To think my OH is doing too much with a newborn...

[PoppyH56]

We are expecting our first baby in the next few weeks or so and before this lead very active social lives. I am happy with cutting this down as I am so excited to just spend time with my LO all the time it doesn't phase me the activities I'm no longer atending. My OH however has bought a football season ticket for the next year (games vary once a week between Saturday daytimes and weekday evenings), he still plays in his Saturday league football team which takes up around 4 hours on a Saturday afternoon, a golfing hobby which is usually played bright and early on either a Saturday/Sunday morning and he is also part of a golf team who once a month play a large golf course with prizes on either a Saturday/Sunday for a whole day (8 - 8 scenario). He will also have training for both the golf and the football on two seperate weeknights for a few hours straight from work. AIBU to suggest to him that with a newborn and also working a full time sales job with which means he leaves the house at 7 and doesn't get in until 7.30/8 most evenings means that the baby and I really won't be taking priority over his busy social calendar? I have asked many times when he thinks the baby and I will be able to fit into this non stop schedule for at least 1 full day a week together as well as helping with our child (especially if I want to indulge in my own social events - which will be rare) and he says he's not sure and to play it by ear. AIBU? Am I best to just wait until baby's here?

Agree with others - him doing stuff 'for a couple of hours straight after work' on an evening isn't fair at all. He needs to finish work and come home to do his bit. You will be stressed and knackered and won't have had any time for yourself all day, especially if you've got a colicky baby.

Imagine if the baby has screamed all day and 6pm rolls around and he's off doing his hobby whilst you haven't been able to even have a hot cuppa?? That way resentment breeds.....

My DH had a football season ticket before our DD was born. We compromised on him sharing it with a friend and going to around 50% of the matches (they never look at the id/photo according to him). In the end he didn't even do that as it was just too hectic but he still goes to the odd game.

The calendar would have worked to some extent but we found it very hard to plan in the early months as consecutive sleepless nights, feeding problems and illness just happened when they happened and we needed each other around for support. Might help as a reality check on exactly how much of a social life he has leavinb little scope to parent and be a support to you

Well,!my football and cricket mad son has almost given them up now he has kids
He doesn't grumble ( much )!!!!

I would clock watch from about 4pm and count the minutes until DH came home. I had a velcro baby that I couldn't put down. I showered at night as it was impossible through the day. I would forget to eat, I did not sleep in the day as she would only sleep on me and I was terrified I'd squash her or smother her.

If my DH was doing activities in the evenings as well I would have seriously lost the plot.

I would also think that even if he can't do night feeds the noise will wake him and he will be too shattered to do any of them.

He seems to have got his priorities completely wrong. His hobbies should fit in around you and the baby, not the other way round. Don't become default childcare OP whilst his life doesn't change.

Sorry but he is very clearly entrenched in the idea that women look after babies, esp newborns and that this is not in the father's responsibility. Father Here to help only, which I'm sure he will do. Help when he feels like it or when yOU will demand it.

There is no 'playing it by ear'. Becoming a father should mean that his responsibility as a father comes first, before his hobbies. And his responsibilities are also to be putbsqid baby to bed, take them for a wal, carry them when they are crying, feeding them, changing nappies etc etc etc.
His responsibility as a partner is also to support you and that means been available (or even better proposing) to give some time off, time together as a family, whatever YOU want that will feel good to you.

I would actually be much more forceful and ask him to agree on what will be his responsibility as a new father and partner with a baby in the house.
Who will get up at night/in the early am/at weekend?
Who will change nappies, feed them etc..?
Who will do the HW, cooking, washing?
How much time is he planning to devote to be a father in his week?
How much is he going to devote to being a partner?

Fwiw, with my first we had no idea what was going to hit us but I knew from experience that I don't deal well with the lack of sleep. So right from the word go, the agreement was that we would take turn getting up at night.
We also agreed that he could carry on with his hobbies, one full day every other weekend plus one evening a week. In hindsight, that was too much as he was also away for work 3 days a week.

You need to establish how you are going to deal with it. Take the long view (would that level of involvement also be OK when you will be back at work/have a toddler?) and don't settle with 'I'm so lucky to see him for a half a day in the week'. He is tnworking away, has all his weekends. He should and can spend more time that that with his family.

I would be furious by the 'playing it by ear' remark. I don't even know what to say to that.

Re him being naive.... be weary that that sort of tactic can also be a nice avoidance tactic too.
Plus if he is NEVER with his child for any proper length of time (eg a full day), he is likely to carry in believe this is a piece of cake and that really you are making a mountain out of a mole hill. Because he won't have had the real experience of it (being together with you taking more or less the whole responsibility because he doesn't know/baby is changing so fast etc will not give him any idea of how hard it can be).

Talks from bitter experience there.
Despite some grounds rules established before Dc1 was born, DH didn't get it until he really had to be in charge (and then agreed it is proper hard work....)

Schvitzing similar here. I had one that screamed endlessly, and paternity leave wasn't a thing then. Luckily my DH wasn't a selfish arse and he took the baby out as soon as he got in from work so I could have a break from the noise. This wasn't something I had to tell him to do or put on a calendar (FFS) but something he did because he was the other parent. It wouldn't have occurred to him to do anything other than come straight home after work because it was our much wanted baby!

