to feel resentful I’ve used my AL for childcare while DH saves his for child-free time?

Stop assuming, get out the calendar with him and work out which days he needs to book off for child care.

Don’t let him take you for a mug again.

😭😭😭 girl what just leave?!?!?!

I feel really sad for the child that neither parent wants to take time off work to spend with them.

This is just poor planning by you both. To be honest isn’t is best to spread annual leave for childcare between the two of you. For example if child is sick, it will be his turn to take leave.

I expect you've collectively discussed and agreed ways of working? He won't know if you don't discuss and communicate....

YANBU but you need to rant at him rather than on here! Sit down with him and make a plan for what leave needs covering and agree who will do what and when.

Tbh I think you are being very unreasonable because you didn't discuss it with your partner in advance and plan it together. Surely you should plan to have time off as a family, and some days when one works and the other does childcare, other days when it's the other way around. It's not rocket science, it's how you manage nursery/school holidays as parents.

This. Talk to him asap.

Time for a sit down conversation with your diaries to sort out the next years plans OP. You should both be sharing the load and if he needs it explained at this point he might get the benefit of the doubt. 🧐 However not going forward. If you’ve booked leave in advance for 2026 then it’s time for him to take on some of those days instead and you cancel the leave to give you some to actually get a rest too.

Well you never discussed it, you just stepped up and took on the default parent role. The guy probably thinks he hit the lottery.

Long past time to have a come to Jesus meeting on how childcare gets sorted when nursery is closed.

yanbu, it is completely unequal and you need to put your heads together and plan it out so you both get child free time off, family time off and individual time off with the child,

Or tell him tha as you’ve covered Christmas this year, he can book time off for Easter

Now is a great time to map out who will do what over the holidays in 2026. Get the calendar out and sit down with him and map out who’s taking what days with the dc. Also book ‘family time’ such as Christmas, and make sure you both have the same child free days off

You need to talk to him and tell him that things are unbalanced, unfair and not working. The conversation should have happened at the ttc stage tbh, but better late than never. If you quietly soldier on without ever speaking up, then yes YABU.

Is there a reason you haven’t just had a table talk about this? You get a wall planner, sit down together and work out between you who is covering which nursery closures and divide it so it’s equal. This should be an easy conversation of “I feel I’ve done the lions share of covering the nursery closures this year, let’s sit down and plan for next year so we both get a break and things feel more equal”.

if you can’t do that or he doesn’t engage then I think you must know you have some significant marriage issues. You sound quite resentful, this will destroy your marriage over time unless you’re honest and he gets on board.

Don’t say that - you will be called a dick for insinuating that parents don’t want to care for their children!

Being resentful is useless. You need to TELL him this is equal shared annual leave very forcefully as you are not the default parent.
Women are terrible at enforcing our rights and we need to do so loudly.

I’ve voted you’re being unreasonable because you’re on here moaning about this instead of having an adult direct conversation with your partner about it.

If you want something to change, voice it.

It’s not hard to say exactly what you’ve said here to your partner.

Don’t become a martyr who puts up and shuts up and does everything and then one day moans nobody else does anything.

This applies to both of them. I find it bizzare that neither parent wants to spend their free time with their toddler.

Yanbu but it sounds like you've not actually had this conversation with him? So I'd start there. It's irrelevant that you earn more but total nonsense that you're the default parent when you both work full time.

Just a heads up though, nursery generally shuts 2 weeks a year, schools shut for 13. Once he's in school you'll both need all your annual leave to cover the holidays so this is a short term issue!

So go to him with the list of nursery closures dates for 2026 and ask him which half if them he is going to book time off to cover

You need to have a serious chat with him about division of childcare labour. It's obviously unreasonable that he just assumed you would magically cover all the childcare.

Have you bought this up?
You shouldn’t have to but you need to tell him.

Failing that, you are in a good position in that you could afford to be a single parent and not miss the extra “help”.

When DD was very young this happened with DH and I. He’s not a bad husband or dad but in that instance he was thoughtless and yes a bit selfish. It was also a symptom of coming out of maternity leave, then initially me being part time, I definitely fell into the trap of being the default parent - if not practically then for all the thinking/ planning/ organising childcare stuff.

DH wouldn’t necessarily have been keeping it for days to himself, though I think he did end up with a few, but more just complete lack of thought. Plus we both work from home so he persisted in the belief that we could somehow manage DD between us whilst working, which quickly became apparent that was never going to work.

So yes, it took a conversation in which I said, ‘look this really isn’t fair, you need to use your leave for childcare too’ and he said ‘yes of course, sorry’ and it’s not been an issue again. He actually has quite a bit more leave than me, so he covers a little more of the school holidays now.

I hope @CrazyCatMom that you can have a similar conversation and that your husband realises he’s not doing his share and rectifies that.

The solution to this is that he now has to do every short notice illness absence between now and March and in March when your leave is about to reset, you sit down together with the nursery closure dates and you split those days equally between you and write it up on the calendar so he can't forget.

Is this the first indicator that he's a selfish twerp who doesn't mind you running yourself ragged?

Has he agreed he'll rearrange his time off to cover the next batch of days nursery is closed? If I remember correctly some have time off at Easter and summer.