....or are all Dads like this?
DD is 14 weeks, she is our first. I feel really unsupported by DH, but fear perhaps IABU and a whingey wife!
He works relatively long hours - leaves at 8 and is normally home by 8:30, unless he has a (work related) social thing in the evening, which average once a week when he's home after 10. So I accept he can't do much during the week and Mon-Fri I am pretty much a single mum. He usually takes her and changes her first nappy of the day and that's it, but he's only started doing this recently since I started putting her to bed in the evenings because it means he actually gets to at least spend a bit of time with her. Before that happened, in the mornings he would just lie in bed pressing snooze until the last minute and then rush off to work leaving me dealing with her feeling like shit because I've been awake since 5am with her. When he gets home she's in bed, but she usually has a feed when I come to bed and she always takes a long time, and lots of ssshhing and rocking to get her back down - I do all of this and he just goes to bed. He is sleeping in the spare room because he doesn't want the sleepless nights (again - fair enough, he's working and it kind of suits me to have my own space and not have to worry about disturbing him), but when he does sleep in with me (sometimes at the weekend - although not always!) he never helps with any of the settling last thing at night or in the middle of the night. I'm often up for 2 hours with her getting her settled and he just pulls a pillow over his face and goes back to sleep. I know he can't feed her, but that only takes 10 mins, the rest is getting her down to sleep! Tonight, I suggested he have a go at settling her after her ten o clock feed and he made a half hearted attempt that just resulted in her crying for half an hour, before giving her back to me and going to bed.
At the weekends he just carries on like before we had a baby. He changes her nappy when I ask him to and has a few cuddles, but doesn't do any of the more tedious bits like helping her get down for a nap. He'll just go off on a run or arrange something with friends without even thinking about needing to do anything about her or thinking about giving me a break.
I know much of the time can't be around to support, but I don't feel like he shares any of the psychological burden either. I'm a new mum and often unsure about what I'm doing so I want to talk about what would be a good thing to try with her or whether I'm doing the right thing, but whenever I raise anything with him he just makes a noncommittal "uh huh" and isn't interested in discussing it.
God sorry this is long and ranty. I probably ABU - reading this back it doesn't sound like a big deal, but I just feel like I'm doing this on my own and I didn't think it would be like this. I'm loving being a mum, I really am, and I don't begrudge having to do any of these things, but I just feel like I'n shouldering all of the practical and psychological responsibility and he's just carrying on his life as normal with the occasional cuddle from a sweet baby. Is this normal Dads behaviour or normal for me to feel like this?