To think he's being a shit dad?

[User2837]

DD 4 months has a bad cough/cold.
DH takes her into the bedroom every night and changes her nappy and gets her into a sleeping bag before I come and feed her.
I've woken up this morning and she has no vest on. I also felt the room was colder than usual and checked the radiator which has been off all night.
I'm so annoyed, her cough sounds worse and her little hands are freezing.
How can he not think of or remember the very basics of her needs, she's not well FFS!
This is just another thing in a long line of him leaving her in hat, blankets and coat indoors "because she's asleep", and constantly asking me to check the temperature of Bath water on the rare occasions he gives her one.
How can he not fulfill the most basic needs by now???
How do I approach this without just making him feel shit? Why doesn't he retain this information and how is he failing to pick up these most simple tasks??

Kindly, User, I think you need to take a step back.

Refuse to check the bath temperature.

Decline to help. He will learn if you let him.

Cold hands isn't an indicator of a cold baby. That's why guidance says to check the back of the neck and the tummy. Extremities get cold - it's core temperature that counts.

Your baby is fine and she would have screamed the house down if she were cold. Babies come with a very loud alert system!

That said I do remember feeling as you are when my dh did something differently to me. I won't say wrong, although that's exactly how it felt at the time. Time and perspective has taught me that as long as baby is clean, dry, warm, fed, healthy and happy the route to that point isn't really important.

Your baby was warm enough to sleep. Therefore her needs were met - just not in the way you preferred.

HermioneAndTheSniffle You are winding the op up and she is already stressing out as it is. We are talking about a vest. A VEST. If a baby is uncomfortable it tells you.

In what way do you feel like you're doing everything? Is this the straw that broke the camels back?

Pickle If babies who are cold do cry then my own dc never read the manual.

Because he only started to cry when he got EXTREMELY cold, they rule that needs a warm bath to be able to recover, not just a warm blanket out over him. Now he was 1- older and 2- in good health.
I wouldnt have wanted him to become that cold when also being ill and on ABs.

Ltb

But seriously.... baby is fine, Temp was prob raised a bit if she has an infection. it would have annoyed me if dh is constantly not listening but is he a child to follow your rules? He is an adult with opinions also...

You are winding the op up and she is already stressing out as it is.

Ok. I’ll leave then. Because obviously she has no right to be worried. Nor to ask her DH to actually act like a dad and be careful.

And nor is it acceptable to have a different POV.....

As I say, I think I probably have overreacted slightly. It probably is the straw that broke the camels back - I'm lucky if DH changes 2 nappies a day. I can't remember the last time I had an hour to myself. As I'm BF'ing, every time DD so much as squeals with DH it's "oh she wants the breast" when it could just be she wants to play, have a cuddle, or be tired.
On Christmas day I took her to the walk in clinic with this chest infection, whilst he went to the pub with his brothers. That's just one example of many. I'm just tired and frustrated.

I do think sometimes the constantly checking is because they get used to constantly being told what they have done is wrong or constantly being told what to do

Its called gatekeeping.

Sorry I really feel like people are missing the point - it's not about temperatures and vests. OP feels let down by her partner and I don't think you're being unreasonable here,OP. You want him to be confident and responsible in dealing with your DD and he's not.

I found it was quite difficult to navigate DH's insecurity about how I could do things better than he could for DD (simply because I was st home with her all day). The solution for us was to be absolutely clear about non-negotiables (ie how many layers she needs on, timings for the day) and accept there are things he would do differently. But the main thing that made a difference was him spending more time with her - he's now much more adept at walking her to sleep than I am for example and doesn't hesitate about changing a nappy, as it should be (and no longer requires praise for it...). If you can, hand over more responsibility, but talk it all through first.

I'm in no way "obsessed" with the temperature. But DD has a chest infection and so I don't want it to worsen. Maybe it is pfb syndrome. Maybe it's just that I feel like I'm doing everything and this is just the cherry on the cake.
So he made an error, it happens. You will too. All perfect mums make some mistakes sometimes, thankfully, they rarely lead to serious incident and this one won't either.

All you needed to do is tell your OH that you noticed he had turned the radiator off and that your DD hands were cold this morning, so probably better to make sure it's on tonight.

How would you feel if you forgot to add oil in your car, and your OH finds out the level is very low and he shouts at you because you could have run out, and the car engine could have been dead and you could have been stranded with your baby somewhere, and then they would have been very cold... using this as a stereotypical example of where women tend not to be as aware as men, might not apply to you at all, but just to show how we can all do things that seem very stupid to our partner because we know more than they do. You're a team, work together!

Babies hands do get cold, my little boy went to bed in vest, sleepsuit, sleeping bag and a blanket last night because we have a cold house, the heating came on at 6, and when he woke up at 8 his hands were still cold, so I don't think cold hands are inductive that your baby was too cold.
They would have woken up if they were uncomfortable. Being a new parent is hard work, my DP had never been around babies until we had ours so had a lot of learning to do, and he doesn't always get it right but I know criticising him wouldn't help.
We had a copy of our DS routine and any important info so he could check it without having to ask. As for things like bath water, our bath thermometer has the ideal temp marked on it so that's easy to remember too.

