to think DH should get up on a weekend?

[tabbyH]

I am getting to the end of my tether... please tell me if you think this is reasonable behaviour!!

Our DD is now 10 months. I am still BF and dream feeding. She won't have a bottle, but will take some milk from a cup which kind of limits my options. I am still on maternity leave, but only for another 6 weeks when I will return to full time employment. DH works full time.

A normal day...
If I am lucky, then he gets up with DD in the morning to give her breakfast which gives me time for a shower. He then goes to work and I give DD milk. More often than not, however, he stays in bed until the last possible moment before he showers and goes straight out to work. This essentially means I can't get myself ready until DD has her morning nap. Should I make him get up with her?

On an evening, he comes home after she has had her tea. He gets to play for about 1/2 hour before I give her milk. Bath and bed time follows. He often complains that his hands are sore (dry skin/mild eczema) and I end up doing both. My hands are often worse than his from constant hand washing!! This is only if he comes straight home, he goes shopping for non essentials once or twice a week (and by this I mean the Aldi specials that we really don't need or have any use for). If he goes out, then he misses play time, and she is ususally in a bath.

Weekends are a nightmare. He doesn't get up with her at all on a weekend, prefering to stay in bed. One morning we go swimming (after her nap), it is me that drives and swims... he reads newspaper and eats toast in the car. By this time it is lunch time (he is just having breakfast) and I have made DD some lunch so she can eat on the way home. He also thinks weekends are his 'me' time and time for DIY, so I don't get anytime without DD to do anything (like food shopping/cooking/baking/cleaning).

In 10 months, he has taken her out on his own once. He came back after an hour because she was crying (tired).

He is excellent at DIY and cleaning/tidying. He doesn't cook much, never prepares DD any food. Cerals are too complicated! Food shopping is beyond him. He adores DD.. not so much me at the moment because I have had enough!

Yesterday, after saying that I had had enough, he said that he would get up today to take her swimming. Of course, when the time came he was still in bed, so I went. I was planning on food shopping, cooking sunday lunch and baking a cake. None of these happened. I could have woken him up, but on other occassions when I have done this, I get accused of nagging - about his late nights (internet surfing until 12/1am) and drinking (2-6 cans a night).

Am I being unreasonable? Do you have any suggestions on what I can do/say? What is it going to be like when I go back to work and he has to get up with her (because I'll be at work)? Would love a bloke's opinion on this.

Just to give another perspective: I am WOHM and DH is at home with DS. I do all weekday mornings unless I have to be at work particularly early (but even on normal days its understood DH has to take over by a certain time, whether he's properly awake or not). This gives DS and me time together and lets DH either get more rest or get ready, whichever he chooses. Friday am is family breakfast day.

I am usually home after bed and bath time. I always cook, we share chores and cleaning up (mostly) in the evenings. We either do internet food shopping or do it as a family at the weekend.

Saturdays DH gets a lie-in and often takes time later in the day to go off and do something-basically, Saturday is his recovery day, but we just as often do something together. On Sundays, I get the lie-in.

In practice, it's not perfect but it's given us a structure based on sharing which is easier than being ad hoc.

My impression is that your DH is not involved enough with DD and they will both lose out if that continues. You can't really keep up all that you're doing without major resentment, so making some kind of fairer arrangement is important.

Things like not wanting to go to bed earlier and get up earlier are just tough once one has children-everything's changed. I sympathise, as it took DH a while to accept that, just as it took me a while to accept I could not go to bed early and leave tasks undone, however much I wanted to.

Eldritch - Yes, he doesn't seem to realise that if he doesn't go to bed then he'll be tired the next day. I'd go to bed before 8 if I could! But there are things to be done and DD needs another feed before she'll sleep through. It is a never ending cycle though, he stays up late, gets up early, tired throughout the day, often has a nap in the evening (or afternoon at wend) then goes to bed late again!

An earlier poster said about his confidence with her. He hasn't got any I don't think. He has got better, but I can't figure out what it is that is holding him back. I keep telling him that on a weekend all I see is dads with their children (presumably because I'm looking for them), on their own with no sign of mum. He did say one day that he wouldn't know where to change her if needed! I flew off the handle at this one... was I born with all the locations of changing tables in my head??? If all else fails then we have a changing mat and the floor is perfect. When we do go out, I now make sure it is him that changes her, not me. He hates doing it outside the house. He also said that he couldn't feed her - but I never asked him to take her when she was hungry, and now that excuse has gone because she eats food and will have water from a cup.

Does anyone have any ideas about boosting confidence? I find it hard to encourage him without sounding like I'm critising all the time. When he feeds her he is constantly tapping and calling her name to get her attention - she doesn't like it and gets fed up of him. I tell him this, and I'm being horrible again. We are doing BLW (mostly) so I just leave her to it. If she'd rather lick the back of the chair, I just wait until she'd finished!

This morning (after 3 days of little communication) he said I was being snappy, and he understood that I don't want to go back to work but that I do want to go back to work. All about me then... nothing to do with him.

I'll try and keep this succint:

My dh has never got up in the mornings. At times it has driven me to distraction.

But in last 2 years, it's not bothered me in the slightest largely because I think we have the balance just right in terms of what we both do. We both have busy jobs and both do equal share of chores and time with dc. Also our kids are older, and I've just mellowed about it.

But your issue really is his lack of quality time (or time full stop) with the baby.

Re confidence - be encouraging, listen to him, try very hard not to attack and criticise. Encourage him to go out alone with dc for small time periods etc.

Boosting confidence? The only thing i found was to just leave the room/house when dh was doing something with ds, so that the Maternal Hand couldn't shoot out to stop him doing something 'wrong'. If he's tapping and calling her name - well, at least he's feeding and interacting with her. He can't possibly gain confidence if he's never allowed to just work through a few things by himself. Sorry if that sounds brutal.

Confidence is a tough one. In the end, my DH was thrown in the deep end when I went back to work and he took over. It was very hard for him, but it's what women do, isn't it? Remember that just back from hospital panic when you realised you were in charge of a baby?

It won't come unless he has to take DD for periods on his own, and that is when a 'deal' or routine is useful, e.g. every Saturday morning or whatever. It sorts out the sleep thing too-DH now knows to drag himself away from the computer and off to bed because the following day is too awful otherwise.

DH and I take turns so that we alternate getting up with DS in the week (and on the days I'm working we get the other out of bed in time for us both to have a shower) - and we each get one lie in at the weekend.

Lying in until 11am is shirking childcare for a half day IMO. You need to make him realise that he's being unfair.

It sounds as though your daughter is old enough to survive an afternoon in her father's care - and if he can change her and offer food then that is the basics covered. I dealt with this by just announcing on a Saturday morning that I would be going out to run errands of various sorts after lunch, and then just doing that. There were a few tears when DH forgot that DS needed a nap, but they both got over it and it was actually really good for their relationship.

Confidence comes from practice... just pop out for an hour of two and leave them to it - what you don't see won't worry you, and he will probably feel less uncomfortable if you are not watching him.