Peter Overton opens up about wife Jessica Rowe’s post-natal depression

It’s been nine years since Jessica Rowe and Peter Overton’s first child was born.

But now Overton has opened up about his wife’s battle with post-natal depression.

An emotional Overton made the revelation in an episode of In Conversation of Alex Malley that will air tomorrow.

The Channel Nine newsreader revealed how Rowe burst into tears and said she wasn’t “handling being a mother very well”.

“I went over to her and she said, ‘I think I have postnatal depression’, and I said two things: ‘Do you want to hurt Allegra?’ She said, ‘I don’t think so.’ ‘And yourself?’ And she said, ‘I don’t think so.’ And I grabbed her and hugged her and said, ‘Everything is going to be all right, I promise you’.,” he said.

The TV media couple soon sought professional help.

“I spoke to her obstetrician the next day and we got her to a psychiatrist who specialises in post-natal and we were lucky we could do that,” Overton said.

“And the doctor said, ‘Peter, you have a very, very ill wife. Perhaps you don’t realise just how sick she is’.”

One night he read an article on the computer that his wife had written – it’s something he said he’ll never forget

“She talked about a little Tiffany clock we had and the knives that she had to throw out because of the fear that she had of hurting Allegra,” Overton revealed.

“I read that and as a husband I simply went and hugged her and said, ‘It’s going to be all right’. At the time, Jesus Christ, it was bloody awful. It was just awful. It was a really hard time for her and for me … really challenging.”

Have you ever known somebody who battled post-natal depression?