AIBU to expect some housework done during my partner's mat leave?

Yes OP, give her the whole weekend off and show her how it's done.

My DH worked away 5.5 days a week while I was on mat leave and I did fuck all housework.

Maternity leave isn’t to provide you with a housekeeper. Your dick won’t fall off if you have to tidy up.

My house was the tidiest it’s ever been when I was on mat leave and dinner cooked every day BUT I had a baby that napped consistently in a Moses basket or pram and slept through the night from 12 weeks. I showered and drank hot coffee too.

I can imagine if you have a baby that doesn’t nap or a poorly baby it’s a completely different story.

Do you get housework done on the days you're fully responsible for looking after the baby?

How old is the baby? Is it just one baby?

This. I honestly don’t get why it’s so hard.

Dh didn't expect anything to be done but I couldn't see any reason not to do things during the day. I had 11 hours from dh leaving g to go to work to coming back.

I mean with a hoover,washing machine, dishwasher,its hardly hard manual labour and doesnt take long to do. I didn't do all the house work in one day and had loads of time to dedicate to ds.

The only thing I didn't always do was make tea.
It would be unfair to have dh get up at night ( which he did to help me) go to work ( he was self employed) , come home start making tea, tidy up and help bath and settle the kids and then he'd have to do his self employed paperwork.
It would be different if id been poorly or struggling to cope but I had a normal pregnancy a tricky birth but things ended up OK.

This depends on lots of things. How baby is settling, how she's feeling within herself and how she's feeling, if she's breastfeed (I tracked that I nursed for over 9 hrs one day so more than a full days work). Are you tidy or do you leave mess you're expecting her to clean up?

I think you need to remember that maternity leave is primarily in place to enable women to physically and emotionally heal from a huge physical event (pregnancy and labour and all the hormonal peaks and crashes that come with that) as well as looking after a baby at their most vulnerable.

Is your wife doing the majority of the night waking? Is she getting much sleep?

Is she anxious? Depressed?

Is she prioritising getting out of the house to ensure she's not isolated and to protect her emotional health?

I found maternity leave necessary for my own recovery, but also incredibly intense. I also never had the opportunity to sleep for longer than 1hr40 min at a time which seriously impacted my cognitive functioning and ability to make decisions. At some points I was so exhausted I was hallucinating.

She's not on leave to be your maid.

Not unreasonable at all. There’s plenty of time to do a bit of basic housework.

How much time do you each have to do the following weekly:

• commute when you can listen to radio/watch streaming/walk or otherwise excercise
• have a lunch break
• have a coffee break
• sleep freely and uniterrupted
• do leisure or meaningful self care activities whilst the other parent is solely responsible for your infant (when they are sleeping does not count)
• eat breakfast, lunch and dinner using two hands
• direct your own time

I think it depends, if you want everything spick and span and you’ve made mess you want her to have cleaned up then yabu, also I remember a woman once saying ‘men seem to think if they put a ring on your finger or get you pregnant you automatically become a professional cleaner’. It made me laugh because dh knew me in college, he knew I could barely cook and was crap at cleaning and yet he expected me to become a professional when we got married.

Are you ever coming back to the contentious thread you started @Cljw?

How old is the baby? Is your partner doing all the night wakings/feeds? Is the baby an easy napper (as in does baby go down in Moses basket) or does baby need to be walked around in pram or held/sling to nap? Is baby “easy” as in quite chill and happy to lie on mat/sit in bouncy chair for a bit or a bit more high maintenance and need almost constant attention?

All of the above would have a significant bearing on the amount of housework your partner will be able to do day to day.

Are you also getting up with the baby in the night or are you expecting her to do that too? If so I assume she's catching up on sleep when the baby sleeps. You know the saying, sleep when the baby sleeps, fold laundry when the baby folds laundry.....

Yabu, I was barely holding it together on maternity leave, especially with my first. If my husband had come home complaining about the state of the house that would have pushed me over the edge.

Are you rich? If not, why not? You're at work all day aren't you?

After my maternity leave, my husband took a year home with the baby, so we understand well what it is like from both sides.

We agreed that looking after a very young child at home = going out to work whichever way round we were. The mental strain of work was in many ways much less i found. Coworkers are reasonable beings, they aren't as loud, unpredictable, they let you work, have lunch etc.

Mentally Mat leave is exhausting for a woman. If she's like me, I was up several times in the night, breastfeeding a baby who sometimes just would not get off, unable to put them down so they would be lying on the bathroom mat crying at me every time I needed the loo. I would some days not be able to get a shower and food done easily.

It's not fair to put the extra stress of expectation of housework on her just because she is home. She needs a lunch break as much as you do, if she gets a nap break to eat and have a hot drink don't insist it should be time for her to do the dishes.

When the working partner was home we would take it in turns to do chores while the other had the baby, being mindful that we each needed a bit of downtime too.

It’s not unreasonable to expect some housework to be done, no. Of course, how much somewhat depends on the age of baby, who does the night wakes, how baby is being fed, how clingy baby is, if there’s anything like colic or similar going on etc etc etc.

How old is the baby. It’s tougher at the start and less tough later on..
I do think that evenings, when you’re both together you should split house tasks … cooking cleaning etc , it’s shared time and shared tasks

deoends totally on the baby and their needs.
Velcro baby who takes ages breastfeeding? Probs not gonna have a chance.
easy baby?
loads of chance.

no one here knows.

It's something that men suddenly magically seem to expect when their partners have had a baby.

Same here. My DD1 was an awful sleeper, a real velcro baby. Fed for hours on end! Luckily my DH didn't expect me to clean the house whilst looking after her

What is house working leave? I’ve never heard of it. Weird comment.

Why? It’s maternity leave not house working leave. Clue is in the name.

I did some laundry and kept on top of the dishes etc but some days it was hard to get the hoovering, mopping, bathroom cleaning done with a fussy baby who would only contact nap and another child to look after. Cooking was very difficult also unless it was quick. It totally depends on your baby and her recovery from birth etc. It is unreasonable to think she should be doing everything just because she's not working. It is a team effort, are you helping overnight or is that all on her? If so, you are being very unreasonable.