My DD's hands were ALWAYS cold, sometimes freezing no matter how warm she was. She's now 18 and a very healthy teenager who's had very few upper chest infections in her life. My husband also suffers from cold hands and feet. I on the other hand never suffer from cold feet and even in 0 degrees, I'll got out in trainers without socks. We're all different, even as babies.

If you fed her after he got her ready for bed perhaps you should have noticed she didn’t have her vest on.

He is helping care for his child and is on a learning curve, like most new parents.
When I was a child there was no central heating and in winter there was ice on the inside of the bedroom windows, we survived.

Baby sleeping bags are a great invention, I wish they had been around when my own children were babies as most mornings they would be in their cot with all the covers kicked off.

Agree with oldmacdonald it's the genuine real feeling of having to check everything the dh does not one specific thing, so OP can never switch off.

Think you need to talk to him when things are calmer and the him you want him to truly take responsibility for the baby's wellbeing.

Maybe write down a checklist of the nighttime routine to refer to? Of there are things he's not sure how to do like bath temperature, get him a thermometer or teach him the technique, try and find ways where he can do it himself.

OP, I totally agree with you. I think I’d be mightily pissed off with DH’s cavalier approach to your DC. My DP used to make mistakes like this with our DC because he always thought he knew best. He would read information and only process some of it, he’d assume the rest and then his opinion was right.

He is actually a very good dad but I remember the arguments we had; he would get things wrong so often because he thought he knew best (think about preparing formula in a a way which is dangerous) and in the end I threatened to leave. My priority (and rightly so) was to keep my DC safe and his feelings really didn’t come into it at all. I read him the riot act and told him I’d raise the child by myself and he could just fund our lifestyle. At no point was I going to allow him to endanger my child because of his arrogance about always knowing best.

I don’t have advice as I am aware some would think my own reactions were extreme but i think you need to hear that YANBU and as a mother your job is to look after your little one and if that means checking and making sure your DH does the right thing then so be it.

I never had the heating on all night when mine were babies, Granddaughter had a sleeping bag that had her arms inside that kept her hands warm and

Pengggwn i sleep naked all year round

I wouldn't sleep in just a vest in this cold weather (especially with no heating on) so no way would I subject a baby to that.

I wonder how many people saying a vest is fine were tucked up in cozy PJs last night

Can’t I am pretty sure it was no vest under sleep suit and sleeping bag

I think the problem here is that you are understandably worried about your baby, her being so little and you being so new to this (and full of anxious mum hormones) and he went and made things worse for you by not doing things in a way that reduces your worry.

The vest and heat thing is really not an issue. A cold baby will definitely let you know they are cold. I promise.

Let him make his own mistakes and parent how he sees fit. It will be to your benefit in the long run. But there are many ways to do things and babies tell you (loudly!) when you make a mistake. You will make many mistakes yourself but the difference is simply that you will feel it was a mistake in the context of doing your best but when he makes one, you automatically think it's in the context of him being lazy/not caring. That's a bit unfair.

OP I think you have accepted that you might have over reacted. You have an ill baby and you are exhausted it is ok to over react sometimes.
Chalk this one up to experience and take a step back and let your DH make his own decisions about how to care for your daughter. He won’t do it exactly the same as you but he is unlikely to cause harm either. When DD was little biting my tongue whenever DH was looking after her was the hardest but best thing I ever did because it made him confident in his abilities to care for her so he didn’t have to run to me with questions all the time.

I don't think knowing an even shittier dad means that he's not being shit.

He should have had the room warmer OP. I know kids will cry if there's something wrong but even so, she's not going to cry because she knows being a bit chilly isn't going to do her cough/cold any good. She'd have to get really cold to cry.
Doesn't sound like he's beyond salvage though haha, its only been 4 months.

You'll just have to put your foot down a bit more and make sure he consistently does things with the baby - like bath time etc. Get one of them bath thermometers for him to test the water with if he's worried about it. Just tell him "its your turn for bath and bed tonight" And don't take no for an answer or any excuses. Once he's got into his own routine with it all it'll be fine :)
Just remember to try and not to take over when he doesn't do something to your standards. Let him learn.

My DH always used to check with me about everything, and I was like, why do you think I know better than you? What do you think? Even over what was to be for tea, I just said, why don't you just look in the fridge /freezer and make a decision??

He used to be like that on occasions when I was ill and he was looking after the DDs. In the end, I ended up thinking, I may as well have been up and be doing it myself!!

I guess I should be grateful really. He did mostly make sure that he got it right, even if the questions were irritating lol. And yes, he did ask the same questions over and over again.

I would have been annoyed in your shoes, too, OP. It does sound like he was being lazy in not making sure DD wasn't warm enough.