To think I shouldn't have to juggle housework as well as looking after clingy baby and ask how much you do on mat-leave?

[Sunrock]

Honest opinions please!

We have a 6-month-old DS.

Every time DH and I argue he brings it up that I don't do enough housework. He considers it 'part of being on mat leave'.

I argue that I'm holding a grizzling teething refluxy baby 90% of the time I'm home! He cries after 5-10mins in bouncer. Even when being cuddled he wants constant interaction and games or jiggling and rocking. DH thinks this is my fault for carrying him in sling so much when he was tiny

We go out every day otherwise I'm crying by noon as the constant grizzling shreds my nerves! He loves being in buggy and rarely cries when out. We meet friends, go for lunch, coffee, long walks, groups, classes, baby cinema etc and he is happy. He naps well in loud busy places. I understand why DH thinks I have a great life while he is stuck at work in an office feeling stressed but if I don't go out I feel like I'm going mad.

At home I can't get much done. I can only eat if I sit shaking a rattle. I sing and dance and talk to him while doing basic jobs but he still cries half the time.

Every day I load/unload dishwasher, wipe kitchen surfaces, do laundry. Every few days I cook and make a big salad but in between we eat ready meals or freezer food or takeaway. Once a week I hoover, wipe down sinks, empty bins etc. Bedlinen and towels get changed approx fortnightly. Once a month I clean bathrooms and hob, usually while DH watches DS at weekend as I don't like spraying chemicals near him.

If it's relevant I also do all night feeds (approx every 2-3hours). DS is in bed by time DH gets home from work and I go to bed a couple of hours after DS as I'm shattered.

AIBU to do so little housework? I told DH I want him to do some and he said mat leave isn't just about taking care of the baby but running a household too! He thinks it's U for him to help but I feel we are both responsible for keeping house clean! He stays up late every night having time to himself, I don't see why he can't take 10mins to empty the dishwasher or tidy up a bit! AIBU?

I'm tempted to just get a cleaner. I'm so tired and when DH watches DS at weekend I don't want to spend all my time off cleaning!

you wouldbe being unreasonable if you had a baby like ds. I seriously thought that something was wrong with him when he slept for four hours between feeds. dd on the otherhand fed up to 20 times a day and cried a lot in between. I had to feed propped up in bed after I nearly fell out of the nursing chair with her after falling asleep sitting up.

apparently the health visitor hammered on the door to be let in, and that is very loud and echoey, and I slept through that with dd finally asleep on my chest. probably with sick down my neck

he is an arse. think seriously about where this relationship is going. it could be bloody miserable.

Agree that you can't teach babies to sleep through. You can get used to functioning with a sleep debt.
I think it's a dual problem- the baby is taking advantage of your generous nature and being unreasonably difficult to manage, and your husband needs to pull up his socks and do more on weekends.

I function on about four hours broken sleep a night, and have done for at least five years (7 kids, so always have at least one baby). I don't even mind it now I'm so used to it. Difference is that my hubby is the same, I might be up feeding one but he's settling the toddler.

Can you and the baby go to sleep school?

If he carries on like this he's going to wear your marriage down with his selfishness before long. Could you imagine having a second baby with him if things don't change?

Why has he never taken Ds for a full day before? No wonder he thinks it's easy if he only 'babysits' for a couple of hours at a time.

I would refuse to discuss anything about cleaning with him anymore. If he wants to live in a cleaner home, he can do it himself. You are experiencing the hardest time of your life. Your partner has no idea and is not interested in helping you. What does that tell you about him?

I don't like the fact that people seem to want a tiny baby to adjust more than a grown man. Our expectations of men are pathetic. Thankfully I married someone who is empathetic and knows that four hours sleep isn't conducive to housework. It is sad and stupid that some people expect a working, family man to do less housework than an 18 yo with their first flat.

He likes to stay up late and get up late, always has. He does offer to get up with baby at 5.30 on weekends so I can sleep, but if he goes to bed at 2-3am it doesn't seem safe for him to be trying to stay awake.

If he was regularly getting up with a grizzly baby at 5.30 am he'll probably start to go to bed earlier.

And does a 6 month old still really cluster feed?

OP your husband is being an arse but I think you are enabling him a little by not just giving him the baby and letting him get on with it.

Agree with Bathtime and Terry Pratchett. Baby comes first not manchild.

Honestly these threads and some of the people who frequent them make me sooooo glad im childfree by choice.

I'm on mat leave with a four month old easy baby returning to work in April

DH does - laundry ironing bins kitchen wipe downs dishwasher making me breakfast before work making us both a packed lunch each night tidying up between cleaner's visit picking up groceries - and that's after a 1.5 hour drive each way to work leaving at 6:45 am

I have no energy and spend all my time breastfeeding or on the sofa :(

Your DH needs to wake up.

