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 :)

He doesn't want to do it and making a bad job of everything so you do it. You are facilitating this.
You need to spell it out to him how desperate you are so that he has no choice but to step up to the plate. You are the only one who can change things because he won't as he's happy with the status quo..

I'm Going to be controversial and suggest you try cosleeping there is many things I have in common with you on your husbands side of issues potentially worse but the one thing I have done is co sleep with my ebf baby and I was rarely sleep deprived, he sleeps better I sleep better he is now 23 months bright happy and independent.

And yet so many of these men manage to hold down high-powered jobs. How does that work then?

"Awww boss, you can't expect me to take on new tasks if I don't feel confident"

"PA, ring up the client and tell them negotiations will have to wait 2 years until they become more interesting"

"I won't be turning up for board meetings until the chairman and I have bonded properly"

Reading some of the responses has made me feel a bit stabby. Just because other women have been happy with zero support from the fathers of their babies doesn't mean you have to be OP.

I'm ebf and most nights DH is in spare room getting a full nights sleep. Some nights I need respite, on average 1 night per week, and that's when he stays in with DS and I get the spare room. DH brings DS for feeds only. Some weeks when DS sleep is particularly poor and I'm on my knees, DH will do 2 or 3 nights in a row where we tag team at the 2am feed and swap beds.

At the weekends DH gets DS handed to him. Yes he gets time off out to do hobbies but when at home or out as a family it's DH time to be with DS and I gently enforce this quite single mindedly.

There's a difference between the daily routine and respite care OP.

You sound desperately in need of respite. Once you've caught up on some sleep you can address the daily routine.

If he does what he is told then tell him to bloody pull his big boy pants and socks up!
Tell him to recruit the additional support or do the additional support (and fucking stump up some cash for his children in that area). Tell him to seek medical advice about the snoring and loss of libido.
Tell him if you ever have to tell him again you'll leave the inept fool to his own problems for good.
Make it very clear he is falling way behind on pulling his weight in your family. The finances, the time - does he expect to swan around forever? Be blunt. He's taking the piss.
He doesn't sound very useful. High stress job etc. Boo hoo. Most of the world has stress in their lives.

A lot of this is fairly familiar - the only reason my marriage to Dh survived the first year or so of dd's life was because I was too exhausted to work out the logistics of splitting up.

To give you some hope - he is now a very active, very hands on father of a 7 year old and a 4 year old. (And we didn't start ttcing ds until he had done a decent share of the parenting with Dd for over a year.)

We didn't have the money problem as we'd had a joint account since dinosaurs roamed the earth but I think that is probably the easiest one to solve - work out exactly how much you have paid in and will pay in from when you stopped getting the full maternity pay until when you go back to work. Lay it out on a piece of paper. Tell him he needs to transfer that to you right now as that is what he owes you for all the time you haven't had an income. I suspect it is laziness rather than stinginess that has stopped him wanting to have the conversation so give him the opportunity to do the right thing.

To be honest the thing that changed things with me and Dh was that one day (when DD was about 1 and I had just gone back to work) he was made redundant. Brutally. Dd was off nursery with a sick bug and I was at home looking after her and had just come down with the bug. We discovered that he could not comfort Dd at all so I had to look after her whilst being sick in a bucket every time I moved. Made him realise that he had prioritised his job over his wife and daughter and now the job had spat him out he couldn't just pick us up where he had left us 11 months earlier when he went back after paternity leave.

I love how these men are able to use their initiative and engage their brains at work, but not at home.

You are expecting far too much of your husband.

What a complete load of bollocks.

As are all the other excuses (depressed, not bonded, not good with babies etc, etc)

He is a father to a planned and wanted baby, He needs to grow up.
(or I'd be smothering him with his precious pillow)

Oh, and stop paying half for everything.

To be honest if you are both in highly paid jobs then buy some extra help in. This is only shor term and your health and recovery is important.
I completely sympathise with the issues of yur ds wanting to sleep with you and wanting to bf at night as a way of settling. All my 4 ebf dc's were like this and 3 out of 4 never managed to take a bottle despite dh being completely on board at trying. I even used to go out of the house and drive around whilst dh paced up and down trying to get them to take expressed milk from a bottle. They never did !!
I would try to get a nanny for a fe whours each day. Feed the baby then let him/her take him out somewhere whilst you get at least a few hours unbroken sleep. Your dh should do the same at weekends.

What Neon said.

