I don’t want to be writing this.

Even now, sitting here happy, relaxed and contented, I don’t want to be writing about this.

With distance, clarity and healing, I don’t want to be writing about this.

Which is exactly why I need to be writing about this.

Because there are thousands upon thousands of fellow dads out there who, just like me, suffered, or are suffering, from post-natal depression, silencing themselves with a gag of shame, confusion and emasculation, feeling that they are alone, feeling that there are no answers, feeling that they are abnormal.

When my son was born, I was absolutely elated. Like every child, he was a beautiful gift, a beautiful gift that gave me a sense of fullness, happiness and completeness that is impossible to put into words.

The first time I looked into his piercing little midnight-blue eyes, I wept with joy. I couldn’t wait to bring our daughter to meet him, to show him off to friends and family, to do all the daddy duties for him that I’d done for our daughter when she was a newborn infant. Being away from him, having to stop holding him, was an emotional wrench every time I left the hospital.

However, within a couple of weeks of him coming home, everything turned upside down.

The elation, happiness and euphoria of just a few days ago began to have a shadow cast over them. That shadow grew and grew, getting thicker and murkier, until it hung its cloak over everything I could see, clouding my perception like cataracts.

An unheralded sorrow, deep and unyielding, settled within me; I developed an inability to be happy.

It came from nowhere. I hadn’t felt overwhelmed, irritated nor had I felt any more tired than a new dad would expect to feel. I didn’t go through a graduated process of misery; there was no exponential snowballing of my negative emotions, no seed from which my dissatisfaction germinated. It was just there. A bleak and unwelcome stranger that stood on the threshold of our happy life.

It started out bad and then got worse and worse.

‘It’s just a phase…’

‘It’ll soon go away…&