To want DP to share housework while I'm on maternity leave?

[Craftyjessicat]

I don't mind doing a bit extra because I'm at home all day and he works 10hr shifts and is on his feet all day so is pretty knackered when he comes home. However he doesn't do anything, either after work or on days off, he doesn't cook, he doesn't do washing- except occasionally his work shirts I I'm not here. He's never cleaned the bathroom in the year we've lived in this house. He did a few little things before I went on maternity but since then he literally has done nothing and I'm finding it hard to cope and getting a bit resentful.
He doesn't do washing up and just uses every piece of cutlery and crockery, he doesn't put clothes away... You get the picture.

It's not like he even takes over looking after DD when he's at home, it's like he can't deal with her for more than a few minutes (she's not a difficult baby) and huffs about changing nappies. She's just under 10weeks and is still breastfeeding a lot but it's like he uses it as an excuse to hand her back to me.

I'm making him sound like an absolute pig, he is a good guy and I be fair I haven't really broached the subject with him yet, mostly because I don't know how.

Am I being unreasonable to expect him to see housework needs doing? Is it a bloke thing that they are just able to ignore these things?
Help!

Tell a woman with a 10 week old baby, her first so no experience of motherhood, that it isnt a full time job.

It does get a lot easier with each baby you have, but your first? Nope, full time job and then some.

5 x nappy changes = 25 min
6 x 30min feed = 3 he (whilst sat down watching TV)
Dressed= 5 min

Bath + dressed = 30 min

Total 4 hours of which 3 of them are sat down.

Full time job? No.it.is.not..

full time job and then some?
Stop infantilising all women as incompetent. It doesn't help them, it doesn't help anyone. It makes me fucking mad, its so demeaning.

And 8 hours of screaming in between. Sang to the tune of The 12 Days of Christmas.

I hope you don't have a baby that you decide to breastfeed then. Because mine fed for 60-90 minutes at a time, every 2-3 hours. More like 2...

Also, some babies just will not sleep unless they are on you. Or on you for a good 20-30 minutes before transferring to where they are sleeping.

I couldn't sleep when my baby did as he would wake often and need re-settling. My days were pretty much taken up with feeding and trying to make the crying baby sleep.

I couldn't do much cleaning once he was sleeping (off me!) because any sudden noise woke him. So polishing, washing dishes, putting washing on, hoovering were all out. It really wasn't worth the stress - for me, the baby or DP! He didn't want to come home to a stressed out, upset, knackered and resentful partner!

Oh, and it's all very well saying babies should sleep in noise. Mine slept better with white noise. It was other noises that woke him all the time and still do now. Even now at 8 months I can't wash the dishes when he is sleeping because it wakes him and the getting him back to sleep is awful. And he is upstairs in his cot ffs!.

My baby didn't start reflux/intolerance/allergy symptoms til 10 weeks. But he was still bloody hard work with no 'issues'. And he is my second.

So can you accept that some people can, some people can't - since we are all individual, with individual babies, and individual circumstances? And I am not incompetent in the least, cheers. But it was more than a full time job that's for sure.

I find it demeaning when others play down how hard it can be raising babies.

Am I incompetent? No, I don't think so.

I sure do wish I could send my broken baby back and have one of Annabelle's perfect ones.

Err what abou feeding.. A baby that age is going to feed alot especially if breastfeeding. Also there is the sleep depravation as I am guessing op does the night waking. Also tbe numerous nappy and outfit changes and laundry.
Life with a new baby is not a walk in the park.
I have 3dc including a 9 month old who doesn't sleep.
Dh is out of the house 13 hours per day and relaxes all evening. I have just settled baby for the second time so my hours are definately longer.
Yanbu op.

I clearly imagined the 2 hour cluster feeds I had with dd .

I have 6 children. I can change a nappy in my sleep and feed a baby whilst cuddling better a grazed knee and helping with homework.

With my first I was a wreck and he was an easy baby. Not because it is hard but because you dont know what you are doing! There is no other job in the world where you are thrown in at the deep end and expected to fend for yourself.

I find it disgusting that women would tell another woman that coping with her first child isnt hard. Good for you that you found it a walk in the park, not everyone else does.

Or tbe two hours that it often took to settle dd after a feed at night. You cannot come up with a time and motion study for looking after a baby. They are all different.

Lucky you frouby. I was juggling everything after a week and I still haven' t caught up. Not sure I ever will with 3dc. Dh does bare minimun but he works long hours so he can sit on his arse all evening whilst I look after baby dd and do bedtime for 3 and come down in the morning to deal with all of last nights washing up. Ok not work except for the odd day here and there.
He rarely manages to look after her for more than 15 minutes before she cries for me inconsolablly.

