🖋George Sandman Alex West, after a difficult delivery her husband went through to bring their first child into the world, was deeply affected. That is why, when it came time to give birth to their second child, he hoped that this time everything would be much easier and calmer.

The birth went better for his wife, but not for him.

Alex says: “I suffered from a severe attack of anxiety, and mentally I completely fell apart. I hadn’t been able— or rather, I didn’t have the ability to— process and understand what had happened.”

Alex says the bitter experience of his wife’s first childbirth and the depression he went through himself after the birth was a wound that had never fully healed. Because of that, he no longer wanted to continue their joint plan to have four children.

He remembers the months after the birth of his two sons as a recurring “dark and colorless” period; a time when life had lost its color and scent for him, while people around him kept telling him that becoming a father should be an extraordinary and enjoyable experience.

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📸GettyImages/ Alex West/ Sam Knight