I would say this is pretty common in a relation where the wife demands to be treated as an equal. How your DH responds to being held to account is the key factor though. My DH is by his very nature a lazy fuck, but his response to me laying on the line that he had to take an equal share in parenting, housework and childcare was to pull his finger out and start contributing properly. I still occasionally have to remind him that me having two X chromosomes doesn't magically make me more fit for these tasks, but he ALWAYS responds to this by sorting himself out and pulling his weight.

You need to lay it on the line for your DH. Break it all down just as you have here - make it clear that this is non-negotiable - either he accepts that you are equal partner in your relationship or there is no relationship. That is the bottom line. If he accepts this, you will get through this. Even he doesn't, your relationship was always going to founder.

You might have to give up on the bottle though - some babies just won't have it. I had to go back to work when DD was six months and she just relied on water and solids til she saw me and made up for it at night I was a zombie for months, but sometimes parenthood is just shit. And DH let me have all the weekend lie-ins to make up for it.

@corythatwas
Perfect

"I can't do the client training today, I don't know where the training packs are, just cancel it all off. No I haven't looked in the cupboard"

First of all, stop waking him up when his alarm goes off. He needs to be grown up enough to do that himself. If you carry someone long enough they forget how to walk.

Secondly you can't teach common sense to someone who hasn't got it. It's futile. If he can't figure out when clothes are inside out then you're going to have to bite your tongue on that one (unless it would physically be uncomfortable for your son). I suspect he will eventually 'realise' and teach himself how to dress a baby properly.

As for the bills, you're trying to hard to gain his approval on that one. Just stop paying it until you're earning enough to restart. Mention in passing that you've cancelled your direct debit as discussed. If he yelps that you didn't discuss it, tell him you did, and he promised to sort it but hasn't, which Judith steely left you with no choice but to get on and sort it yourself.

My husband says it should be against the law to divorce until your children are at school (except for abuse) because every couple falls out horribly over newborn pressures. Usually it's the men that don't step up to the plate, leaving the women fuming. As the child grows the man-child comes on board a bit better though, and peace is restored to some degree.

Doesn't mean you should let him get away with it though. Keep reminding him he's a Dad now. Don't ask him to "babysit" while you bath, it's your right to dump the baby neatly in his lap and tell him you're off for a nice loooooong soak because you've earned it. If he spuffles tell him he's being unreasonable and remind him he's the Dad.

As for returning to work, can you extend it a little? Non-sleepers often sleep around the 6-8 month mark and you're nearly there. I will never forget how desperate it makes you feel but it won't always be like this!

Start with the finances.

"I am not paying any more bills. I need you to sort this now or we will be late. I also need a regular transfer of money not my account and a backdated amount for what I've been paying. We agreed I'd be a SAHP you need to step up and pay the bills."

Then childcare.
"Are you DS's parent or a not very good nanny? Do you think it's right that I do all the work and you don't contribute to bringing up our child? Do you want him to be be hurt someday because you don't think it's your job to care for him / read instructions on medicine."

Finally sex.

"Am I your loved partner? What can we do so I feel like it. And so you feel that way too."

OP I feel for you - sounds like your DH is a tosser! You need to speak with him. But first, the immediate problems sleep and bottle feeding. Def co-sleep and boob will help him settle - not ideal (settling baby to sleep with boob) but when you are desperate for sleep, get that first and then come up with a self-soothing plan. Re: bottle, have you spoken to your HV? my DS ended up having to bottle feed but I managed to find one that was as similar to the boob as possible. I mixed breast milk with hungry baby formula/baby rice and he slurped it up and slept longer and then used boob at night for soothing until I had rested enough to think straight! Good luck

Oh, and I NEVER laid clothes out for DH. He would get angry and ask me where they are, and I would stick post-it notes on drawers and tell him "I told you yesterday", so he'd get extremely grumpy and start slamming drawers in his hunt for clothes, but he soon learned not to ask and I could remove the post it notes once he'd got it.

DH has always been pretty rubbish like that, and it wasn't until I was in hospital for 10 days that he really shone. It was like he becomes this poor, helpless male when I am around and then becomes super-efficient when I'm absent. It taught me not to carry him so much. It's hard. It to pick up the slack as it sometimes feels the easier option, but it's not easier long term.

Depression is the go to excuse for covering up how lazy and selfish some men are. Lots of people have depression. They don't behave like dicks.

