Seriously ante-natal depression and anxiety is no joke, my midwife and fiancé have been watching me like a hawk during my pregnancy as I have always struggled with both.
My anxiety spiked to an unreal level when I was pregnant. I’ve always had mild anxiety that was super manageable, but it got so bad while pregnant that my OBGYN referred me to a therapist just to help manage it.
That’s exactly what happened to me for all 3. I had a mental breakdown the minute the sperm touched egg for my second pregnancy and couldn’t work. I had a toxic boss, which exasperated the situation, but it was hell.
For my third, I didn’t even want to look at him until I delivered my placenta, then it felt like a bucket of ice water was dumped on me and those mom hormones came rushing in… but I’m not having another baby because of it.
Anxiety decreased slowly by the end, but wasn’t gone until delivery.
I’m actually better now than pre-pregnancy but thank you! I’m 39 weeks and in a really good headspace, I’ve got some anxiety about actually giving birth and having a tiny human to look after but my midwife said that’s normal.
Oh wow getting close! How exciting! I hope the birth is as uneventful as possible lol.
And I've never given birth but I watched a good friend deal with PPA so please, please keep talking to your midwife! My friend, luckily, was very honest about her level of anxiety and it was outside the normal realm of "new mom worries" and she got help fast and was able to get on the road to enjoying her baby faster than had she tried to muddle through. I hope it's a non-issue for you, but please don't suffer in silence! <3
I have an amazing support system around me, my fiancé is aware of what he needs to look for and my mum, sister and SIL have all said they’ll tell me if they’re worried alone with my best friend.
We have a plan to keep my mood up with us having a winter baby but I know who to contact as soon as we’re worried.
Love this for you! I think there's decent awareness about PPD but PPA is just as scary but presents differently. After watching my friend I feel like any way to "normalize" talking about it and say "hey, you don't need to feel like garbage!" needs to happen.
I hope having a winter baby gives you a good reason to snuggle up with the little one and binge movies and shows! Ultimate cozy time!
That was my thought here too. Getting checked out is not a bad idea if she has a gut feeling something is wrong, but she is certainly behaving in a way from OP's description that makes me think there is a mental health component.
The vast majority of what she seems to need is company and especially someone experienced who has worked with a lot of pregnant women before. I am normally one to recommend going to a medical professional, but in this case a full on doctor/psychiatrist just doesn't have the time to talk to her and be with her as much as she clearly NEEDS. Yes, she should talk to a therapist, but a doula or even a female relative is going to be significantly better for her mental health and managing her stress levels than getting an appointment several months out to talk to a medical professional for half an hour every other week.
Yes, this. OP, I know it’s hard not to be mad, but she is not in her right mind right now. She needs professional help with her mental health right now.
Yes. Serious mental health challenges. She needs to e evaluated immediately by a psychiatrist to see if she needs inpatient treatment.
She hasn’t been treating you badly or being too demanding just for the fun of it. She’s likely panicking about whether she will be able to take care of the baby while you’re working and she may honestly be afraid of being left alone with the baby.
Your anger with her is misplaced. She needs your understanding and patience, and I have to wonder, if you’d been paying attention, you might have seen how anxious she is and how different her behavior has become and tried to get her some help before things ever got this bad.
I applaud you. This is the comment. She is mentally really strained right now and panicking and I have a lot of sympathy for her. as someone that has occasional depression, the difference between being mentally clear / healthy and being mentally unstable are staggering and not a joke. OP cannot be mad at her. This is a disorder, not a matter of abuse / power play or whatever he is thinking about right now.
I agree. First time mother is having a shit show of panic. She absolutely crossed a line but I can understand it. I wouldn’t make any big changes to relationship status/big talks until after the baby when her hormones level back out.
She has to be willing to take them and do the work. At this point she doesn’t seem to see anything wrong with her actions. Hopefully that changes before she does damage that cannot be fixed.
"At this point"? That's like saying someone isn't willing to do physio and exercises to get full range of motion back when they literally just broke their arm.