What strikes me from your posts are that your baby (and you obvo) must be absolutely and utterly knackered if he only goes to sleep for 2-3 hour stretches. He's not getting a chance to have a proper deep sleep which would explain the grizzlies.

Do you have any research to support this, apart from anecdote? OP's baby's sleep is well within the bounds of normal - according to Helen Ball at Durham, approx 27% of babies are not yet sleeping through at a year old. Hard, yes (mine was over 2 before he slept for longer stretches) but biologically normal. I'd be curious to see evidence showing that biologically normal sleep is harmful to babies.

Every day I load/unload dishwasher, wipe kitchen surfaces, do laundry. Every few days I cook and make a big salad but in between we eat ready meals or freezer food or takeaway. Once a week I hoover, wipe down sinks, empty bins etc. Bedlinen and towels get changed approx fortnightly. Once a month I clean bathrooms and hob

This is loads to manage while dealing with a clingy baby, you are doing way more than I ever did while on maternity leave. Like you my DH wondered why I didn't do more (though we didn't have a major argument about it). Then I went back to work and DH had 3 months at home full time. Poor chap looked like an apocalypse survivor after the first week. After the second week he apologised to me for being critical of how little house work I managed while on leave.

Ive got a very clingy baby too. He won't be put down. The only solution I've found for getting housework done is to do it with him in the sling. my local sling library have given great advice.

We are doing shared parental leave, DH takes over in April. I think that's the best way to appreciate each other's role.

I do wonder if all the YABU posts here are by people who don't realise that their opinions are as misogynist, and borne from, the same society that suggests women should be at home tethered to the hearth... Do the test of flipping this all around, the situation is that men are in charge of the babies all day and all night, do they also get all the cooking and cleaning done or is there an expectation that a woman launches in and spirits all the mess away / prepares the family for the next day whilst poor tired old dad recuperates? I just find it astonishing. You didn't see this coming?? I bet you waited on the chump hand and foot before baby came along and were blissfully unaware that you'd find yourself chasing after him when you had yet more on your plate with baby. I have friends who are the same and regularly have to pick them up off the floor when they are so downtrodden and saying ' is it too much to ask to have some help?'. The hardest thing is not shouting 'you married the lazy prick when there was a giant neon sign suggesting you do otherwise'.
A pp posted that it would be 30 years before we have more equality, I fucking hope it's less than that but by these threads you'd imagine it could be far longer. Women sort it out!!! We need to be more vigilant in our own homes about this sly and insidious sexism! He doesn't have the right to ask you to do any more, and if you don't tell him that a bunch of strangers on a thread who are literally shouting at you that he is in the wrong can't wade in and do it for you IRL. The grizzly baby and whether or not you can put him down is not the goddamn issue. If one of your relatives had an illness and their husband was being as much of a dick as yours is you would spot it a mile off. Sleep deprivation caused by baby is no frigging difference, there is just and endemic lack of kindness here from the male in this story and sadly it's all too common

I have been exactly in your shoes. I thought i would be one of those masters doing/starting a company mums but ds arrived with reflux and i did nothing non baby related for nearly a year. Hardly managed to shower most days. For someone overachieving slightly neurotic people pleaser likemyself it was so hard as i felt such a failure. It caused huge problems at home and nearly broke me. What probabably saved my relationship is that a few months in dh had an operation and was at home with us for 5weeks. I remember once after a bad day he said "f..., you just cant DO anything, can you" and i thought "finally he got it".
Have not rtft but is your ds on omeprazole?

Slummy, he does a few jobs around house, including taking bins/recycling out, assembling furniture, cleaning toaster etc. Before we have guests he mucks in and washes floors, hoovers etc. But generally he doesn't seem to notice the mess/grime until we argue about something then he brings it up! I'd like him to just tidy up a bit as he goes along eg wipe sink now and then, sweep breadboard, clean his toothpaste off mirrors, put cups into dishwasher rather than in sink. Now and then he does empty the dishwasher so I praise him (hoping he might do it more often) but it's still occasional. He's happy to put things in microwave or order takeaway when I haven't to managed to cook but then when have next row he brings it up that i 'should' be able to manage cooking with a baby!

I don't really mind the 5:30am starts. I do them every day so can snap awake instantly and have baby's breakfast, my toast and coffee made within 10mins and baby dressed and fed by 6am. I used to get up at 5am for work. Whereas DH is a night owl and takes an hour to become fully awake. I don't feel it's safe to let him stumble around house with DS half-awake and chances are DS will want to BF so his crying will wake me anyway.

