Former NRL player Sam Thaiday shares two daughters with his wife of eight years, Rachel Thaiday.
The family of four are as strong and united as ever, however, Rachel recently revealed it hasn’t always been easy.
In an interview with The Courier Mail, Rachel said that following the birth of her now three-year-old daughter Ellsie, she battled postnatal depression for eight months.
“It hurts still now, nearly four years down the track, to think of my behaviour and what I didn’t feel for her in the first eight months of her life, which is so detrimental to a newborn’s life,” Rachel admitted.
“I didn’t feel anything, I was numb to something that I had given birth to and created and that is what kills me now.”
At this moment, while Rachel was battling the beginnings of what would become even deeper, more crippling pain, her husband made a comment that stuck with her.
“It’s another girl, we’ll have to try again’, he said.
Recounting the moment of Ellsie's birth now, Rachel explained the remark was not what she needed to hear, however unintentional it may have been.
“I was like ‘I’ve got my insides on the outside on this table for you and you’re telling me ‘you’ll just have to do it again?’" she said.
“I felt like someone had picked up all this heavy resentment and this horrible depression and put it into my stomach while everything else was laying on the outside and then covered me back up and said ‘you deal with it’.”
Rachel believes speaking out about her struggles with postnatal depression will help other women feel less helpless.
She wants them to know they're not alone, and that no matter how trying their experience might feel, it can get better.
“We live in a nice spot of Brisbane that has lots of little watering holes nearby, so we tend to go and explore them. Weekends are usually filled with picnics, bike riding and we love a spot of fresh shopping at local farmers markets,” Sam said in an interview with Style Magazine.