'A cuddle from my little boy is all that stopped me from taking my own life'

IT WAS the image of his little boy flashing into his mind that stopped Aled Edwards taking the last step to end his own life.

- RUTH MOSALSKI

Sulli, then three, had gone into his dad’s bedroom that morning and given him a hug, one of those incredibly tight squeezes that young children do. There was no reason, but that gesture was the moment his dad will be forever grateful for.

Aled Edwards will never forget the day, almost four years ago, when he was seconds from taking his own life, nor he says, will he ever get over it.

It is something that impacts his life every day, but is also his inspiration, the reason he is working to ensure that others don’t get to the point he did.

Aled had two older children, so when he and his wife Sophie found out they were pregnant he thought he would be prepared.

But he started having nightmares.

They eventually stopped six months after his son Sullivan was born, but when, two years later, they found out they were pregnant again, the nightmares started again.

Baby Bea was six weeks old when her father got to the point of attempting to take his own life.

Aled, 40, from Bangor, says no topic is off limits when we speak because he wants to be as open as possible so that there is no stigma in talking about your mental health, especially since he believes he had undiagnosed postnatal depression.

He never had any mental health issues with his two older children, but when he started having nightmares, he says he knew something wasn’t right.

“I was having nightmares which I just put down to being a new dad again. Almost every one of them was on the same theme, and that was self-sacrifice.

“It was people would break into the house, the house was burning down, all of those kind of things. It would always end up with me sacrificing myself and dying.

With the first pregnancy he said they carried on from the moment his wife told him that she was pregnant until about six weeks after Sulli’s birth.