To resent partner since having baby

[newmum1611]

I feel a bit resentful as I don’t feel like his life has changed since we had our baby 3 weeks ago.

For example I do all the night feeds, all the nappy changes. When he’s crying at dinner time it’s me that doesn’t eat as I have to pick him up. Silly things like I want the lamp left on as baby stirs in a night feed when lights are turned off but partner turned it off anyway.

He seems to be doing normal life like playing football etc whereas I’m lucky if I have 5 minutes to get showered.

For example tonight he got in from work and had already eaten dinner etc and I still had to hold baby whilst trying to eat one handed

He did lots of housework and cooking during paternity but I feel like he sees the baby as my problem not his.

Sorry I’m so tired and hormonal and just wanted it off my chest.

Stop being a doormat!

Give him the baby and go out! Go get your hair done, or whatever floats your boat.

Are you young by any chance op?

I’ve noticed this phenomenon with EBF babies. I bottle fed and as a result, DH had to get involved...fathers of BF babies are often lazy

Bullshit. BF is only one part of looking after a baby. My husband would sit up with me in the night to keep me company, do all the cooking and house stuff, leave me breakfast out when he went to work, take our daughter for walks so I could sleep’.

There is no excuse at all for shit parenting. If they don’t step up they’re simply not nice people and shit fathers

ID181241 I know your advice was well meant, but did you ever do this? Because getting enough milk for a day (who even knows how much that is?) is very hard work, baby may not want bottle, etc. I think it's unlikely that OP will really feel able to do this.

A baby comes along changes everything for a mum if you’re primary carer and on mat leave. When I had my first I couldn’t believe the shock of being at home and the utter lack of physical freedom. By the end of the day I would feel overwhelmed and touched out and I would cry if my husband was going to be late home from work. Often I would hand over baby the moment he got home and just head to the supermarket for some feeling of getting out. I know that sounds sad but it was like a holiday to get out for 30 minutes!! Maybe try to do this a few times so that he is left with baby in the evening and just has to deal with it. I just don’t think they get what it is like, how demanding and draining it can be and what an emotional mindfuck. You are simultaneously incredibly happy and at your wits end.

You have to tell him exactly what to do to help and once he does and gets more confident he should help more automatically. They can be clueless at the start and a lot less thoughtful but it will get better xxx

Stop trying to convince him. When you want a thing done just tell him. Then have nerves of steel.

Do not rescue. If he starts doing things badly so you will rescue (nappy half falls off, demands help midway through job) still do not rescue.

If he gets a face on, has a huff, strops around, whatever is his style of displeasure message, ignore it. Seriously, completely ignore it however difficult you may find that. He has ignored you being extremely unhappy so you can ignore him being somewhat unhappy while you get yourself sorted.

Fix this now, nip it in the bud, or you'll be miserable for years and ultimately you'll end up divorcing him. It really is worth forcing him to step up by your actions (don't bother with words of pleading, anger, logic any more).

The advice to go out is well meaning but with my 4 week old it’s that last thing I’d want to do!
There is loads that your DH can and should do. If you are ebf then he feeds you and you feed the baby. So he cooks and clears up, if the baby needs a feed during dinner he takes it straight after you are finished, he cuts up your food so you can eat one handed, on occasion my DH has actually fed me! Nappy changes and comforting the baby have nothing to do with how it is fed.
I wish I had better advice on how to achieve all this, if he won’t listen to a sensible discussion you may need to have a total furious meltdown at him. Does he listen to his mum? Could you get her involved? Or ask your HV to tell him that he needs to step up to look after you and the baby. My midwife was great in that if the baby needed changing or dressing (after being weighed) she’d automatically give it to DH and tell him to do it while she carried on talking to me - a great way to establish that it’s his job really early on.
I really hope you can get him to listen and step up, I wonder if he really realises that not pulling his weight when you need him so much might be the end of your relationship...

Just say... " I do not remember you being this stupid or selfish before baby was born... now when he crys pick him up fuckface. When I need a piss well could you look after him... and if you don't start changing your ways I will be coming to football every single fucking time to show your mates what a twat you are"

Now i know this worked with a friend. Dhe asked me what i would day and that was my reaponce never had this issue myseld however the swearing is crucial. Also don't eb afraid ever to call him out on his crap. Tell his mother his father his mates... whoever this fucker needs shaming

