Who should have been responsible for baby in this situation?

Nobody said you can't "make time for yourself". You absolutely should. That doesn't have to mean days at a stretch away from an infant who is likely not even on solid food yet. You start off small while they are small. This is common sense, or it should be. It's embarrassing having to spell it out. Maybe you're just looking for a row? Tell you what, why don't you look at any other mammal, literally any, and see how many of them leave their babies for days at a time.

There is no sense clinging to how things were before. If you've got a baby, you ARE going to need to get ready around that baby. Even if dad is awake and willing to take the sproggle off your hands, chances are even that kiddo will squawk for mum anyway, because some babies just do that. As a mother of a young baby, yes, you are going to have less time for yourself. Sometimes "doing your hair" is going to mean "brushing it". This is just the reality of life with a baby. If you can't accept that kids change your life, don't have them. The good news is that it is temporary. It's easy to forget that, and to worry that the days when you could spend ages fannying about with your hair are gone forever. Rest assured they're not.

@Terfarina

its all about balance! I bet Op doesn’t go away every weekend. But sometimes she does, and that’s fine! Actually some time away for yourself and away from baby is good for your mental health and actually likely to make you a better mum in the long run. Happy mum = happy baby 😀

Obviously once you've finished work you don't get time off from parenting, I can't even see where anybody has said that. You also don't get time off from your children to mentally prepare yourself for a weekend away, but that's me sticking to the actual subject unlike so many people on this thread

The mums who devote their time and energy to their babies aren’t better mothers than those who are more interested in beautification and weekends away from very young babies?

No. I got home and wanted to spend time with my kid. Partner then got on with our dinner while I either breastfed in early days, did the bath and bedtime then had dinner and then opened laptop to do work til midnight. You don’t get to have time off from parenting just because you’ve been at work all day and have something dangling between your legs.

@weusedtobeapropercountry

i know loads of mother who still make time for themselves - who are into hair and makeup and do it daily, who still value their friendships and go on weekends away etc. they’ve always liked makeup, for years, and always wore it. So having a baby really doesn’t serve as a magic wand that completely diminishes that interest.

some women are happy to change and some aren’t, the former aren’t better mothers than the latter.

Because that's life. That's growth and change.

Pregnancy and motherhood changes a woman at every level, from the cellular all the way up to the neurological. Fighting this fact generally leads to misery. Better to embrace it, and trust that the important bits of you are not actually lost, and the stuff you miss (the spontaneity, being able to gallivant off for days at a time) - it all comes back around in due course.

Or you know, fight it. Have that weekend away from a 5mo baby. Push for EXTRA hours away from said baby. These are totally opposite to normal mammalian behaviours, but whatever. Each mother ultimately has to decide what's right for her and her baby.

And that takes several hours? I'm team DH, I think. Put baby in a sling. The feminist in me says that all this titivating is giving in to capitalist consumerism and should be avoided, but you probably won't agree! 😄

@Grammarnut

i need to air wrap my hair for it to look nice. I would want to do that for a weekend away

My apologies for misunderstanding you 😞

I should know better than to go in with a totally knee jerk reaction. It's just so disheartening to constantly see the insidiousness of it in the way women treat other women.

But he has only had 5 hours sleep and is going to have the baby all week-end. Give him a bit of slack. What do you need to do anyway, apart from brush your hair and maybe put on a little make-up because of course you packed your bag yesterday?
I'm not suggesting it's in any way heroic he is looking after the baby, but it's unreasonable to ask him to do it while you brush your hair, really. Sit down together, let him doze, have some coffee and chill.

OP is clearly trying to get us all on board though.
We have no idea what his job is.
Interestingly, Op hasn't come back and said that he is in a role that doesn't, or shouldn't need anyone to work late - he could work in hospitality, a 24 hour funeral director, a 24 hour roadside assistance mechanic, chef, bouncer, bar owner, a business that does a lot of business with American markets, or hundreds of other jobs that do entail working past midnight.

@weusedtobeapropercountry

@weusedtobeapropercountry

sorry meant to tag you instead

@BubblesandTiara

i mean, if you didn’t feel good and confident going out without hair and makeup up done you’re not just gonna miraculously start feeling happy to go out without these things being done just because you’ve given birth. If anything you’re gonna want to do your hair and make up more in the wake of post partum body changes!

