Night before c-section, DH spends night cleaning with MIL?

[papercoversrock]

This has been bugging me on and off, so I thought this was a good place to ask AIBU...

At 39 weeks pregnant, I had a complication (transverse lie) and ended up one day at 4pm, booking a planned c-section for 8am the following morning.

It was to be our first child and my first time in hospital. I was worried, nervous, happy, excited, the lot.

If my husband had asked me what I wanted and needed to do that night, I would have said spend one last quiet night together before the shit hit the fan! Eat an easily-digested meal reasonably early. Talk together. Get excited together. Get an early night.

But he didn’t ask me.

The second the surgeon left the room, my husband (36yrs old) was on the phone to his mum, asking her to come over and help him clean.
And she did. Between the pair of them, they cleaned the house from top to bottom.

Yes, the house had got somewhat messy (He works a lot and I worked until 8 months pregnant, and by then was exhausted the whole time.)
But it was by no means squalor, and nothing DH and MIL did was necessary for our son to be safe and healthy. I could have gone into labour any time, and brought my new baby home to a safe environment.

Just as an example of how OTT it was, MIL took home bags of laundered and organised baby clothes to re-wash (all bundled together into a bin bag, annoyingly) and bags of toys to steam clean - most of which were for 6 months plus. They cleaned in the toilet and spare bedroom that DS was unlikely to be in for days, weeks, even months. At one point, I had to dive in and prevent her from taking away my (washed and folded) pyjamas and maternity pants that I wanted to wear in hospital!

If DH had said “I feel a weird need to clean with my mum until 11pm, so if you want food and company, maybe you should call someone else” I might have felt hurt, but at least I would have been prepared.

As it was, he kept nipping in every hour or so and saying “Won’t be too much longer.”

His mum’s lovely, and I didn’t want to hurt her feelings or make a scene, but I don’t feel completely at ease around her and didn’t want her there at that moment. I just wanted to relax and speak freely in the company of my husband.

Toward 9 pm I took DH to one side and said “You have to stop now. The house is fine. This is too much. Your mum has to go home. This isn’t what I want.” I was crying and he took my shoulders and said “We’ll be finished soon, don’t get upset.”

At 11pm, DH’s mum finally went home. I then got angry with DH for leaving me hanging on for 6 hours at such an important time, and he threw a bag of “washing” (the one containing my clean maternity pants that I’d saved) down on the floor and shouted “Who do you think I’m doing this for?” Then I quietened down (couldn’t face a fight the night before an operation, so just swallowed it and breathed deeply) and we went for takeaway pizza as nowhere else was open.

I finished eating about 20 mins before the midnight deadline. We went home and up to bed. I was stressed and couldn’t sleep. He was tired and started snoring almost immediately!

Weeks afterwards, no matter how carefully I brought it up, he still wouldn’t have it that he did anything wrong, and I made him angry when I mentioned it, so it was easier just to stop mentioning it.

But it’s stayed with me. It was such a vulnerable time for me, and such an important moment for us both, and frankly I felt like my feelings were inconsequential to him.

How would you feel in my place? I mean, he wasn’t out gambling away our house or banging his secretary or anything. But still, I don’t feel like what he did was ok.

I also wonder whether there is possibly an element of post-natal depression, given the timing. This isn't remotely saying it's your fault or that you don't have the right to be upset but it may be intensifying your reactions or serving as a bit of a screen for other feelings. You've just gone through a landmark few weeks of new parenthood and hormones are crazy anyway. Many women don't recognise PND because they blame their feelings on tiredness etc. It's very common.

MmmBurp, you said things I should have said too.

I think he was trying to do a nice thing, your house sounds like it needed a clean through. Neither you nor he would want to spend time cleaning when the baby is there, who wants to be cleaning the guest toilet when you could be cuddling a baby?
Also, unless you are bed bound or in serious pain, you could have eaten. I'm sure he didn't hide the keys to the kitchen, I know there wouldn't be anything that would stand between a pregnant me and food!
He was told the baby was coming next day, he looked around at the house and panicked.

