to ask my wife to let me get on with it?

[Yimpy]

My wife and I transitioned parental duties about 4 weeks ago. She went back to work full-time and I dropped my hours considerably, basically becoming the next best thing to a stay-at-home dad. Our DS is 8 months old and her and I have a pretty good parenting relationship. Whilst she was on maternity leave and I was still working, I still spent a good amount of time with DS and made sure to be involved in everything.

But I feel like her and I are always at odds about parenting issues and that she can't let anything pass without commenting on it. I don't want to be unreasonable and push her away but it is a real blow to my confidence when she criticises the way that I do something or starts pointing out what she did in the situation. I feel like she is always watching and critiquing when it comes to DS and it is making me feel resentful.

There are a few examples. She will make a quip if I let him sleep in the living room with me after he goes down so I can watch TV, she is constantly asking about how I make his meals, gets irritated at the fact that I have changed his feeding routine (she was making 5 7oz bottles a day FFS!), picks at me if I have a lazy morning and don't get us washed and dressed until after his breakfast (his second feed). I mostly brush it off or try and re-assure her and it gets forgotten about until the next time.

We have talked about it and she has assured me she isn't trying to criticise but it is very, very overwhelming at times. I feel like every decision I make is being thoroughly questioned when I would just like her to have the confidence that I know what I'm doing. Especially after a month.

There has been one incident regarding sleeping that she has been absolutely right to criticise me for. I have developed a habit of cuddling and singing him to sleep and now if I am in the house he won't sleep unless I do that. But I know that I made a mistake there, have acknowledged that and I am working on fixing it. But I feel like she is still resentful about it and thinks that I need to be checked up on throughout this whole thing.

There are things I want to do over the next few weeks such as move him from his big travel system pram/buggy thing to a smaller, fold-away buggy, start him on eating what we're eating at meal times (blended and pureed if possible), move him out of our room and into his own room etc. I'm worried that I won't be able to do any of it without express consent and that this will be an uphill struggle. I wish she would trust me to just get on with it.

That's an encouraging update.

As earlier posters have said you both need to give it time and you both need to be kind to each other. You sound like you are being considerate towards your wife.

I would have hated it if my DH had questioned my parenting skills, not that I thought I was doing everything right bit because I like to work things out for myself.

I think you should just be as nice as possible to each other and try and enjoy your baby as much as you can. Talk, have fun and be as nice as you can even if you don't feel like it. No one knows the perfect way to raise a child, you just sort of have to muddle along and not get to hung up on things.

My DC are adults and I'm still making it up as I go along.

Well done. Talking together and trying to meet each other half way is great progress.

Your relationship can come out of this even stronger if you are both willing to invest in it consciously every day, and put it first when communicating and as you approach decisions about the baby together.

Hello, I don't have much to add except to agree that everything's a bit up in the air right now and if you keep communicating, you should find a balance.

The very best of everything to you & your family.

Yimpy you sound really thoughtful and loving, you guys will be a lovely little family.

Glad you sorted out the pram issue. Your wife needs to understand that travel systems are for newborns. They may not be sold that way but tell her to have a look around. Everyone switches to something lighter within the first year.

The rest of your post could have been written by my partner! I still have to work at not "educating" him constantly.

Good luck, keep talking and you guys will be just fine.

Japanese- my 13 month old is still in the pushchair bit of her travel system and most of my friends who have 12-18 month olds still use theirs for around the village. Definitely not just for newborns!

Agree with all mathanxietys posts.

Agree with nerr travel systems are not just for newborns they are designed to go from birth to 4 or whenever you no longer require a buggy. They tend to (but not always) be more supportive of a developing bone structure and typically recline for naps better. Light umbrella folds don't seem to recline as well. I vaguely remember health advise being babies under 1 year sleep flat, which would rule out any accidental naps in a lighter buggy?

Food is fun till one, so if your child needs 8 bottles a day, he needs 8 bottles a day.

I imagine your dw is finding being separated after 8 months of being the sole carer and watching the carefully instilled routines falling to the ground a bit disheartening possibly. Keep communicating between you, involve her in the little decisions and she should feel reassured. If baby only sleeps on you now she must be feeling really pushed out. It's not an easy situation with the pnd, work together and you will get through this

I wonder if she was worried about leaving him and thought "well, it'll be AS IF i'm still there because DH will be there", and now youre not doing things as she would have done them, its brought it home a little bit more that it ISNT her looking after him in the day any more?

Are there any little routines or habits that she used to do with him that you could continue and maybe send her a picture of so that she can see its not all changed?

"She will make a quip if I let him sleep in the living room with me after he goes down so I can watch TV....picks at me if I have a lazy morning and don't get us washed and dressed until after his breakfast (his second feed). I mostly brush it off or try and re-assure her and it gets forgotten about until the next time.
We have talked about it and she has assured me she isn't trying to criticise... I feel like every decision I make is being thoroughly questioned when I would just like her to have the confidence that I know what I'm doing. Especially after a month."

Posting even though I see your situation has improved because having read the whole thread I'm amazed no-one else has said this.....

• Your wife is a woman who has had a baby. This will mean that she has been bombarded (probably from years before she met you, let alone the baby) with fairly detailed images of what a 'good mother' does and is. Many of these images are not realistic, several of them are directly contradictory, but all of them are held up as being Very Very Important, to both the future quality of life of the child but also the value of the mother as a person.

• Your wife had PND.

Therefore it is very likely that her normal baseline anxiety about living up to being a Good Mother has been magnified by this illlness. She will have struggled very hard to do everything as well as she possibly can for the baby, in its best interests, potentially both struggling and obsessing to a degree that seems irrational to people who aren't freshly postpartum women with PND. She will certainly have done things she found physically and mentally gruelling, over and over and over again, to get things as good as she can (even if sometimes that wasn't as good as she or you might have liked, or you found it rigid or controlling), the amount of sheer effort is huge.

• You are now taking over the role that she had, but doing it differently.

This will be difficult for her but she knows she basically just has to get over it, especially if she actually wants to go back to work. She understands that she has to trust you, but she is also going to be itchy about how much effort she put in and guilting herself if she feels you might be taking it all less Very Very Seriously than she did.

• If you look like you might be slacking at the baby's expense, she will have a huge anxiety spike. Changing his routine to accommodate your TV viewing or wish to have a 'lazy morning' (eg: prioritising those things over the baby's needs) will look to her like slacking or not taking your responsibilities as seriously as she feels they ought to be taken, which wil increase her guilt at not doing it all herself forever, and maybe her PND.

There isn't anything wrong per say with either of those things, but her perception will be worry that this is merely the thing end of the wedge/a wider attitude and undermine her ability to let go and relax - especially if one thing you have done is change the sleep routine in a noticeable harmful way. :/

Travel systems aren't just for newborns. My 2.6 year old DD was still using hers and only stopped because her brother was born. Every so often when I also have the sling she climbs into it (3.4 years). Sorry sidebar.