@BubblesandTiara

But why should the pre-baby version of a woman disappear?? And be replaced by someone who doesn’t blow dry their hair and goes bare faced and doesn’t care about all that??

Not in regards to babies, but...

• Because normal babies want to be with their mum, and mums, normally want to be with their babies.*

If you ALLOW your poor husband to be involved and bond with his own child, baby will want to be with either of you! When your baby spends more time with you because dad has to go back to work after a couple of days, baby is not closer to you because you are the mum, it's because you spend the most time with hime - and apparently don't allow the dad to be involved.

I don't know why some women feel some superiority in pretending they are essential to their baby, PARENTS are.

mums, normally want to be with their babies.

yes, we do
It doesn't mean we don't also want to sleep through the night regularly, that we don't want to go for a walk./ run, or spend an afternoon baby free with friends, or go away for the weekend when we are comfortable everything is well and safe at home

Many of us are much better parents because we take a break. When you read all these poor women sobbing and at the end of everything because they are sleep deprived, never had a break and the baby is screaming non stop for hours and hours - do not dare come to tell me that taking a break is bad for either baby or mum.

Oh. Dear. God.

And yet she'll be expected to do everything she has to do usually no matter how little sleep she has, tired, and no one will bat an eyelid!

Definitely not unreasonable to want to feel nice and to not necessarily look like a sleep deprived mum of a 5 month old when going away with your friends!

If he was going away i'm pretty sure he wouldn't have to worry about doing meal prep/leaving the house spotless/who's going to watch the baby whilst he gets himself ready to go and he almost certainly wouldn't be expected to walk around with said 5 month old in a sling whilst getting himself ready!!

Double standards really boil my pi** when it comes to things like this 🙄

Considering you've made the rest of the weekend as easy as possible for him, I don't blame you

Did he need to be home so late?

I left my newborn baby (not even two weeks old) to go away for a whole day, just for a jolly.

I look back and don't recognise myself. That wasn't a normal or healthy thing to do, if I'm really brutally honest with myself, but I think this kind of thing is relatively common in first time mums. Totally understandable when you think about it, it's just a huge adjustment, so all encompassing, and so scary in so many ways.

Even with that level of detachment, you wouldn't have been able to pry me away from him with a crowbar at five months old. And I'd have had a completely rubbish time to boot. Because normal babies want to be with their mum, and mums, normally want to be with their babies. We'd have been fucked as a species if this weren't the case.

We are all different, obviously, but I think there's a conversation to be had around healthy attachment when it comes to young babies.

Mothers are the default parents for babies this age. It happens so much it's practically ubiquitous. Not just in humans either.

biologically, they have to be but only for a couple of reasons. They are the ones who need to recover from childbirth - which can be straightforward or painfully slow. So far (and hopefully it stays that well ), only mothers can breastfeed.

If you remove recovery and breastfeeding, because mum can't or simply does not want to, parents are absolutely equal.

A man is not less able to parent just because he has a penis. See again the number of male obstetrician and paediatricians etc who are perfectly able to do a lot more than most natural mothers can

If you can't trust your husband, why did you even have a baby with him?

Mothers are the default parents for babies this age. It happens so much it's practically ubiquitous. Not just in humans either.

It's not unreasonable at all to expect the other parent to step up to make it as equitable as possible, but realistically, there IS going to be a default parent (babies may even benefit from this) and it's probably going to be mum. A bit of expectation management in expectant parents would not go amiss at all.

For example. Expecting to have hours to do hair and makeup when you have a 5mo baby is beyond what I would call reasonable. This is someone clinging the not-a-mum version of herself, because she's scared (like most of us) that that version of her is at risk of vanishing forever, and also that this new version is less desirable and has less value. These are completely reasonable and familiar fears, but this is what needs tackling, imo, not just, "who should hold the baby" (which is often decided by the baby at that age, let's be honest 🤷‍♀️).

Sooooo much to unpack.

He probably also likes sleep.

I don't like anyone at 7am.

Babies, especially, can get in the bin.