And I have just seen that you answered yes to the question about other times he has not been nice to you.

No couples counselling. Please go to counselling on your own to see if you are able to get it all off your chest including but not limited to the night before the CS incident, and for advice on how to deal with what is going on.

What sort of other things have been going on?

This incident alone, yes yabu, but if it is a pattern of shouting you down then maybe there is an issue there

Gordon Bennet.

There's a major under current of 'the poor little sausage is just a man, they do this, they don't know any better' with a side order of 'be grateful he didn't piss of down the pub' and 'awww but birth is hard in the menz and you have a healthy baby so get over it'.

The highly scary night before a major OP and becoming a mother, when the OP needed her partner, he panicked and pissed about, left her without food, comfort or company, got his mother to mess with prepared stuff for the baby and re do it - which undermines - and then threw a tantrum when she dared to communicate how miserable she felt.

He's not a poor little sausage, on that night he was a rubbish partner. Tolerance and compassion is not just the job of people with vaginas, and es if the your partner massively lets you down on a night when you really needed them it's bloody hurtful and hard to get over.

NotTheDuchess - cleaning the guest bathroom is what an enthusiastic MIL with the energy to clean for 6 hours straight is for, and she could have done that when she came over with a few casseroles for the new parents the day after the CS.

Telling your DS to man up and take care of his wife, and go out and get her a meal or prepare one for her is also what a MIL is for, but that takes a MIL who doesn't see herself and her DS as the primary couple and to hell with the interloping wife.

Then there are MILs who hear of a CS scheduled for the next day and arrive bearing food and bubble bath and flowers and who leave their unspoken but heavily implied criticism of the DIL's housekeeping standards at home.

I would have gone, as they say on here, absolutely fucking nuclear if someone had taken my washed and sorted baby clothes off to wash again. It's acting as if you, your work, your preparations are just not there. And if I'd been your MIL I would have said 'hang on, these are washed and sorted' and checked with BOTH parents whether I really needed to wash them again. I'm afraid it sounds a little as if your MIL relished the opportunity to make a statement.

And I am gobsmacked at all the posts on here lionising the dh for cleaning and saying it's his endearing little way of coping and the OP has to just suck it up. I think it's because of the cleaning. Sadly (from the evidence of other posts), so many women on here seem tzo live with husbands and partners who do absolutely nothing that one who cleans without being asked (or even wanted to in this instance) must be praised to high heaven. It's the 'be grateful' narrative.

Context of the relationship is so key.
If he is generally a good guy, I would put it down to last minute panic -wanting to be useful etc.
If he's an arse (which it sounds like he maybe is) then this could well be a pattern of putting himself first, being controling, and shouting you down.

My first reaction would have been to give him the benefit of the doubt (although the lack of food until midnight is bonkers! )

'Tolerance and compassion is not just the job of people with vaginas'

Yes. This exactly.

The fact that he's still chucking loud tantrums to shut you down whenever you try to talk about also says he's a bit of an arse, and possibly also that he knows damn well he behaved like one that night.

I held onto a pre baby #1 grudge and in a way I wish I hadn't

If he is normally kind try to forgive him as a. Weird panic besets before a baby comes

Sounds like he was freaking out and rather than passing his anxiety on to you he needed to stay busy.

I'd love to know what the responses on here would have been if he'd spend the evening playing computer games 'to cope with his anxiety'.

I think you are being a little unreasonable to still be dwelling on it. At the end of the day he was just trying to be helpful, and his way of dealing with feeling a bit panicked was to try to help even if it wasn't in the way you wanted him to. He shouldn't have made you wait two hours when you were crying, but when people are stressed their reactions won't be usual.