Also think op just wants dh to do something. Surely taking it in turns to cook and wash up should be bare minimun even during the week. That is just personal care after all and not housework.

It's not 'just a man thing' at all.

My DH is a SAHD. I work normal hours - 10 hours give or take, plus commute. He does the cooking and most of the washing, we share the rest, but we do have a cleaner once a week.

When I was a SAHM he did more than I do now, but I had 2 evening jobs and was studying, whereas he just has the kids.

The way I see it, we should have equal relaxing time. For us, that means he does more than me at home during the day, but when I get home and at the weekend it's all shared. When he was working, I got as much done in the day as I could, but things like dinner he had to do when he got home, as I had to go out straight away. I had less relaxing time then for sure, as I didn't really have any, but I adored my evening work, and would rather do that than watch TV.

No one is saying it is easy. And of course all babies should be different with some being easy and some being difficult.

But if we all said that having a baby is a full time job that leaves absolutely no time for anything else then the average family size around the world would be a lot less than what it is!

I agree that the OPs DH should do something to help. But after a 10 hour manual shift I think it would be a bit much to expect him to come home and start on major chores.

Housework shouldn't be women's work. But it should be the responsibility of the sahp and I know standards won't be as high after the baby until a good routine is established.

Babies do sleep lol. A lot. More than what we think as exhausted new mums. It takes me 20 minutes to toptidy and dust a room. 10 mins to mop a floor. 40 minutes to completely blitz a bathroom. 20 minutes to change a bed. 10 minutes to sort a loadvof washing and get it in.

I found when I was working 30 hours a week outside of the house that if I made a list at the start of the week I was more likely to get everything done.

For 1000's of years we have managed to juggle childcare and homemaking. Without tumble dryers, dishwashers, microwaves and online shopping to help. Let's not make the age of equality the age we throw our hands in the air and declare that in actual fact though we are capable of holding our own in the business world we can't multi task a small baby and a home.

I will expect a little help for the first couple of weeks whilst me and baby recover from the birth. But I would be offended if anyone implies I am not capable beyond that time of coping.

frouby in the 1000s of years we managed to juggle childcare and homemaking, men did not just go out of the door for 10 hours and then do nothing. They also worked 14+ hours a day. There's no reason OP's husband should be the only one to benefit from modern standards of living.

hearing experiences like the detectives is why I ve decided to stop at 2. I don't think I could be so lucky three times. But sometimes I wonder, whether it's they themselves that's made it so easy, or, me.
Difficult babies aside, I suspect normal babies are as hard or as easy as you make them.

Are they, I think that's bollocks. Treated my two the same. DS1 slept through from nine weeks. DS2 up two hours a night for years.

Two children. First one slept through from 8 weeks. Second one throws the odd all nighter in from 16 weeks but they are unusual.

Do you think I treated them differently? No I did not.

It might be something to do with the fact that children aren't sodding clones.

You didn't make it 'easy'. Don't flatter yourself. It is most definitely luck of the draw.

Congratulations to the smug mothers with perfect babies who still managed to maintain a pristine home with a newborn. Get some freaking empathy and understand that not everyone adapts easily to motherhood and some babies are a nightmare.

DD1 was a very easy baby, easy to put down, slept through from 6 weeks. But I still remember being so absolutely overwhelmed by the whole experience that it was a major achievement if got dressed and managed to put a wash on when she was little. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing - I'd never even changed a nappy before she came along.

DD2 was a dreadful baby she pretty much screamed for 10 months straight. But she was okay in a sling so I popped her in one and just got on with life, including managing all the housework just fine. The big difference being that this time around I knew what I was doing and didn't an hour second-guessing myself over every aspect of caring for her. I remember wondering what it was I'd found so hard about coping with the domestic chores as well as caring for DD1, when now I had two of them and it was fine.

I still don't have an answer, but the "deer in the headlights" phenomenon is common enough with unprepared parents of newborns, and it very definitely can be a full-time job to deal with baby. There's nothing infantalising about that - just how it is sometimes.

As I've said, the SAHP should do as much housework as they can reasonably manage during the day. Some days this might be lots, some days this might just be getting everyone up and dressed.

And when the WOHP comes home, both should be on their feet (or sitting/lying with baby) dealing with all the left-over work until it's all done.

At no point should one be on their arse because "they've had a hard day" while the other continues to have a hard day doing the housework around them.

