Devastated Perth dad Chris Nicholls tells Natalee Furhmann about the day his perfect life was shattered.
When new mum Rebecca Morley told her husband Chris to go back to sleep after they both woke to their baby Freddy’s early morning cry, Chris happily agreed. Four hours later, Rebecca told him she had killed their son.
“I still love her, but I’ll never understand why she did what she did,” says heartbroken Chris Nicholls of his depressed wife. “We had a lovely romance and a lovely life ? it was four years of pure happiness for me, and at no stage were there signs of what was to come. As a father, you don’t expect your wife to kill your child.”
What was to come was nothing short of a nightmare for Chris, 44, who fell in love with their much-yearned-for IVF baby when he first set eyes on him on May 11, 2008.
Just four weeks later, the doting dad’s life was destroyed when Rebecca, now 40, woke Chris and calmly told him that she’d smothered their son.
His school teacher wife recently escaped a jail term after pleading guilty to infanticide, or killing a newborn, in a Perth court. She was placed under a two-year supervision order.
“When someone you love kills someone you love, it’s a cruel paradox,” says Chris, a former hairdresser, who remains unemployed and in therapy more than 12 months after losing his son.
Chris is still haunted by what his wife told him after she killed their son. “Freddy woke at 3am for a feed,” he recalls. “The next thing I know it’s 7am and Bec is shaking my shoulder, saying, ‘Chris, can you call the police? I’ve just killed him.’
“I raced into Freddy’s room shouting, ‘No, no, no!’ I called triple-0, tried to revive him and kept asking, ‘Why did you do it?’
For the full story see this week’s Woman’s Day, on sale September 14, 2009.
Do you think post-natal depression should be taken more seriously? Leave your comments below.
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