Thanks for all the advice. DS has a jumparoo, bouncer, rocker, floor-seat, play-mat and many toys. He will play for approx 5mins before squirming and grizzling to be picked up, 10mins if lucky. If I don't pick him up he screams so I tend to carry him around! I'll try putting TV on for him. It's as if he wants constant movement and stimulation.

He sounds like a lazy fucker. Sorry. Dh was a bit intimidated by the babies when they were small and I did all night feeds and breastfed but dh did ALL the housework. All of it. And went to work ft. I used to tidy a bit so it wasn't a shocker when he got back, and I used to cook a bit, but that was it.

I carried Dd1 around until she was about 18 months! She was so clingy and stayed that way for years. She's now 17 and planning her holiday with mates in the summer and out so much she's basically never here and when she is, she's sleeping. Try and enjoy these early days x

Lndn he's on ranitidine and Gaviscon. Still goes through 3-4 outfits and 5-6 bibs a day though better than it was!

Of course you can sleep train a baby. I don't know how to link, sorry, but if you google it, there are hundreds of books on the subject, and the importance for the baby of sleeping for longer periods.

Look at it from your dh's POV .he gets home from being at work all day to having to start on the he nd you tell him how you have been out all afternoon with your friends.
At 6m your baby should be starting to entertain himself a bit.if you are carrying him round all the time, you are not helping him get mobile. Are you giving him new interesting things to explore, or passing him the same old toys he was bored of months ago?

If he was a decent, kind, loving father and husband he would come home to his sick baby and exhausted wife ready to muck in and do his share and relieve the burden.

That is what it is to be a man. You are someone who takes pride in looking after your family.

Someone who comes home from a day st the office to an unwell baby, and a wife who has been dealing with that baby all day, to criticise her and ignore him, is not a man, but a pathetic, lazy, useless boy who needs to assert their superior status over women by treating them as skivvies.

He is contemptible.

Which woman here would go to work, leaving their husband at home with a sick baby for one day and return expecting a clean house, dinner on the table, to have no interaction with the child, and five hours rest while the husband keeps working?

Who would treat their "partner" like that?

This man has been doing this for months.

Nasty bastard.

It sounds like you baby is unusually unsettled even for a grumpy refluxy baby. I guess you have asked the Doctors about it.

Mine all had their days but I can't imagine having to constantly carry around a six month old. Doesn't he play with toys at all?

I'm currently on mat leave with 5 month old DD. DH gets home from work and is handed the baby as bath time is daddy time, and if she wakes up after 5.30am and she's fed, he will get up and cart her about whilst he gets ready for work so I can sleep. He does this mostly because he wants to spend time with her as much as give me a break.

Cooking we split, I sometimes do the prep but he makes sure it's on the table once I come down from feeding DD to sleep. Laundry, I probably do more, but he will do it without being asked if it needs it. The weekend is about teamwork - we both need some downtime but also some family time. We have a cleaner because we can afford it, and I do loads of classes, coffees etc because it's much easier being out and about than spending every day staring at the same four walls.

DH isn't pefect, I do sometimes have to spur him into action, but he would never try and dictate what I should or shouldn't be doing. I don't mean to sound all 'look how great I have it', I just want to point out that it can be different.

I do find it sad that there are men who don't see parenting and running a house as a team effort, and surely the whole point of being in a partnership is offering (and giving) help and support where you see that it's needed. Being blind to someone who needs help is not being a good partner IMHO. Parenting is hard work, and a bloody shock to the system at first. We live in a world where women are not expected to be chained to the kitchen sink and the sooner your DH realises that the better! For me, it's also about setting the foundations of the relationship you want with your children in the future. I don't want DD to grow up in a world with the gender stereotype roles that still continue to exist.

Give him a massive kick up the backside and good luck!

I agree with every word you've said, Bathtime. Threads like this give me so much rage. My baby was just like yours, OP, and I got virtually nothing done during the day, because I literally could not put him down without him howling. It did improve after the six month mark when he started crawling. Controversial, but we did gentle sleep training at around that time, and he started napping in his cot for a couple of hours a day, which gave me a bit more time for housework. But I used to use some of that time to relax because I was so shattered. I had very bad PND which was related to the sleep deprivation, and that was with DP helping loads. If DP had been like your husband, I think I'd have topped myself.

I agree about gender roles.and equality. But I do think the OP and her dh are being a bit unreasonable to leave a house dirty. They should sort the house out together (and dh does need to change his views).

In a few months time your baby will be much easier to look after, not least because he will (hopefully) be sleeping much better. I wouldn't worry to much about getting the housework done. The amount you are doing seems fine. You can employ a cleaner and/or give it a good clean once you have more time.
Your DH on the other hand will probably never change unless he finds out first hand what it is like to look after a clingy baby. Don't let him put you down.