DAVID GILES: Parenting is hard...we shouldn’t be surprised if mums get depressed

He’s bald, has enormous hands and a handlebar moustache.

He’s a mix of working-class plumber and middle-class musician.

As such he can fix my radiator, but can also write me a poem to cheer me up when I’m feeling sad. I imagine he keeps a diary, but I don’t know. He has red cheeks and swears a lot.

The reason I’m telling you this is because Vicky and I were talking about our friendship group this week. How in the last fewyears we’ve all changed. We’ve become parents, or taken over family businesses or suffered losses of loved ones. All things thatmake you shed the skin of youthful energy.

Not so much growing up, but growing.

I sometimes worry I’ve lost what defined me. I think my thirties have been less joyful than my twenties. Which is weird because there is more joy inmy life.

The little fleshy hurricane that destroys my house and puts the TV remote down the toilet enriches my life in ways I could have never imagined.

When we were talking about our mates, Vicky said that basically everyone has changed...except Gentry.

She’s right. He still greets me in the same way he’s always done (“ahoy hoy Gilesy”). He still gets drunk and kisses me. He still wears a funny apron that says “chef”when he’s cooking. He still says offensive things thatmask his kindness. “If you’re on a bus aged 30 or older, you’ve failed at life”. That sort of thing.

And he still looks after people and has a huge amount of compassion for anyone that’s suffering.

In one of his more reflective and kinder moments recently, he said he thought it should be expected that all women would get post-natal depression. Not that everyone would, but that it should be considered the normand dealt with as such.

He was wearing his chef apron at the time, so it was hard to take him seriously. But I think he’s right.

I think my mumhad it, and it killed her because doctors in the Eighties didn’t knowasmuch about it as they do now.

I’m sure lots of my friends suffered with it in various degrees and didn’t tell me.

And I knowmy sister-in-law is currently going through it. She’s been to the doctor and has been prescribed anti-depressants.

She’s hopefully doing better than she was a few months ago.

But it takes time because it’s such a complex thing. Inaway, I think both these sentiments are true.

It is a big deal.

It isn’t a big deal.

For anyone suffering from it, it can become all-consuming, but at the same time, most people experience it in some way.

There’s somuch pressure to be a perfect mum, so much anxiety, so much fear you’re doing things wrong.

There’s so little resembling your old relationship or your old house or even your old self.

And all of this gets magnified because of lack of sleep and hormones doing things I don’t understand.

Yet somehowwe’re still surprised when women go a bit off piste and struggle to cope with what they’re going through.

In that sense, it’s not a big deal. It’s what happens to lots of people and there’s nothing to be ashamed of.

So what links these two topics (apart from Gentry) is change. In one way I don’t want things to change, but in others I know they have. I guess the key is not to fight the change, but to acknowledge it, talk about it and adapt.

Nothing is really that big a deal then.

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