You need to read the book Wifework and then carefully about how you want to proceed and what the consequences will be. An email detailing all the issues is an excellent idea, however, you shouldn't be surprised if he thinks your whining or exaggerating. Pregnancy and first child are when men show their true beliefs; it's when domestic violence starts or becomes more controlling and violent. You need to think whether or not your prepared to live like this and whether or not an ultimatum insisting he actively participate in the care of his child might end your relationship. In my experience, men like this don't change.

I don't think he's depressed, I think he has checked out.
Probably thanks that because he is the man he is inherantly valuable to you... doesn't realise that if he continues to be as useful as a chocolate teapot, if he is more cost than benefit you will ulimately bin him

An email detailing all the issues is an excellent idea, however, you shouldn't be surprised if he thinks your whining or exaggerating
On one hand this is a good and rational suggestion, on the other it is more work for the op and (when he inevitably responds in a way that makes her seethe even more) may just cause even more stress.
Look after number one option, don't waste too much energy on the passenger in this situation

You poor thing. It does take having a child sometimes to realise quite how entitled, selfish and fucking useless some men can be. My own OH has wavered into this territory on occasion, but round about the 5 month mark he started to 'get it' and he has been loads better since.

I am in a similar job/ industry to you I suspect, and I am recently back at work. DS is 13 months and ebf. My DP will do bedtimes, as I am generally still at work. At my bedtime I go to bed with my DP but when the child wakes in the night, I fetch him from his cot and co-sleep with him in a separate room. This way I get sleep, DS gets to continue BFing (he has shown zilch desire to wean off the boob) and I get nice cuddles with my little one while DP also gets a decent sleep. The deal is that from 5am it's my DP's watch, so he gets up and takes over so that I can go back to my own bed and get some sleep before getting ready for work.

This kind of shift pattern is the only way that I've been able to keep my sanity. I know your child is at a much younger age, but I think if you can also try to work a shift of sorts during the hours that your DH is home, so that you get a couple of hours off here and there, then that is one way to start equalising the care role.

A few things which I hope you will gain comfort from-

-I presume you're going to start introducing solids in the next couple of months. It takes the pressure off feeding quite a bit, I found

• However hellish the napping (or lack thereof) is right now, your baby is going to start transitioning into an adult sleep cycle imminently, and before you know it, you should get respite twice a day, as they ought to have around 90 minutes nap after breakfast, and another 90 mins after lunch. Get your head down my darling- it used to drive me fucking batshit when people bleated 'sleep when the baby sleeps' (mainly because he only ever slept while being driven around by me at that age) but I have now learned how to powernap and feel so much better for it.

• bottles. Arggh, I hear you! DS wouldn't take one either, until I had to go away to a work conference when he was 6m and necessity took over. We tried so many but in the end found he accepted dr browns. We used the faster flowing teats too, to mimic my forceful let-down. He would also drink out of a cup (not a sippy one- just a regular cup.) Have you tried that? It is hit or miss at first and heartbreaking to watch all of your tenderly expressed bm getting dribbled down the baby's front at first, but worth preserving. Have you tried going out of the house while your Dh gives the bottle? Many babies won't take a bottle if they know that that the real milk source is close by! There is of course also a school of thought (I hate to admit when my DM is right) that says that if a baby is hungry enough, it will miraculously work out how to take milk from the bottle... (not that I recommend starving your baby. Just make him keen for his bottle next time you try.)

I do feel sorry for you and hope that, as it did for me around this point, that things improve for you.

He should be sharing part of the burden at night. The argument about the SAH partner doing everything during the week is a logic fail unless the working partner is also on call for 24 hours. If they don't have to work at night, they don't get to delegate it all to someone else. Exceptions can be made for the WOH parent if they're a surgeon, driver, air traffic controller or similar. Not if they work in an office and just don't like being tired.

If he refuses to do it, then his money pays for someone to do his share- night nanny or similar. Not household funds. It sounds like you can afford it.

He is practically just a sperm donor. Tell him what you want done and it needs to be done now. Like with the money, tell him what you want and ask him to act on it now..e.g of he needs to sort out a direct debit to give you more money each month.

If he bathes your dc let him get on with it.. You've let him not use his brain and he isn't using it. Let hime make the choices on what your child should be wearing etc, if he puts your son in lets say jeans for bed ask him to think and do it again until he gets it right.

I don't know if this is helpful at all 😂 but I usually resort to sarcasm, passive aggressiveness when angry.

If you let him he will free ride, you will bear most of the cost of child rearing while he continues to advance in his career, investing in his earning potential gaining in power and status while you lose yours

Lol 0/10 for troll effort neo

This DH does fuck all with the baby, let alone the night feeds.