To think I get the shitty end of the illness stick

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Have spent last few weeks looking after ds and dh through various foul illnesses.

I now have a hideous cold and feel worse than I have in years. My option is to get the hell on with it. Am a SAHP and dh is out the door at 7am. He won't be back until late tonight because of a Christmas party his second of the week

To top it off, ds likes waking up at 4am. Am starting to feel a bit broken. Obviously I know dh has lots of shitty things to deal with at work but at least if he's ill he gets to stay in bed and feel appropriately sorry for himself.

Ok, moan over.

When dh does get home, you both need to have a discussion about sharing childcare when one of you is working and other other ill ie both not placed to look after a young child.

If that means him going in late/coming home early, working from home, taking over the minute he gets in until he leaves the house in the morning, rather than him taking a day off, that may be the compromise at times.

What is not on, I would suggest, is one party absolutely refusing to compromise or shift their priorities in the short term regardless of the needs of the other.

I know, you're right. I'm not doing it tonight, I want a clear head and to think about how I'm going to calmly put my point across. It's knocked me a bit that he really doesn't see the issue here. I genuinely think he doesn't see that he had a responsibility. That annoys me from the pov that I have more responsibility for ds than he does. But also lack of care towards me as his dw. He basically put his job ahead of me today. I do get that you can't always get out of work easily, but I can't imagine being in his position and saying no tbh.

When he was in bed ill for 48 hours a few weeks ago I made sure he had stuff he needed etc even though I had sole care of ds, who also wasn't well, and had my nightmare of a father and his wife staying. It was a pigging nightmare.

You're right you do need to address this. It was issues like this that brought DH and me to the brink of separation. We are working on it now, and he does get it, finally, but a lot of resentment was built up and a lot of trust was lost.

Hope that you're feeling better.

One of the things I realised with my dh was that I needed to give him advance warning if he might need to take time off ie 'I'm feeling awful, I might need you to come home early later on', rather than insisting I was okay and then realising that I wasn't. This way, he could organise his time at work with this possibility in mind, rather than having to rethink his day later on.

It's actually happened very rarely (twice in 8 years?), but these things become a much bigger deal if they're shrouded in feelings of resentment and feeling uncared for.

Thanks calindana and christina. Still not feeling good and have been up since 3.30 so also exhausted.

Dh has big meeting today which he's really getting himself tied up about so I'm letting that pass and will try to speak to him tonight. He wasn't in a good mood last night and wasn't particularly supportive so I'm starting to feel really disappointed. He just doesn't get it.

Luckily my mum is off work today so she is helping me this afternoon.

yanbu. I have similar problems. Fortunately I am rarely ill.

The only time DH took time off work was when he was literally ordered to look after me by the doctor. I was so ill he ended up taking 6 weeks off. Luckily his work were very supportive and understanding. But just goes to show how ill I have to be before he takes notice.