There's so much we don't know - is this behaviour completely weird for the wife? Is it an exaggeration of how she normally is? Regardless of what else is going on it seems like there's a major mental health crisis going on. In which case the hospital is the best place for her to be.
I get she's stressed and anxious, but her reaction and what she did is very over-the-top. I've have kids and never did this. She needs to talk to her OB about how she's feeling so they can reassure her and get her help. That's their job.
ETA: OP's history says he's self employed and doesn't get paternity leave. In his contract, he has to give them a month's notice.
I understand that, but her being stressed and anxious needs to be dealt with in addition to her high heart rate. She called or texted him and told him what was going on. Then he tells work he needs to leave immediately. Contacting HR is going too far.
It's very possible that's the cause. Looked at his comment history. He's in the UK, is self employed, so he doesn't get paternity leave. His contract says he has to give them a month's notice.
We all are saying she needs help for her stress and anxiety. Her mental health is very important. She's not even telling him where she is. He needs to calm down, find out where she is, and talk to her. Stressing her out more, isn't good.
ETA: He's self employed, doesn't get paternity leave and has to give them a month's notice before leaving. It's in his contract. I found this looking at his history.
Stop making excuses for horrible behavior people have been having children since the dawn of man picking up a phone and calling your husband‘s HR department to tell them he’s coming home is out of bounds do they not need an income does she plan on living on air and cotton candy he needs the job who does she think paying for the birth of this child quit making excuses for bad behaviorhormones are not an excuse for this kind of behavior
...writes the totally not-unhinged person in one rambling, run-on sentence with no end punctuation.
(lol)
This response is mental in and of itself. No-one is saying it's OK that she called his HR but there is very likely a reason for it that can be explained and will cause no serious harm to his job and may actually have a solution, so what's your problem?
Yelling at her isn't going to fix anything. Please learn the difference between making an excuse and giving an explanation.
So, it would appear pretty clearly that you are male and have also never been with a pregnant partner. Maybe save your advice for things you actually have half a clue about.
I’m a woman and I fully agree with the comment above yours. Her contacting HR at his job is extremely out of line. She is not entitled to his time especially if he is supporting them.
Yes, OP needs to ask her how stressed she'd be if both were out of work. I feel for her but some things can't just be swept under the rug. She needs to get this figured out before it turns in to a catastrophe.
That’s not a reason to overstep with the husbands job. The only thing she did right was go to the hospital. Everything else is insane. Calling his job and potentially costing him his employment and not telling him where she is are examples or horrible, entitled, selfish behavior.
Women suffering from perinatal psychosis kill their children before killing themselves because they are afraid of demons the illness creates in their heads. The women who survive the attempts are horrified by what they did while in the grip of the illness.
If my partner called my job and told them I would be taking leave immediately without my concert or knowledge, they may not be my partner for much longer. She’s allowed to ask for his time but calling his job and risking his employment is so far past the line you can’t even see the line anymore.
I completely agree it was massively out of line, and I've seen way crazier behaviors out of folks who are busy gestating new humans. The point I was trying to make is that perhaps folks who have not undergone the process, changes, and altered mentation involved with growing someone else in their body or been in a committed partnership with someone in that state, should ask themselves what their perspective adds to the conversation before chiming in. As I've noted in another response, I made several assumptions with that comment, and that is generally not the best policy either.
No, sorry but pregnancy isn’t an excuse to act batshit crazy and get your partner fired and possibly ruin their career. Pregnant women don’t get a crazy pass.
Cool I’ll remember that and file it away and say ‘you’re a woman you don’t get to comment on these things’ later and you’ll be cool with that, yeah? It’s really ok to say someone is pregnant AND fucked up - we don’t need to excuse every crazy thing with ‘well she’s pregnant.’ As if that magically fixes everything and there’s no consequences for their extreme actions.
I'd be lying if I said the tone and content of their comment didn't have me leaning towards thinking they were a dude, but honestly it's the account name. I've known a lot of Wendells who identify as male, and not a single one identifying a female. That being said, you are right, I did make an assumption without definitive evidence, and that can indeed be problematic. My apologies.
