Yours Truly believes in the couvade—from the French couver, ‘to brood,’ or nest (but YT likes the double meaning of brood). Otherwise trivialized as ‘sympathy symptoms’ in our culture, it’s when a man feels faint physical echoes of his partner’s pregnancy and birthing travail.
There are things, like the couvade, about the human experience that cannot be explained. Universal stuff that we all share but that feels uniquely individual. Halting on a busy sidewalk, the iPod-anchored bumping you as you reach for that misty déjà vu moment, say. Or stray wistful thinking about something you didn’t get quite right in life—big stuff, but pondered without that heavy regret—and you brain-sigh to yourself that you'll do it right next time. As though. As if. You know?
Yours Truly also believes in that hush-hushed affliction called Postpartum Depression that overcomes up to 80% of mummies—and some daddies, too. YT further believes that we don't like to talk about it much because we don't understand it. That we don’t take it seriously is reflected in our trivializing it by calling it the ‘baby blues.’ Maybe we do so because the unexplainable frightens us. How can bringing a healthy chubby-bubby into the world cause depression? How can there be such sorrow and weeping? Whence anxiety over the baby's harm?
YT had looked about and seen only security, comfort, and love: everything needed for a fresh-baked sniggy-bum. Pink lovies and blankies. Much joyous bonding. An easy, quality latch on the royal boobie. So why the nightly despair, YT wondered, also despairing.
YT had deployed his best logic to overcome the obvious irrationalities, but the silent weeping and shaking continued, nightly, as YT turned away in renewed surprise from 30 Rock.
Yours Truly came to dread the early evenings—those witching hours—which came with that same bleakness that universally accompanies a winter Sunday’s dusk. Not being one to indulge the obdurate after the full sun of logic has illuminated irrationalities, Yours Truly curled into frustration and resentment on that same couch.
But it was Yours Truly who was wrong. Stupid and selfish and petty. Astonishingly slow to learn. Hopelessly forgetful. For each of YT's three children, YT was reminded and warned of what may—and did—happen. And yet Yours Truly's response to PPD was predictably the same, which callow predictable response gives natural rise to our—yes, gentlemen, our—partners' sometimes feel that we really are worthless: forgetful, hockey-crazed, beer-gargling, garage-loving, big-screen revering, low-profile tire-burnishing worthless. For not understanding. For not remembering.
If you're a new daddy, then don't be like Yours Truly. Be silent and respect that some things are larger than us and cannot be understood—at least yet. For most mummies, PPD passes, as YT now understands it. And you'll want to recall later, when sidewalk-stopped, how you were, and then be totally free from regret, and instead smile like the noonday sun.
—Yours Truly
Printer-friendly version