Mumsnet Talk

Go out and do something or invite friends round then. Or speak on the phone, don't make OH a prisoner of your issues too. I have had severe depression and am on AD's now, before you say I don't what I'm talking about. If you get others to capitulate to your problems. it will be too easy and you'll never want/need to recover

YANBU.

I'd like to say how impressed I am that you scraped wallpaper/decorated with a 2 month old. Don't tell my DH!

Do you go to any baby groups? Just wondered because you said you're lonely.

YANBU. I think he is being incredibly thoughtless to leave you with 2 dc and a 6week old when you have PND.

Nolittle, are you the op's dp's nephew by any chance?

No little, ive never had pnd and i wouldnt have been happy with my dh doing this.

Me not agreeing to it would not be 'my problem'. What a strange attiitude you have.

No Teabrick, I'm not and I stand by my post.

YANBU. Buy nephew a decorating book and tell him it's a late Christmas present. You need support from your DP right now and you aren't getting it.

How are you feeling now? It is a long road to recovery. My counsellor always told me "If you were ill you would allow yourself to rest and get better, so why are you trying to still keep juggling everything you did before?".

YANBU
I assume he's working during the week and this should be your time for help and company.

Tell him from me to jolly well stay home and look after his own family.

Yes, I know it's far more fun, buggering off, offering wise advice and feeling all smug about being helpful.

Your nephew will manage, your wife will manage because she has to, but she shouldn't have to.

Please get your priorities right Mr lonelybunny

Do as you would be done by. In other words, you wanted help so give help to others. It's one weekend (others TBC).

I think the responses on this thread prove who is the one with strange ideas, nolittle.

What MamaTJ said

DP should be home doing his fair share on the weekend, and not swanning of leaving the person who he loves struggling with 3 children and depression.

He's not helping because they need help, he's helping because being useful in a situation he can control suits him far better than helping with small children.

Small children are tiring, stressful, boring and cannot be organised in the way adult company can.

I would have given anything for two hours on a train.when DD1 was a toddler.

Did you mean to be so rude NoLittle? Yanbu OP. I'm all for doing a favour but not to the detriment of my family .

And I disagree with Nolittle. You need help from your DP at weekends. You're not holding him prisoner, if you were physically ill you would expect him to help with childcare and helping in the house.

With all due respect, Nolittle, it is not just a case of getting out of the house here.

I'm all for helping family, but there's a time and a place. Also, if family means that much then they should have rallied round when your own family needed it. I can see why your DH wants to help his family but he is BU. Has the nephew specifically asked for help with decorating? Maybe you can ask him to ram a melon in his mouth sideways, be sleep deprived to the point he aches from tiredness and then start to scrap the wallpaper whilst dealing with someone who needs his attention every 90minutes? Maybe then he can appreciate what you had to do without the added burden of PND

Ignore that last wink - PND does not merit a wink. It's blooming awful and took me over a year to get over. But I still think you should get him to try to think from being in your shoes.

Does DH help with nighttimes or very much at the weekend? Do you think he might see this as being some timeout for him? You could tell him that my DH sees his work as being timeout, which means he gets to be playful daddy when he gets home

And yes I do have a DH who tries this trick.

Fortunately, he knows he does it. Being helpful is how he feels comfortable in social situations. He's forever fixing things at other peoples houses.

We nearly came to blows over my parents door long before we had DDs.

Much as he'd liked to escape small children he did realise it wasn't fair.

Also his DDs soon got big enough to make his duties very clear x

You clearly need some support, some time with DH and a break form the kids.

Agree he has to take the eldest two with him if he goes.

Also your baby is only 6 weeks. DH should be totally enabling you to rest/sleep/have down time. By swanning off, he will be free of any responsibility and you will get no respite.

I wonder if he just wants to escape from you. I am not being rude, but I had PND and my DH just couldn't cope, he did not know or understand how to deal with me and quite frankly he didn't want to come home from work and at weekends he would go off fishing. Everything did come to a head and we had to sit and talk LOADS to understand each other and come up with a plan of supporting each other.
I hope you sort it out.

YANBU at all.

In your shoes I'd email the nephew (copying in DH) and just kindly say 'sorry it's too tricky for DH to help out in person with decorating at the moment as he has a 6 week old baby and so is needed to look after his older two children and support OP at weekends. Dh is very keen to help but it will need to be over the phone for the next 6 months.

Ring the nephew, saw how nice of dp to help and I hope you don't mind I'm sending the dc (or the older ones)as well as they haven't seen their df much recently and its wayyyy to much to be expected to manage again with all 3!!!!

He will soon not want ur dh