To be increasingly filled with seething resentment towards DH

[endofmytether1000]

WARNING: extremely long! I have NCed, am a regular MNetter.

DS is 5 months old. I am on ML from a very high pressure, very high paid job. DH also has a high pressure, very high paid job that he doesn't particularly like and causes him a lot of stress (but that he will not change as he is too scared to).

DS was an ivf pregnancy due to anovulatory PCOS, and I then had HG in pregnancy which was reasonably well controlled by meds so that I could keep working. I went into labour early (37w) on my final day of work before ML started (groan) and had a very long and complicated delivery culminating in a crash section losing 2L of blood with a bladder prolapse. I am ebf and since 14 weeks DS has refused to take much from a bottle.

Because I'm ebf I have done all night waking/feedings since birth which I've been happy to do, no point both of us being up etc etc. DS doesn't sleep much during he day (the dreaded 40 minute sleep cycle!) but has been a reasonable sleeper for the most part - 1-2 night wakings and quick to resettle.

HOWEVER, now things are changing and I am becoming increasingly resentful of my dh. Am too tired to make this coherent but a few "highlights" - sorry for length but trying not to drip feed

• DS has stopped being a reasonable sleeper/resettler and is now waking at midnight, 330am and 530am. He is not actually hungry but will ofc when held to my chest eventually go for my boob. DS has also started to fight against sleeping in his cot / he wants to sleep with us/on me! So it is taking c 1-1.5hrs to resettle him, which means the sleep time between feeds is more like 1-1.5hrs. DH sleeps through all night wakings with a pillow over his head, snoring heavily. If I shake him awake to help me with settling DS he will do so under great sufferance, and if he does get DS down in his cot he will immediately go back to bed with his pillow so that when DS cries out again (because he's not properly settled) I either have to go to him myself or shake dh awake again. So I end up just feeding DS as I can't really hold him off by myself. DH is such a heavy sleeper that he sets his alarm for eg 6am - it will go off, wake me up and then I have to shake dh awake. This morning I was awake from 330-530am and then dh's alarm went off at 6am and I had to wake him
• dh constantly tells me that "we really need to push DS to take the bottle" however will not do anything to help me - I tried to introduce a dream feed with a bottle but I would go up to bed at 1030/11 after expressing and dh would be asleep with his head under the pillow and refuse to wake up. Similarly he will not commit to being home for either the 7am or bedtime feed for eg 2 weeks to get DS used to a bottle. So I have to try to give it to DS myself and obviously he won't take it from me.
• on weekends I do almost all of the child care. Dh will take him if I specifically ask but only for the minimum amount of time I ask for (eg yesterday I asked him to look after DS whilst I had a "quick bath" - I was having a nice soak and after 40 minutes dh came up to the bathroom and said "I thought you were only having a quick soak, when will you be done?"). If I want him to look after DS for multiple periods he will claim he "has to do some work today" and disappear to his study.
• dh will not use his brain AT ALL with DS - he will literally do exactly what I tell him and no more. Some recent examples - he gave DS a bath last night (he does this 1-2 nights a week), I lay out all DS sleep clothes whilst he baths him (as he "doesn't know what he should be wearing") and I put his sleeping bag on the bed. DH put it on backwards and inside out "because that's how you left it". FYI I don't care about it being on backwards but wtf?! This man has a masters degree and runs big complicated business projects at work. More seriously he has given DS too much calpol in the past because "you didn't tell me there are 2 doses in the sachet" (it's written clearly on the packet). I am so tired of having to ALL the thinking for him.
• similarly I have to do anything related to DS care eg I am looking for a full time nanny at the moment and I am doing all searching, interviewing. I research the cot and all the various bits of kit he needs. &etc
• I do not get paid ML past the first 6 weeks (crap industry) yet I am still funding 50% of all our household expenses. This includes paying rent, all bills and expenses plus 50% of a mortgage on a house we are currently renovating and will move into. I have told dh that I think this is unfair and he keeps promising that we will "sort it out" but it is never the right time to talk about it
• our sex life is non existent as dh has lost his libido. We had sex once in the third trimester of my pregnancy and have had sex once since he was born. Before that it was slowly slipping to once a month territory. I am trying not to pressure dh but he literally has no interest in me at all and i find that really hard.