My DP and DM spent the two days before I went into labour cleaning our new house which we moved into two days after DD was born, I missed DPs company during those days as we had moved back to our hometown so I didn't have friends around, but he had actually benefitted me massively by cleaning the house top to toe so I didn't have to worry about cleaning with a new baby.

I think you're being extremely precious and unreasonable...as well as extremely ungrateful and unappreciative.

Bollocks. She sounds sad and stuck with the memory of something that really upset her. Why such exaggerated and attacking language?

I don't think the cleaning is a problem, nesting I can understand and even wanting to take his mind off the impending op. Shouting at you is not on - how exactly did he think that was helpful reassuring? And nor is the fact that you didn't get anything to eat - though I think in your shoes I would have made myself a snack and then taken myself off to bed and left them to it. I also think It speaks volumes that you are still brooding on it and arguing about it - I would have thought the joy and relief of your baby's safe arrival might have lightened the atmosphere to the point where you could laugh about it together and say "What was that all about?" It's the fact that you can't that rings alarm bells.

What strikes me is him yelling "Who do you think I'm doing this for?" at you when you confronted him about it.

He thinks you should be glad and grateful because he was doing this for you. But you made it clear you did not want him to do this, that it wasn't helping you at all, you begged him in tears to stop. So he feels the problem here is not that he ignored your needs and wishes, but that you weren't complying with what he'd already decided your needs and wishes should be.

That isn't okay for him to do, even at a stressful worrying time. That is not about "oh, it's stressful for men too" or "men nest too" or "he probably just felt anxious" or whatever. That is him ignoring what you actually want in favour of what he's decided you should be grateful for.

It also sounds worrying to me as an outsider that you describe a pattern here where you bring up your feelings, he gets angry/shouts, and you drop the subject to calm things down.

mummy

yes i've seen it and responded.....

I felt stressed reading the op.

Agree wholesale with mathanxiety and miss havisham.

When my waters broke with first baby and we were sent home dh and I went out for dinner round the corner and sat together shoring ourselves up for what was to come. I have happy memories of my last night before I was a mother, sitting in the garden with dh. If he had rung his mother and the pair of them crashed around the house ignoring me despite me asking them not too I would have been very upset. Yanbu.

I think it sounds like he had been muttering to his Mum about his "concerns" with the state of the house and they decided this was the Last Chance and so decided to completely override you.

in that situation I would have taken control, told them what needed cleaning and what didn't, if MIL started cleaning unnecessarily I would have said don't do that it doesn't need doing, I would have told my OH we are eating at this time and I want to spend the night with him from a certain time I wouldn't have sat there getting upset secretly, which you can't change now but you need to see that he was doing what he thought was best for the baby, he was trying you've got to give him that? whilst I was heavily pregnant I could have got my OH to walk over hot coals if I wanted to lol but I'm not that mean, that's changed now unless I'm breastfeeding at the time haha

But she did try to 'take control', Sunshine. She told him very plainly to stop. He ignored her and then shouted at her.

While Mumsnet puts a high value on cleanliness I don't actually see why a house needs to be super-clean for a new baby. Yes, a new mother will be tired but in a normal - as opposed to MN - world, friends and family come round to help with chores, and can be asked to chuck washing in the machine or do a load of dishes..

A baby who is breastfed and who cannot crawl round is going to be getting immunity from their mother. All a baby needs is a parent - preferably two? - who are happy and relaxed and can work together.

Women will remember vividly if hospital staff have been unhelpful during labour or disregarded a birth plan for no good reason. It matter in the same way - perhaps even more - if the people who are closest to us ignore our needs and wishes.

I would have hated that too.

I have to ask though, why didn't you get on with having something to eat at a reasonable time? I imagine a big part of this is the 'still being hungry and pregnant at 11pm' but there was no need for that. You are responsible for your own pregnant body. Sorry if that sounds harsh.

If you really can't get past this incident OP then you need to tell DH firmly that you want to talk about it without anger and do exactly that. Stick to what is actually his part in it though.