Pengggwn I just mean that if he is at home 7 days a week, as I would hope he would be during his paternity leave, I wouldn't freak out at him going out for 4 hours for a match (as presumably I could also get out of the house for similar blocks of time), but when he is back at work there is no chance in hell I would be okay with him skiting off for 4 - 12 hours at a time at the weekend for sport.

We should all have happy, independent lives, regardless of children, and for him that is doing his stuff.
For you, it is nesting and nurturing.
You get your enjoyment in different ways.
I'm sure he'll change when baby is born. He'll do a little less, but you will be unreasonable if you think it will all stop

What double standards!

OP should be happy to stay home and do all the 'nurturung and nesting' (that means all the baby care, housework, cooking, laundry etc I suppose) while her oh should get his 'fullfilment' swanning off out 4 or 5 times a week including most of the weekend?

'A little less'? I should be a lot less, his family arent hobbies to slot in around bloody sports! He needs to get his priorities right from the off. His wife will need support and he needs to bond with his baby, help with housework, help with baby care, not leave her to it while he goes off enjoying himself with mates.

There is no way he can know how a baby is going to impact on him, if the baby is colicky, if the op needs a CS, if she has PND? Telling her he wont change plans yet but will play it by ear is basically saying until you really need me to do something I am not planning to change anything I usually do just because I willbe a father.

Wait until you're back at work and he needs to rake time off work when DC is sick or needs to be taken to the doctors - hobbies will be the last thing he will be thinking of!

I think when the baby arrived he will understand a little bit more about parenthood and alter his schedule appropriately, if he's a decent bloke.

Either he genuinely has no idea about how much a baby will change your lives or he is deliberately arranging his life to spend as little time with you and the baby as possible. To give him the benefit of the doubt, I'd opt for the former. Do none of his friends have children? Does he know anyone with a baby? Actually I think even if he does it is impossible to imagine how much your life changes when you have a baby - it's also impossible to imagine how much (for most people) you are happy for that to happen when the baby is actually here. It's the reason why people without children can't understand why life revolves around your children and complain about friends suddenly becoming obsessed with their new baby. For this reason it is pointless nagging him about it before the baby arrives - he won't get it - and don't get into tit for tat "You are out for four hours here so I'm out for four hours there" ramping up the resentment before he can see the reality for himself. See for yourself what your baby is like when it arrives - you're much more likely to have a calm feeder/sleeper if you are calm about it yourself. Chances are that if he's as enthusiastic about becoming a father as you are about becoming a mother he'll be besotted and wishing he could spend more time with you both. I think you have to let him find this out for himself. He'll still be able to go and watch or play the occasional game of football and fit in a round of golf, but it might not seem quite so attractive to him when he has the much greater attraction of spending time with his new son or daughter.

'Let's play it by ear' comes across as 'I'm trying to put off agreeing to cut down my leisure activities'. I would want a more positive response than that about what he'll do with his child. Suggest deciding who gets which weekend day for a lie in as a starter. He can't expect to have a lie in as well as a day out playing sport while you do all the baby care.

Hobbies don't feature with a new baby

What poop. I don't actually know anyone that stopped their hobbies for a new baby, male or female.
Compromises on times yes, but not stopped!

Friends back at the stables a couple of days after giving birth, mothers with babies out watching daddy in a running race the weekend after etc.

Your life doesn't have to stop, but talking and compromise is a must.

I suggest that you also have activities outside of the baby, so you get out of the house alone.

I think the football is fine, but he clearly has an active life.

I think you should have him involved in as much as possible from day 1 and leave the baby with him from an early stage. If you cope with everything, you could end up being lumbered. I sometimes wish I'd played this differently.

Why bother having a family of you don't intend to see them? Tell him to drop the football maybe? At least stop watching it. I can understand that playing might replace a workout but wat Hingis just an epic waste of time and money.

I have a season ticket to the football.

My son was 3 weeks old when I went back to watching games live. I was standing on the terraces at 9 months pregnant (I got stuck in the turnstiles a week before he was due, that was when I knew it was time to stop until he was born!).

It is the only thing I really do outside of work and home, and it is my one true love, so there wasn't much that would keep me away! My husband is brilliant, hands on, helps out as much as possible - but I am the one who takes the Saturday afternoon time, and I have done from very early on.

My second son was/is breastfed, and for the first few months of his life, I would take him to games in the sling because he wouldn't take a bottle (DS1 was bottle fed, is now nearly 5). I swear, all the blokes around me would make more fuss of the baby than the game, they were great! I remember missing two goals against Nottingham Forest because I was stuck in the concourse feeding - I was not happy!

Anyway, what your husband thinks he's going to do is too much. Just the golf, (although the 8-8 thing is too much, at least it's only now and again), or just the playing football, or just the watching football, one of those would be fine. But all of them is too much.

Well he's in for a massive shock isn't he

I think it is wonderful that all those activities have full crèche facilities for new borns. They don't? Oh.

Did you not have a discussion about how life will change with a baby before you got pregnant?

@Redpony1 your post makes perfect sense. I don't want him to stop, I just want there to be a compromise which I think there will be. I do actually watch him play football on the Saturday as I have always done since we've been together and enjoy it and a lot of the other mums go with their little ones. My hobby is the gym which he has already been informed that I go to every morning once I feel up to it and he has baby so there is compromise. I just think we will find out once our LO is here. No point in me demanding too much now, as long as he's aware it will change.