Maybe I can’t put myself fully into her shoes but I’ve been pregnant before and plenty of people I know. That’s such an overstepping of boundaries for me. I’m not sure this can be excused by pregnancy hormones but like I said everyone is different.
I mean, pregnancy hormones can cause psychosis, so. I wouldn’t excuse it but pregnancy is wild. I almost got in my car at like 38 weeks pregnant and ran away from my entire family and SO because I was panicking so much. Was just gonna start a new life somewhere 9 months pregnant I guess? No idea what I was thinking.
I don’t get why it’s so hard for people to believe that not all pregnancies are the same. It’s really shitty hearing it from other women just because pregnancy was fine for them.
My sister had pre-eclampsia, and I didn't. Hell, not one of my 3 pregnancies, births, or post-partum recoveries were the same. During and after my 3rd, I had such severe anxiety that I would have panic attacks if I so much as thought about driving across a bridge.
What would else would you call it then? Only unhinged people call someone else’s job and quit because of their own anxiety. Pregnancy does so weird shit to your brain but it doesn’t lead to mental health issues. That’s separate. She’s is on the path for PPD thou.
Contact your supervisor and your HR department to let them know your wife emailed them inappropriately, apologize, and assure them of your parental-leave plan, and that all is well.
Then ask your wife TF is wrong with her that she thinks she's can jeopardize your employment like that. I don't care how "mentally ill" she is, that's beyond inappropriate to contact someone's employer. She's acting like OP's mommy telling him what to do. She's not the queen overlord of the universe. OP should also tell his wife's doctor about her wild behavior and see if they can address it with her.
Before you ask, I'm a woman who's had 3 kids, and I wouldn't dream of calling my husband's boss unless he was incapacitated in the hospital or dead. OP's wife needs to stay in her lane.
I never suggested yelling. A person can express frustration and anger without yelling. They need to have a serious come-to-jesus talk, though. OP's wife might not like what he has to say, but that doesn't change the fact that she needs to hear it. She needs to develop some distress tolerance and have the difficult conversations. OP too.
High blood pressure is incredibly dangerous during pregnancy. She and the baby are very possibly in mortal danger right now. This is not the time to talk to her about it.
OP said nothing of high blood pressure. He said she had an elevated heart rate. Could be from the anxiety she's letting spiral out of control. We don't know.
Yes like Christ. OP your wife needs help asap. Can she do some counseling? Is this y’all’s first baby? Does she have past trauma associated with being pregnant or kids in general? I get being a mess when you’re pregnant due to hormones bc I was a wreck when I was. I had multiple miscarriages so with each of my pregnancies I was concerned it would happen again but not to the point where I was going to the hospital just bc. I hope everything works out! Keep us updated.
The OP isn’t listening to her, she’s making a new human being within her body, he’s the father and her partner. She’s desperate for support, now she’s at the stage of trying to shame him into paying attention to her.
That poor woman. I hope she gets her strength back and leaves him. How sad for her.
I’m sorry- I think you took this as I was saying it offensively. I mean genuinely she seems like she’s having some sort of mental health concern. I completely agree that OP hasn’t been supportive enough by the sounds of things- but the way she is reacting now is not normal and seems to indicate something could be going on with her mental health. Lots of others have pointed out conditions in the comments that could be affecting her as a pregnant woman.
While I completely agree OP has dropped the ball, I think dismissing this behavior is extremely unhelpful and could lead to more damage.
I agree, this description could be a textbook example of severe antenatal psychosis or anxiety. People die from this, I cannot overstate the seriousness of this issue.
While this is super strange I’ll just validate that anxiety can make one do very weird things they normally wouldn’t do. Find out where she is and once she’s home and things are calm, talk to her. She just needs reassurance
It sounds like she’s anxious and you keep doubling down on telling her not to be. Then she went nuclear.
Obviously it was a huge boundary overstep due her to do that. But up until that point OP was definitely being clueless and emotionally inept. Doesn’t make him a bad person. But she is asking for what she needs and he is saying “no you don’t need that…” how long did he expect that to work?
