He has not spoken to you in three days. Not because you had a fight. Just because he has nothing to say.
He used to come home excited about seeing the baby. Now he comes home, sits in the other room, and scrolls through his phone for hours. When the baby cries, he does not come. When you ask him to help with something, he snaps at you for reasons that have nothing to do with what you asked.
Your mother-in-law pulls you aside and whispers, “Is he okay? He looks like something is wrong with him.”
You have been so focused on your own recovery that you have not really noticed. But now that someone has said it out loud, you realize you cannot remember the last time he smiled. Not the polite smile he gives people at work. An actual smile.
You think maybe he is just tired. Maybe he is stressed about money. Maybe he is not interested in this baby the way he should be.
Or maybe he is depressed. And nobody is talking about it because everyone is too busy taking care of you.
The Thing Nobody Tells You
When you have a baby in Nigeria, everyone watches the mother. Is she healing? Is she eating enough? Is she bonding with the baby? Is she crying too much? The grandmother is there. Your own mother is there. Aunties are stopping by. Everyone’s eyes are on you.
And that is good. You need that.
But somewhere in all of that attention, the father of the baby disappears. Nobody is checking on him. Nobody is asking if he is okay. Nobody is noticing that he is sitting in the other room not really present because something is wrong inside his head.
Postpartum depression is not just a mother’s condition. It happens to fathers too. And in Nigeria, where men are already not encouraged to talk about their emotions, where there is shame attached to admitting that you are struggling, postpartum depression in fathers often goes completely unnoticed and untreated.
The statistics are real. Between eight and ten percent of new fathers experience postpartum depression. Some studies suggest the number is higher in countries where mental health support is not easily accessible. Depression in fathers affects the whole family. It affects your recovery. It affects the baby. It affects the marriage. And it affects him, sitting alone in his own suffering because he does not know how to ask for help and no one has thought to ask if he needs it.
Why It Happens
This is not about weakness. This is not about him not loving the baby or not being ready to be a father. Postpartum depression in men is a real clinical condition with real causes.
The Loss of Identity
For months, maybe years, you have been preparing to be a mother. Your body changed to announce it. People treated you differently. Your identity shifted. But it shifted toward something. You were becoming a mother.
For your husband, the shift is different. One day he was a man. The next day he is a father. But that shift happened suddenly, without his body changing, without the same social preparation. The man he was is still there. But now he is also responsible for a tiny human he did not know how to care for yesterday.
Some men grieve this. Not the baby. Not the idea of being a father. But the loss of who they were before. The freedom they had. The simplicity of their life. This grief, when it is not processed, becomes depression.
The Feeling of Being Unnecessary
During omugwo, the mother is the center. Everyone is focused on her recovery, her pain, her needs. The father is on the outside. He provides money. He shows up occasionally. But the actual work of recovery and baby care is happening without him. The grandmother is doing it. The aunties are doing it. His mother is doing it. He is not needed in the same way.
This creates a strange emptiness. He is a father, but he does not feel like he is doing fatherhood. He is a husband, but his wife is focused on the baby and recovery. He is a son, because his mother is still mothering him in some ways. But he is not sure what he is anymore.
For some men, this ambiguity becomes anxiety. For others, it becomes depression.
The Pressure to Provide
In Nigerian culture, a man’s value is often measured by what he provides. Money. Security. A roof over the family’s head. The ability to say, “I take care of my family.”
When a baby comes, the expenses change. Maybe you need to hire help. Maybe you need more food in the house because you are breastfeeding and eating more. Maybe the baby needs things. The financial pressure increases at the exact moment when the husband might be least emotionally equipped to handle it.
If he was already struggling with money before the baby, the postpartum period can feel suffocating. He is supposed to be happy. Everyone else is happy. But he is lying awake at night thinking about how he will pay for everything. And he cannot tell anyone this because his job is to provide, not to struggle.
The Loss of Connection to You
Before the baby, you were partners. You did things together. You had conversations that were not about logistics or household management. You were intimate. You knew what each other needed.
After the baby, you are both so exhausted that you rarely look at each other. You are touched out and do not want him near you. He is lonely and does not know how to tell you because you are already dealing with so much. The connection that held you together starts to feel thin.