On the other hand, I do have help - I have a part time nanny 2x a week for 4 hours. Dh keeps saying "get more help" but it is difficult to find part time help plus ofc DS doesn't take a bottle so it doesn't really free me to do much during the day as I always have to be available to feed.

All this is coming to a head I think because I now have chronic sleep deprivation - I haven't had more than 4 hours straight sleep since DS was born and the last 3 weeks not more than 1.5 hours at a time. I had zero maternity leave pre baby (literally went from office to hospital) and had a very stressful run up to leaving plus ofc was still vomiting from the HG so was not well rested going into this. Plus I have had a very slow recovery from my section and have not been able to do sufficient amounts of exercise to help that. I feel like I am doing childcare 24/7, shouldering 50% of my financial obligations and do not have a functioning marital relationship, whilst my husband basically continues with his pre kids life and is perfectly happy. I am going back to work in 6 weeks and am beyond stressed about it. Sometimes when I am trying to settle DS at night and he is snoring next to me I want to commit violence. But I also know i am hormonal and sleep deprived so am not sure what to do about it.

Not sure what I really want from this post other than somewhere to vent! Thank you for making it this far :)

I think your DS is only 5 months and you are both still finding your feet as parents. It isn't easy, babies don't come with instruction manuals and there's a huge chasm between how you think it will all be and how it really is. My DH didn't adapt easily to being a dad...he loved them but found the physical demands overwhelming and didn't cope with disturbed sleep as he was running a fairly new business and had huge stress going on. I moved into the spare room with our DD who was a TERRIBLE sleeper and that took a lot of pressure off all of us. He got better as they got older, he just wasn't that into babies but oddly enough has really come into his own through the teenage/older years and is now an amazing dad with them. Give yourselves both some time to catch up with your new lives and try to sort your sleeping spaces out better. Once you've got some sleep life really can change for the better overnight!

Babies have drunk from cups across cultures/history. Bottles (and pacifiers) are a recent industrial innovation.

Couples' counselling and lay it all on the line?

He is behaving very selfishly.

Your health is important and should be taken full account of in decisions on feeding IMO.

Oh, bollocks to all these 'he's not very good with babies'.

Nobody starts out knowing what to do with their own real life new baby. (OK, some have done more with babies than others but most of us come to this completely cold.) Mothers, and quite a lot of fathers, and same-sex coparents and, well, everyone who isn't a bit useless and doesn't want to shirk their responsibilities, learns. Learns to change nappies and give baths and do bedtime and find clean babygros and generally do parenting stuff.

OP, you are not a SAHM: you are on maternity leave, to which you are entitled to (among other things) recover from having given birth.

I can actually relate to a lot of this. I had a big argument with DH just yesterday over him not helping enough with DS (4months, crap sleeper). He also has a very stressful job and was coming home, drinking enough wine to ensure he slept through anything including our DD (2.5 years) waking up or DS screaming with wind (ie things he could help with, not feeding), and saying horrible things to me if I woke him to ask for help. But to be fair to him after I pretty much broke down and explained things from my point of view, he went for a bit of a walk and a think and came back sayng he is really sorry, he is going to stop drinking and do more to help. He just hadn't really realised how hard the sleep,deprivation is and how much I need his support. To me it should be bloody obvious but it seems not to be the case. It is also strikingly obvious that he is very under confident with the baby...he is great with our toddler. He just feels that as he can't feed and doesn't spend much time with him (time at home taken up with toddler) he doesn't really feel he can help much. A bit of support from me in terms of explaining exactly where he can help appears to have hit home. So my suggestion is to sit down, really explain how hard things are for you and have some practical suggestions of what he can do to help. Don't turn it into a battleground, it will only make it harder for the both of you. And remember, it WILL get easier!

My DP was ace with babies, having had two before we had one together - plus his exW was totally hands off and didn't parent. He was far more experienced than me. I still thought it my responsibility not to torture the whole family by doing my utmost to ensure peaceful nights for everyone.

