Quebec gives the non-birthing parent five weeks, or three on the special plan, and the weeks are not transferable, so almost everyone takes them and almost everyone takes them right at the start. That puts the leave on top of the part that looks hardest from the outside. Two adults in the apartment, somebody always awake, meals appearing, the stroller finally assembled, a rotation of visitors who all want to hold the baby and who all leave within ninety minutes. Then it ends, usually on a Monday, and one adult walks out at 7:40 with a lunch bag.

Week four is not week one. By week four the birthing parent’s body has done some of its obvious healing and none of the rest of it, feeding has either settled into a pattern or has not, the baby is awake more and has developed opinions about being put down, and the visitors have thinned out because everyone who was going to come has come. Most of the help showed up during the weeks when there were two adults at home to receive it. Very little of it shows up in week four.

Worth knowing about the second parent’s own week four is that the research does not put their risk at the beginning. A meta-analysis of perinatal depression among Japanese men found the prevalence peaking at three to six months postpartum, around thirteen percent, with an overall rate near ten percent, and lower numbers in the first month than later. A larger review of couples found both parents meeting the threshold at the same time more often in the three-to-twelve-month window than in the first twelve weeks. The month that everyone treats as the end of the hard part is, for a lot of families, somewhere near the beginning of it.

What the week actually looks like, in the houses where I’ve seen it: the person at home does every wake-up and every feed and every change between 7:40 and 18:15, plus the laundry, because the laundry is right there and doing it is easier than looking at it. The person at work does a full day of pretending they slept, then comes home into a house where the arithmetic has been running all day without them, where their arrival is a relief and also a kind of audit. Both of them are tired in a way the other one cannot see from where they are standing. Neither of them says much about it, because saying it out loud sounds like a complaint about a baby they wanted.

The families who come through week four in better shape are usually the ones who moved help into it on purpose, while there was still someone around with the bandwidth to arrange things. Groceries on a standing delivery rather than a one-off. The friend who wanted to come in week one told, plainly, that week five is more useful and that the useful version is arriving at 4pm and folding whatever is in the dryer without asking where it goes. The return to work staggered where an employer allows it, three days then four, instead of a wall on a Monday. A standing hour on a weekday when the person at home is not the only adult in the building.

Nobody makes that plan in week one. In week one there are two adults, a full freezer, and a house that feels covered.

The other thing about week four is that it is roughly when people stop asking, and not because they stopped caring. The question “how are you doing” seems to have a shelf life of about a fortnight in most people’s heads, after which the assumption is that things have normalized. The answer given at week four is usually “good, we’re figuring it out,” which is true and also about a third of the information. Ask again at week six, and at week ten, and the answer gets longer.

Sources

  • Tokumitsu K, Sugawara N, Maruo K, Suzuki T, Yasui-Furukori N, Shimoda K. “Prevalence of perinatal depression among Japanese men: a meta-analysis.” Annals of General Psychiatry, 2020;19:65. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12991-020-00316-0 (15 studies). Postpartum prevalence in men: 9.7% in the first month, 8.6% at 1-3 months, 13.2% at 3-6 months, 8.2% at 6-12 months. Authors note the rate of postpartum depression was not significantly different between men and women in their data. Caveat worth keeping in mind: this is a Japanese sample, though the authors say the numbers track an earlier international meta-analysis.
  • Smythe KL, Petersen I, Schartau P. “Prevalence of Perinatal Depression and Anxiety in Both Parents: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.” JAMA Network Open, 2022;5(6):e2218969. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.18969 (23 studies, 29,286 couples). Both parents depressed concurrently: 2.37% at 0-12 weeks postpartum, 3.18% at 3-12 months.

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