Hello all -
Please forgive the lengthy post! I'm 29 weeks with our first baby, and have been working part-time since January because I haven't had any luck with finding another freelance contract to squeeze in before baby arrives.
Husband runs his own business, works night shifts at least 3 nights a week and does trades work during the days the rest of the week. He lost a big contract recently and with my imminent loss of income also approaching (I only get statutory MAT pay) he is working his guts out to try to stabilise our finances – generally he ends up doing 12 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week.
He's hugely excited about having our daughter and I have absolute faith that he will be the best dad in the world. He's the hardest working person I know and will absolutely do all of the grunt work of parenting with me - night wakes, dirty nappies...the whole shebang.
Neither of us has ever really wanted to fall into the typical gendered family roles with me housekeeping and looking after the kids full time - in fact he's said that he'd much rather be the stay at home parent - but given that he has much higher earning potential than me, we've both come to accept that that's how it has to be for a while, so I'm just trying to crack on and focus on all the baby prep and domestic shiz while he exhausts himself working.
My question is...with all that in mind, how much is it reasonable of me to ask of him in terms of participating in the baby prep?
We start antenatal classes soon and he's (slightly reluctantly!) rearranged his work to make sure he can attend, but his attitude towards any other reading/research is pretty much 'it'll be fine - we'll figure it out', or ‘can you just read it and then tell me?’
In some ways, I do actually trust him when he says it’ll be fine because he's an absolute trooper and so dedicated to us, but I'm worried that he's severely underestimating just how bloody hard it's going to be and maybe if he read a parenting book focussing on newborns he might find himself better prepared on the very basics?
I don't want to end up in the situation where I've just given birth, am a total wreck, am trying to figure out the parenting thing for myself and am then having to simultaneously walk him through it all while I'm barely holding it together.
But on the flip side, I see just how exhausted and overwrought he is from trying to get our lives in order and take care of me, bump and puppy (he also does a fair share of housework alongside his jobs) and it feels almost cruel to ask yet more of him right now.
We did get a puppy just after I got pregnant, and it was a similar situation. I did all of the research, reading, prep, buying stuff and then had to talk him through everything when we actually got the puppy...but then he did, after my instruction, commit hours and hours to training, walking, middle-of-the-night trips outside in the snow for toilet training etc etc and probably spends more time on average now with pup than I do.
Sorry for absurdly long post, but he’s never been around newborns and I’m worried for him that he’ll be underprepared for what’s going to hit us and I just genuinely don't know whether it's fair to push the issue or whether to count myself lucky for everything he does and accept that if he ends up blindsided by how hard it all is, I need to step up and support him until we get the hang of it. Thoughts?