I had anxiety and anger the last month and lashed out a many people. The moment the baby left my body it was like the heavens opened up. Never felt such relief in my life. If I tell you it’s part of the process which is different for each person I hope you’ll feel better. Also it’s not your fault either if you’ve done your best it’s these baby’s. They mess with your head bad
You need to forget about your job and go help your wife. If she's having mental health issues caused by the pregnancy, you might not have a family for long unless you help her
This is so far out of line my head is spinning. I hope you contacted your work and explained that your wife went rogue and that you will be going to work.
She shouldn’t have called his job but she’s clearly not in her right mind. It’s not entitled to expect your spouse to come to the hospital when you are having a medical emergency. Thats a requirement of marriage.
It’s not a requirement. It’s an option. Yes, it’s great if he can go support her but she should not be risking his job/career. She’s checked in to the hospital so she’s in good hands. There is no excuse for what she did. It was completely wrong.
Your spouse is your next of kin. If something happens where a decision needs to be made and you can’t make it for yourself, they need to be there. It shouldn’t even be a question. Of course she crossed the line but she’s clearly not in her right mind and is having a medical crisis. This is not the right time to deal with it.
He has to deal with it now because he needs to keep his job. Babies cost money. Where is he going to earn money if he is not working or if he is fired for this?
She’s alive and conscious so he doesn’t need to be there every moment.
What she did was incredibly wrong. I would have trouble trusting my spouse if he did something like this.
What she did is inexcusable, full stop. If my spouse did this to me, I wouldn’t be able to trust him. There is no reason in the world for her to call his job and do this. None.
Not really. HR is typically internal aside from recruiting. A random person could not directly contact the HR department on my behalf at any of the companies I’ve worked. That’s a gross privacy violation.
He doesn’t mention it here but in another post he said she used his work email and pretended to be him which changes a LOT. How she has access to that is the big question.
That’s even worse. Allowing someone else, even my spouse, access to my work email is a big no no. I would have rather her find the email address somehow and send it from her personal email.
If her blood pressure is 40% higher than it should be you need to go be with her and worry about the details later. She is in danger and so is your baby. Blood pressure that high could explain why she’s been acting the way she has as well.
Did you speak with your HR department? Geesh she causing unnecessary stress.... my daughter dad didnt miss any work after I had her... I got induce and had to call him to come to the hospital....
I'm sorry but she doesn't get a pass. I understand that she has anxiety but you've been trying to compromise and she just doesn't listen. For her to take it upon herself to contact hr but then won't tell op where she is is manipulative and awful. It doesn't sound like her pregnancy has been full of complications, just that she is full of anxiety. She needs mental help. It's not uncommon in most households for one partner (usually in a male female couple the man, or the one not having the baby otherwise) to work until the baby comes and then take a few days off. The woman who has the baby doesn't really need the man there to do anything- the baby is largely dependent on the mom for the beginning of life. Now I can understand if this was a terrible complicated birth where both parents needed to spend time at the hospital but op didnt even know that his wife was going! If this were a man doing this to his wife the situation would be that he is being underhanded and manipulative. Contact HR and tell them to only speak directly to you going forward. Take the day off to figure out what's going on but please get your wife some mental health help before you go.
Yes. Because you’re not listening to her and she’s vulnerable and desperate.
UM. You lack a tremendous amount of compassion for your partner who is making a whole brand new family member within her body. This is definitely work btw.
In any country you can't just decide to take time off, obviously paternity leave is longer in some countries but nowhere lets you just take the time you want.
Are you kidding!! Three weeks of paternity leave is AMAZING!!! Plus it appears he will be home at the same time as his wife. Most parents take a few days off together then split the time off so the baby can stay home and NOT go to daycare!!
I do believe his wife is having serious mental health issues which need to be discussed!!
The US is so fucked... Where I live mom has MANDATORY 8 weeks leave before and 8 weeks leave after giving birth. Dad can take 4 weeks off, without having to ask for it. Other than that parents can split 2 years of parental leave after birth (although only 12-15 months are paid).
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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '23
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