Keep talking-- to him and he should get the picture. Me and DH been together nearly a decade and never had any major rows until first baby arrived a few months ago. He just hadn't realised how much hard work a new baby was and expected to carry on as usual. This resulted in several massive rows bollockings-- in the first few weeks as I was recovering from c section.
One particularly good one was leaving me with crying baby while he took 20 mins to prepare formula was probably farting about on his phone. All bottles were clean so should have taken 5 mins.
He has now got the message. Yes I am taking on the mental load to achieve this and am working on this but it's better than letting it slide. I've never lost my rag with him before and he is a very hard working bloke and kind but he was absolutely bloody clueless in first month.
I should have guessed he would be a nightmare when we first got home from hospital, as we pulled into drive he said 'I'll get baby in and you put the kettle on, and we can watch bake off' errrr no, I can barely walk and just had major surgery. Life won't be the same again and he was just expecting it to be like the films. Grrr gives me rage thinking about it. I turned around and obviously said no, but that was the start of many rows for us but a few months on and we're getting back on track. Hang in there and do not internalise your feelings, let him know exactly how you feel else he will carry on in his little bubble while you are run ragged as someone else has said.

If looking after a baby is so easy/just involves ‘sitting around all day’ then he can look after the baby and give you a break in the evenings then can’t he? Would like to see him back out of that one.

Oops didn't mean to underline first bit

Yes having a baby is a 24/7/365 role. He can look at it like a job if that helps him understand, whilst he’s at work, you’re at work looking after the baby, when he’s at home you split it 50/50.

If the baby starts crying, simply say to him ‘your turn to sort dc’. If he’s eaten, you give him the baby and say ‘my turn to eat’, the same with showering etc etc. When he gets in from football, you give him the dc, say ‘your turn’ and you go back to bed for a few hours in between feeds or have a bath. You really need to nip this in the bud and force the issue, otherwise it’ll never change.

@LisaSimpsonsbff I did do this and it is hard work initially but I would pump on one boob while feeding DS on other boob (so it wouldn't take any additional time). I got used to it very early though as DS went back in hospital at 2 days old as my milk wouldn't come in so they made me pump at every feed for a week to monitor how much I was producing. He was exclusively breastfed after that but I always had at least a days supply of pumped breast milk in the freezer for errands, appointments etc (also went back to work at 6 months and he was still BFing until a year so had to stock up for that). Once you get the hang of it though it's no more onerous than the hassle of bottle feeding and your breasts adjust to produce enough milk for pumping.

Fair enough - I pumped a bottle every day from four weeks (to get baby used to bottle for me to return to work) and found it an absolute pain and didn't feel comfortable leaving baby with just bottle until about three months as I never knew whether it was enough. Also he fed every 90 mins-2hrs until about then so that would have been a lot of bottles for a day! So I don't think it would have been realistic for me, but obviously it does work for other people.

You have to say it. A lot of men just do not get it! start with a 'smells like a change is needed-your turn' and go from there!!

Ps its early days-better it be fixed now!!!

Oh OP it’s truly depressing how often a post like this comes up. I notice them because I too was in your shoes and even though DD1 is 2.5 now it still gives me boiling rage to think how useless and selfish DP was when she was born.

I tried everything to get him to understand that we should be doing all the parenting together and even though he paid lip service to this idea, the sexism is so deeply ingrained I know deep down he thinks the children are my job and he “helps”.

I truly hated him in the early months, full on hate, rage and disgust. The only reason I didn’t leave was because I read on here not to make any major life decisions the first year of having a new baby but to wait until things settle down and then see how you feel.

The only thing that worked was being direct and blunt with what you want him to do. I KNOW you shouldn’t have to do this and you WILL feel resentment but it’s either that or split up really and a breakup isn’t always the easier option when there’s small children involved.

Carve out the time for you so tell him for eg. that you’re taking 3 hours to yourself every Saturday evening and Sunday morning lie ins and follow through. Tell him he has to cook dinner mon, wed and fridays/ Hoover on Tuesday’s etc etc You get the picture. Be explicit and sadly you’ll have to give up on the idea that he’ll use his initiative with the baby and just pick him up when he’s crying etc. he won’t do this.

Sorry you’re in this position, try and get support from family/friends as your mental health is at risk with an arsehole like this as your “partner”.

OP, I had a similar experience when we went from carefree coupledom to first baby. DH had an inability to see how to help and what the baby and I needed from him; later this extended to other things like me taking on so much of the basic lifework you need to be a family.

We had divorce-level fights over a fair few years to get this sorted out. My resentment of him grew and grew and become more toxic. Nearly finished us. Now though he pulls his weight, shares, and can 'see' the invisible work that goes into just basic family life.

I thing it's communicate, communicate, communicate, communicate. In the very early days with a newborn it's especially hard when DH goes back to work and you rapidly become an expert in the baby while he falls further and further behind. The more time he has alone with the baby the more he will understand what it's like, and how it's seriously possible when you have a newborn not to get time to shower or eat a proper meal. Maybe you do have to be explicit and tell him what you need.

