Am I expecting too much of DH?

[dorysealover]

DD is 6 months old.

DH is at work all day so just me and DD at home.

She's going through a developmental leap and doesn't seem to be sleeping much at the minute. Some nights she's waking every hour. DH has decided to sleep in the spare room so he can get a good nights sleep.

We've agreed that on a Saturday and Sunday he will get up with DD on a morning so that i can have a few hours sleep in, which after a week of poor sleep, I need.

DD will only nap on me during the day or in the pram if we go for a walk, she doesn't like the sling, so I feel like I'm limited to what I can do around the house.
If I didn't let DD nap on me she wouldn't nap she'd become over tired and sleep less on a night.

When DH comes home around 5pm I feel ready to hand DD over and catch a quick break.

He will spend an hour playing with her whilst I sort the dinner for us, we will eat at 6/6.30 and by 7 I do DD bath and we both go to bed at 8pm (although it can be a few hours before she will settle)

DH will stay downstairs watching tv / on his Xbox until around 11pm then he will come up to the spare room to bed.

I use time on a weekend to catch up on house work, cleaning, laundry etc, but if we plan a family day out, the house work gets put on hold and i then feel irritated that the house isn't in order.

I just sometimes don't feel like Dh is doing enough, yet I feel like I don't ever stop!!

Some nights he will offer to cook so then he misses the play time with DD.

I breastfeed so he can't really do bed time as she feeds to sleep, and I've tried feeding her first for DH to settle her but she will not settle unless I'm there.

I don't really know what else DH could do but at the minute I'm starting to feel irritated with him.🙄

Any advice?

if you spread the cleaning and laundry over 5 days, it is easily done in 1h/day. How long does hovering/mopping take and it's not a daily chores? Laundry? well, you stick it into that thing call washing machine. And tumble drying/folding/hanging doesn't take a lot of time either.

Exactly! He could do an hour per day after work and still spend two full hours on his xbox. Easy!

I think it’s impossible to say what ‘should’ be doable when you’re on maternity leave because it depends so much on the DC.

I got loads done on my second maternity leave with a baby and a preschooler in the house. I got much less done on my first, because even though I had just one baby then, that baby was a screaming non-sleeping bundle of rage for months and months and was such bloody hard work and I was sobbingly tired. DC2 was a laid-back dream in comparison.

So if you have a baby like my DC2, yes you can probably keep on top of all the housework during the day with time to spare. If you have one like my DC1, good luck doing anything above the absolute bare minimum.

Also her dh plays with the baby after work for an hour, so that is an hour after work he does, op won't let him put the baby to bed yet either. He offers to make dinner from the op. He also gets up with the baby at the weekend.

op won't let him put the baby to bed yet

😂😂😂 the baby who’s breastfed to sleep, that baby?

She isn't comfortable putting the baby to bed on her own so she stays with her when the baby is asleep, is how I read it.

Literally in the OP:

I breastfeed so he can't really do bed time as she feeds to sleep, and I've tried feeding her first for DH to settle her but she will not settle unless I'm there.

and actually, even if she isn’t comfortable leaving the baby alone, that’s absolutely fine. I’d understand the advice if the OP wasn’t happy with that arrangement- but she’s fine with it. The problem is her husband not pulling his weight in his own house. Regardless of the baby, that’s selfish and lazy.

If folks read the ops description of her day all day everyday is doing only th8ngs with her baby, including hours with just sitting with rhe baby sleeping on her. Literally.

At six months old this is unusual and I’m not convinced healthy, particularly if rhe op needs to go back to work. No one else is going to replicate this extreme situation,for her child.

So the upshot is the house work doesn’t get done. So it’s done in the evenings and weekends. However the op won’t let her standards slip, but she herself cannot do it, because all day is only baby and then she’s in bed by eight, so she wants her husband to do it and to her standards after work. And then to have days out at rhe weekend.

So there needs to be a compromise, the standards need to drop some, and rhe op needs to try to do more during rhe day other than baby stuff, the rest of rhe work needs to be split between them, but to a level they both want, not just what she dictates.

*"And posters saying that's when he should be doing the housework is also ridiculous."

When do you think those of us in households where both parents work do the housework? It's really not THAT much of a hellish burden to do a bit of cleaning and laundry of an evening. And I find time to play computer games as well, so I'm sure he could too.*

@GoldenOmber I'm in a household where both parents work outside the home so of course there are jobs that need to be done in the evening. However, if one of us was at home all day with a 6 month old, I'd expect whoever that was to do a general tidy up during the day and not leave it all to be done at the weekend or by the person who was out at work all day. I'm talking about putting on a wash, a bit of hoovering etc not deep cleaning every room in the house. I'm not saying her DH shouldn't lift a cloth to wipe down the counters or tidy away things in the kitchen but expecting him to hoover the house and clean the bathrooms etc etc when she's there all day is a bit much.