If babies cry at night and don't sleep, the very first person to be concerned about is the baby and helping it to stay quiet and contented. Expecting two parents to participate in some sort of tripartite family torture session is not the way forward.

OP, I completely misunderstood the term "EBF". I thought it meant "expressed breastmilk feeding" not "exclusively breast feeding", which is why I was miffed at the bottle issue. Apologies! I just clicked now! What I said related to expressing milk (which is my only experience). I did a bit of both in the beginning actually, so definitely not correct about them not taking the bottle if you breastfeed exclusively. The were happy (thankfully!) whichever wayt their food arrived. The whole cup thing is really hard -- when you are that tired, your hands shake and I cried over much spilt milk before completely giving up the cup!

The little blighters smell the milk on you, apparently, so definitely persevere with someone else giving him the bottle to the cheeky monkey! Good luck.

The nights are only part of it. He should also be doing his share at the weekends du

DH just finds actually caring for him exhausting
And that's doing very little. Ram it home how much harder you have it doing the same for 24/7 running on no sleep.

The nights are only part of it. He should also be doing his share at the weekends during the day.

Not as some sort of statement but just because that's, you know, what coparents do.

Expecting an EBF baby to take a bottle is unrealistic

No it isn't, mine took one no bother.

Mine took one but wouldn't take a cup.

DH just finds actually caring for him exhausting

As opposed to those of us get really energised and peppy from looking after babies?

Endof of course you should expect your husband to do more. It's not reasonable that one person is on their knees with exhaustion while the other in the couple is not.

For what it's worth I have a DD who is now 3, but was EBF and wouldn't entertain a bottle. I tried everything. My DH spent weeks trying every morning and night but she just wouldn't have it. She also wouldn't have milk from a cup. However she happily took water from weaning. She just didn't want milk that wasn't from the source. I now wish I'd stressed less about the bottle, there are plenty of other ways your husband can help.

At weekends my DH would sleep in the room with DD one night and I went into spare room. If she didn't settle for him he would bring her in, then take her back after a feed. More often than not she did settle without milk if she didn't get me straight away. Also just not being on call and expecting to be woken makes a huge psychological difference.

That sounds rubbish, sorry to hear it's so hard and you're getting so little support. In my experience many men fall into the wife=default parent, man=breadwinner roles without thinking. Don't settle for it, but it's easier to change once you're getting some sleep.

I'd suggest cosleeping, it saved my sanity ( up 6x for 18 months). Also leave the house for 3 hours at the weekend- sleep in the car, phone off. He will cope. He will also learn how hard it is. Good luck

I found looking after DD very relaxing. Babies are lovely! But you need to get into the baby's groove, not try to impose your own agenda too much.

You can start by sleeping in another room and not waking him up. He's a grown man.

I found being off work and having a newborn/ young baby fairly monotonous and soul destroying to be honest.

Some people love the experience,others do not. Doesn't make you a better person either way as in both scenarios you're still looking after your baby to the best of your abilities.

Well done OP, sounds as though you've had a good think and are much calmer now. Just to reiterate, outside help or no, you are entirely justified in expecting DH to pull his weight with your DC. I'm rather shocked at the number of people who think a day job is reason to do nothing else at home.
Agree about trying again with the bottle. Haberman feeder and Dr Browns were recommended to me and mine both took to them fine when I started to express. Make DH try first and don't let him give in and bring baby to you.
Also, my first DS was the worst sleeper. My DD is 3 years younger and she slept through before he did. Some kids are just like that, try not to worry and make DH do his share. Good luck

It's not about being a perfect parent. It's about not working oneself up into a frenzy. Most babies tell you what they need to be contented, if you just give them a chance 😉

Ok love 🙄

One of my EBF children happily took a bottle, one took one single type of bottle grudgingly if nothing else at all was on offer, one refused all bottle and cups entirely. Every baby is different.

But they don't always neotrad. DD1 would get completely mixed up between being hungry and being tired. She would scream for milk, when she was actually tired. She would feed to the point of being sick; and would only sleep when she was utterly exhausted from crying so much. DH was crap at helping during the nights with her; she hardly slept for the first year. He was much better with DD2.