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Hi everyone first post, I'm 22 and my partner is 24 and she have birth to our wonderful son 5 weeks ago. Prior to and during the pregnancy she suffered with depression, we weren't expecting the child and spent a long while trying to decide whether to abort or not. We went to counselling earlier in the pregnancy and that seemed to help me at least but on her part not so much, she has some deep seated trauma and it takes a while to get to it.
In the late pregnancy and during the birth her abdominal muscles split and her coccyx was damaged, this means that she can't walk or sit for very long and can't lift anything heavy, including the baby. I think that this is also triggering her depression to come back again.
Due to this I am having to cook ( of which she eats 7 meals a day), clean, get her set up lying down for every breast feed, and due to her depression she often has periods where she will be very low and destructive ( e.g. She smashed a ceramic bowl downstairs the other day away from the baby) so I have to then help her to calm down. Despite all of this she still seems to find faults in everything I do, as she gets more depressed she has periods where she will try to push me away for example, she has asked me hundreds of times to leave the toilet seat down, I know this old one right?, since putting it down hurts her abs, I am trying to do this but with lifetime habits they are hard to break, in the past week I have only done it twice so yay improvement!
The trigger which caused me to write was last night ( and a few nights before) I brought my kegs up in my sleep and in the process kneed her in the coccyx, completely unintentional but as you can imagine she was in quite a lot of pain, and I think worried that this would delay the already slow healing process. She said some very hurtful things like "you have idea how much I hate you right now" and "you just don't give a [censored] do you?", completely undeserved for what is a reaction in my sleep, but I have tried to dismiss these and just words of pain. She also kicked me out of our bed, and said I can't sleep in it until her coccyx heals. I don't know if she still means this but considering it could take anywhere up to a year to heal, I'm worried. Not only does her coccyx hinder [censored], something that I'm already struggling with, but if we're not sleeping in the same bed, will we begin to lose our physical intimacy? I'm really trying to be the glue in our relationship, which with an individual whose depressed is already hard, and losing physical intimacy would be very hard to get through. I also feel myself getting lower nowadays, randomly breaking down saying it's all too much and crying. I need some help.
I mainly wrote this to vent, since I don't have many dads to chat to and thought it would be good to have a forum to speak with. P
Thanks for reading,
Dan
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Hi Dan
It's a very emotional time for new parents, learning to look after baby and that's when everything goes without the added problems you have both had to deal with.
The depression was present before the birth and although you both did your best to address it together it will have an effect on how she is feeling now.
As you are struggling it might be a good idea to talk to your GP. As of you are breaking down and crying then it might be that you need some help to get through things. It might also be a good idea to speak to the health visitor about how your partner is feeling...things like post natal depression should be addressed as soon as possible. Perhaps she might need to adjust her pain relief, has physio been mentioned?
As far as the physical side of things is concerned, I think you have to be very patient with her....at the moment she is feeling very low and being in pain won't help...[censored] will probably be the furthest thing from her mind at the moment and I think you have to respect that. The important thing here is to get her feeling better and then everything else will flow from that! If your [censored] life was good before there's no reason why it won't get back on track in time. Lots of women feel like this after giving birth and that's without the injury your partner has suffered, it takes a lot out of a woman's body and it can take weeks if not months to get back to normal, so when you factor in your partners injury and the fact that it's only been five weeks, I think it's perfectly understandable that [censored] isn't on the menu right now...as I said, you must be patient right now!
It's good to talk and I've no doubt you feel a little better after venting!