You Can’t Ask That: June 1

It’s an emotional You Can’t Ask That episode tonight on Postnatal Depression, where eight parents explore the shame, public and family pressure, plus the personal guilt that surrounds this often misunderstood and taboo topic.

Having a baby is sold as one of the most exciting and rewarding things you’ll ever do. But what if it isn’t? What happens if that joy is replaced by depression? What if the only way out of it seems to be harming yourself or your baby?

Antoinette loved her job, her daughter, her husband, and her life. Yet moments after she gave birth, she described being overcome by dread and depression.

“All of a sudden the room started to close in on me and I felt incredibly claustrophobic, and all around me is joy and then I feel I can’t show how I’m feeling because I’m ashamed that I should be happy and I’m not,” she says.

When Lorraine had her first child in the 1980s postnatal depression was not yet on the radar, and remains largely misunderstood today.

“I didn’t know the difference between the utter exhaustion of looking after a brand-new baby, with the utter exhaustion that’s associated with depression,” she says.

As many as 1 in 5 women and 1 in 10 men experience depression in the year after the birth of their baby. Lorraine says it left her feeling “incapable, unworthy, a failure.”

Wednesday 1st June, 9pm on ABC.