Why don't you think he isn't pulling his weight @pumperthepumper?
He is working all day and then takes his dd for an hour in the evening and takes her both mornings on the weekend so OP can sleep in. When does he sleep in? Never.
If you count looking after a baby as equivalent to 'work' then he is doing his fair share of the work.
I personally don't see looking after a 6 month old baby as particularly hard work. Lying cuddling on a sofa for 3 hours a day is not work. Yes it means it's hard to get the housework done but it's also relaxation and he deserves some relaxation too when he gets home in the evening especially if he never gets a lie in at the weekend.
He's offering to do dinner so it's not like he isn't contributing. I think it sounds like a tough situation for both parties but I don't think it's fair to suggest he's not pulling his weight.
Yes he could do a bit more in the evening but equally OP could do a bit more in the day.

Eh, not that unusual, Bluntness. Inspired by Pumper I just looked back at baby pics from six months – 50% selfies with a snoozing baby on top of me, sent to DP at work to cheer him up as he missed her; 50% her attempts to crawl (once she mastered that I really didn’t get anything done). Most of my family, friends and women in anti-sleep training forums were the same. Contact nappers are legion, not unusual.

(In the background of my pics, tbf, a fairly ordered house – the difference I suppose is I occupied DD not with games but with the fun activity of fold-the-washing, put-away-the-washing. And had a DP who did all the shopping, dishwasher loading, and various other chores, before he sat down to play games. And definitely dropped my standards – I do agree that’s the key here. It’s not the sleep that’s the problem, it’s the need to have it all.)

I think @GoldenOmber has it, though, it depends on the baby – for a long time I got little done as DD was a screaming colicky mess until four months, who wouldn’t bloody feed to sleep or sleep in the pram, and took hours of rocking multiple times a day. Her naps were my chance for a breather, not to clean. She also pooed 8+ times a day, all epic up the back numbers, until she was 8 months. My friend with a baby with very different bowels found time to do the laundry required of reusables; I simply couldn’t. We’re all commenting here based on our babies, not the OP’s.

At six months old this is unusual and I’m not convinced healthy, particularly if rhe op needs to go back to work. No one else is going to replicate this extreme situation,for her child.

Just not true, it’s perfectly normal for a six month old breastfed baby to be held while she sleeps.

Again, if the OP wasn’t happy with the situation fair enough - but people are literally criticising her tending to her baby’s needs only to justify the husband doing absolutely no housework in his own house.

Yes he could do a bit more in the evening but equally OP could do a bit more in the day.

The OP is also breastfeeding, including at night. Why can’t he do a wee half hour of cleaning while she’s seeing to the baby? What’s the big issue?

I think division of labour is the main issue and managing expectations.

Op, have a chat with you dh and see what his thoughts are. He gets a full night's sleep every night plus downtime on his xbox. What is your equivalent? Sleeping with baby on you isn't down time.

I think you both need to divvy up chores properly. And as for his comment about choosing between housework or going out at the weekend.... can you both not pitch in together then go out for a few hours, then one cooks dinner, the other sorts the dishes and baths baby etc? Sounds like there is very little teamwork in your household.

OP who tidies up after dinner and clears the kitchen and gets the room straight/dishwasher on or whatever?
And when you ask him to do more in the evening what does he say?
I think theres a world of difference between him literally putting his feet up straight after dinner or if he tidies the kitchen, puts dishwasher on, cleans around etc.

No one is suggesting that the OP does all the housework, but I'm not sure why her husband should do it all either. Surely they should be splitting it between them. Which means perhaps the husband doesn't get to play X box for 3 hours a night, but perhaps also it means that the OP needs to get some balance in her life too.

Cuddling the baby and letting everything else fall to ruin is a luxury which almost no one can take in reality. Most people have to balance it with at least some attempt at multitasking! If you both did half an hour a day, then that would be sufficient. Half an hour of practical house things, split into sections if needed would be a very small fraction of her and her baby's day and wouldn't detract from the focus being on the baby.

Again, if the OP wasn’t happy with the situation fair enough - but people are literally criticising her tending to her baby’s needs only to justify the husband doing absolutely no housework in his own house

No, you’ve missed the point, she wants the house done to a certain standard. She cannot sit she says if it’s not done, so she wishes her husband to do it to her standard. Not his.