Good luck, I hope you can sort it more quickly than we did.

Are you doing shared parental leave? And if not, why not?? He needs to learn how to deal with baby at the same time that you're learning. Otherwise it'll always be "but you know how to deal with DD better than I do".

Are you breastfeeding? If not, leave baby with him for a few hours. If you are, perhaps consider starting to express so you can leave baby with him for a few hours.

He thinks you're just sitting around all day doing nothing. He has no idea that it's actually really hard. There was a great article on the BBC yesterday that you could show him: www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46399467

"Thirty-year-old Andy took over full-time care for two months in July, but admits he was not aware just how much work was involved in staying home and looking after his daughter."

I think this is really common, and men (generally men) don't understand how exhausting it is because they've had no experience of it.

Also, don't just swoop in and take baby back when things get hard. That's reinforcing that baby is your responsibility and he's only 'helping' for a moment before you take over again.

He's just as capable of calming baby down as you are. He's simply choosing not to bother because he knows you'll take over.

...and I can't believe how selfish he is that he can watch you eating one-handed and not take baby while you eat. Surely that's an easy place to start?

OP, I'm sorry you're going through this. Your DH is being a prick. I can easily believe that he genuinely has no idea how much work a baby is while he's at work - hell, I fantasised about maternity leave thinking it would be this gorgeous gentle time when I'd be wafting around, reading books in parks while my angelic child slept in the fresh air.... hahahahahaha.
But he needs to wake up.

Absolutely agree that you eating is the obvious first step. Just point out that you can't eat and hold a baby and is he really that selfish?

Something that worked for a friend of mine, and she didn't even know it was happening.... a mutual friend couple (from NCT) realised what was happening with her and her DH. They'd all become quite good friends. So they engineered an opportunity for the DH of the "good" couple to have a casual word with the DH of the other couple at a lunch where he "good dh" suggested post baby feed that the two women go off to browse a few shops while they looked after babies and then he used that as an excuse to make some comments about how hard it is for the woman blah blah. The point is that it was effective. is there a man in your mutual life who might be able to do this? A sad truth is that sometimes they need the kick up the butt from another man before they'll listen.

[for the record, that annoys the hell out of me. But... if you don't want to threaten divorce, or lose your rag completely, sometimes it is the way it is].

Dh needs to learn that he can do/comfort babies. Men do get nervous but they can learn.

I brought dd home from hospital and, because I didn’t know what I was having, I only bought a few basics in white. I fed dd, put her down and my mum and I walked out to have a girlie hour shopping for pink stuff.

Dh was thrown into the deep end and I had to point out a few things but he wasn’t given the chance to dip out.

My dm had to do something similar, though not so drastic with my dad, too. Both my dh and ddad survived and learnt their ability to cope.

Sorry to read this OP. You do need to try and set some time aside to sit down and discuss how you look after and raise your child together. You're not looking for help, you need him to be a co-parent. When you're both at home you need to share the load and both get a bit of a break - if you don't you're possibly setting yourself up for years of resentment or always being the person responsible for all aspects of child rearing. It may be he's nervous, unsure, from an environment that looking after babies is mum's job so he doesn't know any different, or he just really believes it's women's work. But none of that makes it ok.

"being useless is a choice." AbsoBLOODYlutely!!

"His reply this morning was that I have one job and sit around my family’s houses all day!" Time for a tirade listing ALL you've done in a day - and a strike on doing ANYTHING for him, no laundry, no cooking, no getting his favourite food/drink in.

What are his parents like? I'm guessing he was spoilt rotten!

What's your mum like? Cos mine would've gone through a "man" like this like a dose of salts!

I agree the "pump enough for a day" advice especially this early when bf is likely not yet fully established is poor advice & likely from someone who didn't bf. It also really shouldn't be necessary!

This arsehole really needs a wake up call!

"Fix this now, nip it in the bud, or you'll be miserable for years and ultimately you'll end up divorcing him. It really is worth forcing him to step up by your actions (don't bother with words of pleading, anger, logic any more)." Totally agree!

Also agree that another more sensible male having a word can help too - my ex did this with a mutual friend of ours who was being a real dick. Guy was resistant at first until ex said "mate if you don't stop being a dick & start pulling your weight she's gonna leave you!" Until that point this guy was dismissing the issue as his wife "being postnatal" and making a fuss over nothing essentially. His bloody mother didn't help! She'd spoiled him rotten and had been a sahm all his life and done everything at home his dad didn't even know how to make a cup of tea!