy I had. I constantly wondered why I wanted another child, and how I could ever think that it couldn’t be much harder than what I was already doing. But I struggled, like a fight to catch my breath every day for weeks after he was born. I kept telling myself that this too shall pass, and I just had to push through.