For some men, this disconnection is temporary and resolves as you both adjust. For others, it becomes a hole that gets deeper. He feels like you do not need him anymore. You feel like he is not present. And neither of you knows how to fix it while you are both drowning.
What Postpartum Depression Looks Like in Husbands
Depression in fathers does not always look like sadness. Sometimes it looks like anger. Sometimes it looks like being gone all the time. Sometimes it looks like numbness. If you know what to look for, you can see it.
He Is Irritable Over Small Things
He snaps at you for asking him a simple question. He gets angry at the baby for crying, as if the baby is doing it on purpose. He loses his temper over things that would not have bothered him before. This irritability is not always about what you are actually saying. It is the depression looking for a place to come out.
He Is Withdrawing From the Family
He used to be present. Now he is always working late. Or he is in the other room on his phone. Or he finds reasons to leave the house. He is not angry about being home. He is just not there. When he is physically there, he is not emotionally present. He is not interested in the baby the way he was in the first few weeks. He is not interested in you. He is just going through the motions.
He Is Using Substances More Than Usual
Some men drink more when they are depressed. Some men start smoking or using other substances they did not use before. This is not about partying or having fun. It is about numbing something that hurts inside. Pay attention if you notice him reaching for a bottle more often, or disappearing to smoke more frequently, or if his substance use has changed since the baby came.
He Is Sleeping Too Much or Too Little
Before the baby, he slept normally. Now he is sleeping until noon on weekends or staying up until 2 AM even though he has to work. Or he is exhausted all the time and sleeping at odd hours. Sleep disruption is often a sign of depression, even if the disruption looks different in fathers than in mothers. You are not sleeping because the baby is awake. He is not sleeping because his mind will not rest.
He Is Not Interested in Sex
You are touched out and not wanting intimacy. He used to respect that. Now you are starting to heal and want connection again. But he is not interested. Or he is minimally interested. Or the interest feels mechanical and empty. This is different from him respecting your boundaries. This is him being disconnected from desire, from you, from his own body. Depression kills desire.
He Is Talking About Being a Bad Father or a Failure
He says things like, “I am not good at this,” or “You and the baby would be better off without me,” or “I am not the kind of father this baby needs.” This is not him being humble or realistic. This is depression talking. A depressed person sees himself as a burden. He sees his failures as fundamental truths about who he is. And he is beginning to believe that everyone would be better off if he was not here.
He Is Absent From Decision Making
Things need to be decided about the baby or the house. Before, he would have opinions and would be part of the conversation. Now he just agrees with whatever you or your mother-in-law say. He does not care. Or he cares but does not have the energy to participate. He is becoming a passenger in his own family’s life.
Why Nobody Notices
In Nigeria, there is a particular kind of blindness when it comes to men’s mental health. A man who is depressed is not always visibly falling apart. He still goes to work. He still brings home money. He still shows up to family gatherings. So the assumption is that he is fine.
But depression does not always look like what we think it looks like. A man can be depressed and still be functional. In fact, some of the hardest-working men you know are using work as an escape from depression at home.
There is also shame. Nigerian men are not raised to talk about their emotions. From boyhood, they are taught that feelings are weakness. So when a man is depressed, he does not tell anyone. He sits with it. And the people around him, who are raised not to ask men about their feelings, do not notice.
Your husband’s depression might be invisible to everyone except you. And if you are exhausted from your own postpartum recovery, you might not notice either.
What This Means for Your Recovery
Here is something that is hard to say out loud: when your partner is depressed, it makes your recovery harder.
You are already exhausted. You are already dealing with your own postpartum body and emotions. You are already trying to figure out how to breastfeed and care for a new human. And you need your partner to be present. You need him to bring you water. You need him to handle the baby at night. You need him to manage visitors. You need him to advocate for your rest.
If he is depressed, he cannot do those things. He does not have the energy. He does not have the presence. He is drowning too.
This is not his fault. But it is your reality. And it means your recovery might be harder than it should be. It means you might end up doing more than your body can handle. It means the postpartum period might be longer and more painful than it needs to be.
This is why it matters that someone notices if your partner is struggling. Not to blame him. Not to make him feel worse. But because his mental health is directly connected to your ability to heal.
