Partner who works away

[Beansprout30]

My DH works away Monday to Friday and often has spells abroad. He's just returned my six weeks away and we have a beautiful 8 month old dd.

I feel awful posting this but I'm really struggling when he returns home, it's great to have him back but I feel like mine and dd's routine goes to pieces. He doesn't understand how important it is for her to nAp etc and try and stick to similar times, he lacks major confidence with her - probably because I lose patience with him but he doesn't listen when I tell him how we do things and he also has bad OCD so gets his priorities completely wrong! For example baby needs to get ready for bed and he will be faffing around doing pointless things like straightening up our duvet! It drives me insane and we end up arguing which I hate in front of dd

I love him very much and he's a good dad but I feel like I'm looking after two babies when he's home. He has no clue how hard it is on my own. Can anyone relate or offer advice on how to get him to listen and be more hands on before I throttle him?

[JiltedJohnsJulie]

Sounds completely normal to me. Mine drives me crazy when he's home

[relaxo]

So familiar!

I used to have a good routine/rhythm when ex worked away. When he's come back, the rhythm we had would be thrown into chaos. For example, the kids had an 8pm bedtime and he'd get back at 8:05pm 😡 If he texted ahead, I'd have kept the kids up but they'd be falling asleep, hear Dad and be wide awake again.

With regards to the difficult thing, he'll only know if you also sometimes travel abroad. One of the hardest times was looking after kids when you're ill yourself. I cried many nights feeling ill and comforting a teething baby and praying that the older ones didn't wake up.