And in no universe is it okay for a man a) not to look after his own child at any point during the day or b) to leave his shit all over the place for his partner to pick up/wash up like a skivvy.

There are posters on this thread whose partners do nothing except make mess for them to clean up. And I have to ask - what are you actually getting out of these relationships? Do you realise your life would be infinitely easier if you just got rid of them? I'm not saying LTB. But all the bargaining power is in your hands when you sit him down to negotiate a fairer deal for yourself.

Its not about being smug at all. My DD wasn't an easy baby when she was little, not until she got to about 3 months. Colicy and clingy. But she did still sleep. And if she had gotten less than 12 hours I would have been concerned to be quite honest. Babies need sleep more than us at the end of the day. It may not be sleep like we have ie 8 hours asleep followed by 16 hours awake but you have to learn to adjust.

My DP knows that when he comes in he has a bath and washes the bath out putting a dirty, damp towel in the washing basket along with his dirty clothes. He knows his 'job' is bins and whilst I am PG he does the windows as they are too high. He knows that he can leave a plate or cup in the sink, but if he makes himself something to eat then I don't expect to clean crumbs off the side and put the butter and ham back in the fridge. He knows to put the clothes I leave on the bed that are his away if I haven't gotten around to it. And on a saturday morning when he gets up if I remind he will strip our bed off.

Its about balance. My DP works his bollocks off to provide for us. The majority of the income we get as a family is from him working 5/6/7 days a week as a S/E builder. So the amount we get in 'wages' is directly linked to the amount of work he has done.

If I were the one out of the house 10+ hours a day I'd expect to come home to a relatively clean home with a meal offered at some point during the evening. And I wouldn't expect to spend my days off doing chores. And I've been the working parent as well so can see it from both angles.

If after 10 weeks the OP is seriously not able to manage an hour of day of chores (with the DH holding baby if necessary when he gets in from work) then telling her that its fine to feel like that won't help longterm. As she is on maternity leave at some point she will have to return to work and how will she manage to work and raise a baby if she can't manage a home?

Its hard the first few weeks. I know that. Have been there. But it is not impossible if mum and baby are well healthwise to manage a home as well as a 10 week old baby. Its as hard or as difficult as you want to make it. How do you think lone parents cope? Or parents where one works away? Or is ill? They manage because they have to.

Sat all day waiting for DP to come home and do stuff for you is not a healthy attitude. If there are no underlying issues then if baby really won't go down at all then get a sling on and crack on with it. Take baby from room to room in a bouncer if you have to. Whatever works for you.

But the longer someone sits there saying 'I can't' the harder it gets to get off the sofa and actually start living as a normal person again,all be it one with a baby. I'm sure the OP would love to find the time to go for a wander around the shops, or meet friends, or go to a mum and baby group? Telling her that she won't be able to do that as she can't possibly be expected to do something like wash the pots or do some dusting won't help.

Sat all day waiting for DP to come home and do stuff for you is not a healthy attitude

At no point did the OP say that she was doing that. Just that she didnt think it was fair that he comes home and does a big fat sod all when she is struggling. Him bathing the baby and doing bed time is NU, or him cooking the odd meal or washing up is NU and he is doing none of that!

loubylou - lone parents cope fine because they don't have an extra adult strewing mess about the house and expecting them to clean it up.

And you seriously let your DP sit in his arse on his day off while you continue working? When is your day off? If you're happy with this grossly unfair situation, well, that's up to you, though more fool you, I say. But don't expect anyone else to accept it.

Some people don't mind doing housework. Most of us hate it. I hate it, every single tiny aspect of it. My DH hates it too. So why should I do it all?

Not one single person has said that the OP shouldn't do a stitch of housework during the day, so I'm not sure where you got that idea from. Pretty much everyone has said she should do as much as she can. But why on earth should her partner get away with doing nothing. Not one item, not holding the baby, not bathing the baby, not cooking, not running the hoover around, not washing his own dirty dishes - NOTHING.

She is the mother of his child, his partner, not his slave.

PS _ when the OP returns to work, I would bloody well hope that she isn't expected to also "manage a home", but instead share the responsibilities of the home she shares with her partner, with her parnter!!

Its a bit of a leap (and an obvious, while illogical, dig) to take "smug mothers of perfect babies with pristine homes" just because some of us can occasionally mop a floor despite having a baby.
Hyperbole much?

Its not smug, its the impression that you gave!

I too managed, eventually. But not everyone does or take longer to get into it, to suggest that the OP is somehow lacking simply because she is struggling will just make her feel worse.

Its not illogical, it IS smug!

Sorry, should proofread.