This is the issue. She wants it both ways. She needs to compromise. If she wishes to have the days spent doing baby stuff only fine, if she wants him to do the housework fine, but in that case it needs to be to his standard as he decides, not her,

Think the issue is he probably doesn’t do enough but you’re also spending 3.5 hours each day with a baby lying asleep on top of you. The answer seems to be working on a solution to settling them and telling him to do more.

Maybe he wouldn’t - maybe he’d see meeting the needs of his six month old baby as more important
But it's easy to over consider our kids'needs and when doing so means you are run knackered and then expect others to be as knackered as you, something is not right.

There comes a point when you have to accept that you become a better parent by considering your own needs too.

He is doing is part in it and rightly putting some time for himself in the mix. OP should do the same by gently trying to introduce such time in her schedule.

@Bluntness100

Again, if the OP wasn’t happy with the situation fair enough - but people are literally criticising her tending to her baby’s needs only to justify the husband doing absolutely no housework in his own house

No, you’ve missed the point, she wants the house done to a certain standard. She cannot sit she says if it’s not done, so she wishes her husband to do it to her standard. Not his.

This is the issue. She wants it both ways. She needs to compromise. If she wishes to have the days spent doing baby stuff only fine, if she wants him to do the housework fine, but in that case it needs to be to his standard as he decides, not her,

I don’t think the OP said anything about not doing it to her standards? Just that he’s not doing it at all - instead playing his xbox for 3 hours a night. And when she does all the housework at the weekends, he plays with the baby.

But he’s had some really good tips on how to do childcare AND cleaning from this thread, so maybe that’ll change now. Plus he’s not breastfeeding so it’ll be much easier for him to do housework in his own house.

I don’t think it’s fair to compare the husband having a lie in/rest to the op. I have honestly been woken every 45-90 mins for 2.5 years and the effect is obliterating. The idea that I could then be effective in the day is strange to me. I was even sent for an mri because I was so neurologically impaired. If the op is being kept awake so frequently at night she should be sleeping during the baby’s nap. Not doing housework. This is not a chance to catch up on work but a chance to catch up on sleep.

@Pumperthepumper

So the man can juggle childcare and housework whilst the OP gets to just do childcare?

And yes, I have both bottle fed and breastfed, and done many a contact nap, and still managed to put the hoover round sometimes.

Have you tried a hakka or something similar? Pumping takes a lot of getting used to but the hakka catches the letdown from your other whilst dd is feeding one no1.

Perhaps ask him to complete x things a week to help out a little more

I think you need to talk to him about doing more housework but at least he seems considerate to have the baby straight after finishing work so you have a bit of time. Also even though you don't get much sleep in the night, him letting you have the lie ins on the weekend mean he doesn't ever get a lie in. Maybe just come up with a plan that on the weekend for an hour in the morning before you go out he cleans the house and helps on weekdays sometimes after work. I have a 5 month old, I do housework through the week but DP will clean kitchen, sterilise bottles etc before bed, we both do it on a weekend, one lie in each at the weekend, it works well.

@Bridecilla

You're sat under your baby for 4 plus hours a day - just sat? To be honest I'd grumble as your dp

She's not say doing anything fun. Probably sees stuff needing doing or longs for a moment of peace. Anyone who thinks being stuck holding a baby all day and waking every hour overnight is fun or easy is mistaken. Breast feeding and running around after a baby and never being able to put them down is exhausting and draining. People saying he should get a lie in at the weekend are perhaps forgetting op is up hourly overnight all week. No respite through the day. He has from 8pm until he chooses to go to bed, he gets a full nights sleep. He doesn't do chores or says if we go out then I'm not doing chores.

Op if your husband could try and help you settle the baby overnight it might help. See if they respond better to him being in the room rather than you. My first stopped waking when it was just my husband in the room.
Husband was furious his nights were no longer baby free no disturbance but I said to him, I've done nearly a year of this up every 2-3hrs feeding etc so you'll cope with one waking where you say 'back to sleep' and they do.

This thread has lost the plot.

The OP said that she does little more than hold the baby all day.

She felt the baby was unsafe in a bouncer or play mat.

The OP said that her DH gets up with the baby Sat and Sun, giving her a lie in, but he gets none.

The OP said that they leave all the housework till the weekend, even though she's at home all week.

The OP said that she hadn't considered a playpen, until it was pointed out to her that she should leave the baby down to allow her to at least put on a wash. She said she'd try this.

It was pointed out to her that expecting her DH to "step up", while she is effectively holding the baby all day and not putting her down even for a few minutes to do a few bits round the was unrealistic and an unfair criticism.

Seriously folks.