Certainly there was little time for affection, let alone anything more intimate.
“I had taken quite a lot of paternity leave, planning to ease myself back into my self-employed life, but I found myself always shopping one minute, then snatching half an hour to write an important letter, then pacifying Molly by taking her for a walk in the baby carrier. My wife sensed this and, assuming that I was blaming her, started retreating from me into her life with the baby, which seemed extremely exclusive. I seemed so responsible, too much so, and I had these feelings of resentment and loss about my life before parenthood. “After my daughter Molly was born, I was obviously delighted, but over the subsequent weeks I began to feel tired and scratchy all the time. Tom H, 32, is an accountant in the music business He lives in London. We cannot truly know what we are letting ourselves in for, but we can at least be better prepared.Association for Post Natal Illness: 0171 386 0868.

Labour’s proposals for a campaign of “preparation for parenthood” are a start, as is the burgeoning impact of paternity leave: Kraemer notes that the Swedish car manufacturer Volvo now actively prefer to employ men who’ve taken paternity leave.Such vigilance will surely have good effect, though it may be that fathers need to regain a secure sense of their role, as something more than a “supportive” cameo. Now that we have this participatory doctrine, we have lost these ritual aspects, and male PND is a new result of this loss.” The way forward, he says, is to be more aware of the father’s role; for “the father needs to be in good shape after the birth”.Paternal parenthood is being taken more seriously, and part of the agenda is preventing the likelihood of PND. “Though it had no application, it was a way to channel the emotional energy of the father. “The last example of couvade in this country was earlier this century, when the man was instructed to boil the water during birth,” he says. “There was always a reason: flu, a backache, whatever.”Odent says that the absence of couvade – a French word, literally “hatching”, given to the sympathetic birthing rituals that were once part of paternity – may have much to do with it.

“Two or three days later (after birth), I found the mother active and the man in bed,” he says. Michel Odent of the Active Birth Centre and author of Primal Health (Century Hutchinson), says that he has noticed it particularly with the home-birth families with whom he has dealt. For if men cannot express their depression, it will emerge in other ways. Psychoanalyst Joan Raphael-Leff has called these different types “participators and renouncers”: the former being actively involved in the whole birth process; the latter being older-fashioned chaps who reject the idea of being in the birthing room.Yet even the most hard-nosed renouncer, if he is to slip a disc, will somehow manage to do it in the post-natal period. “In women it is seen as acting out the character.”One interesting facet of male PND, according to the marriage and partnership research agency One Plus One, is that “new” men are said to be more likely to suffer than the unreconstructed.

“Depression in a man is seen as incongruous with his role, which should be self-sustaining and autonomous,” says George. She will often be hostile at this period, and he will return it”.George also cites research showing that husbands tolerate wives with a mental health problem more than the reverse; and that studies using the Beck Inventory – a psychological test for depression – show that men are under-diagnosed as depressed, whereas women are over-diagnosed Men, you see, aren’t meant to get depressed. Malcolm George, a physiology lecturer who has written papers on male PND, cites the “demand/withdraw” pattern of marital interaction – whereby women tend to demand, men tend to withdraw – creating a vicious conflict that is “very prescriptive of relationship breakdown Depression is about sadness, but also hostility. We expect too much from new fathers.”This can lead to relationship break-ups. “These days we live in isolated units, away from the extended family, and the male partner is expected to do everything. “One of the things that we feel strongly is that fathers are asked to fulfil too many roles,” she says. Claire Delpech, secretary of the Association, thinks that part of the problem may be that father’s roles are poorly defined.

But most acknowledge a raft of psycho-social reasons for PND.There is an Association of Post-Natal Illness in London, and while many men still call on behalf of their female partners, the awareness of male maladjustment to parenthood is looming larger each year. Some, like Nikki Bradford, author of What They Don’t Tell You About Being A Mother and Bringing Up Babies (HarperCollins), remains pragmatic: she believes that a major factor of PND in both sexes is sleep deprivation. And if men are not prepared for parenthood it does not help.” In these circumstances, some form of male retreat is evident.There are psychoanalytic undertones to male PND; one theory centres around castration anxiety. “Part of the problem for new fathers is that their lives are very different; it is a shock and a surprise, like being an older sibling and watching someone new take your place. “Men are bullied into the room and some react negatively,” says the spokeswoman, who reports that a common response from fathers is “they feel guilt for causing the pain”.Part of the cause of male PND could lie in poor preparation for paternity, says child psychiatrist Sebastian Kraemer. A spokeswoman for pressure group Families Need Fathers says of the post-natal period: “Society discourages the involvement of fathers with children, and the marginalisation starts here.” Current orthodoxies – such as men being present at the birth – can have ill-effects. There are masses of practical demands on him, but he is excluded from the core mother and child unit.