Should I hand over childcare to DH and let him make his own routines for baby from scratch

[Unreliableplank]

My DH is being put out of work and will not be working from next week onwards. Prior to this, his work has been extremely busy, he has insomnia and seems somewhat depressed and isolated. I feel like our relationship is a bit strained owing to us sleeping in different rooms - I co-sleep with baby. He sleeps in another rooms because of space constraints and we worried initially he would crush baby since he sleeps heavily and sprawls.

Although I also work full-time and have been working from home, I have taken care of my 14 month old maybe for 80-90% of the day (as I am also still fully breastfeeding baby). As to the extent of his usual involvement, he usually changes one or two diapers, plays with baby in the evening for half an hour or so, and might take baby out when he goes out to buy his lunch or dinner, but all meals, bath, and bedtime have been entirely handled by myself. I also decide on the locations of all the outings, dinners, play dates, everything.

He doesn’t work on weekends, but his habit is that since he worked such long hours during the week and suffers from insomnia, he usually sleeps in until about 12 or 1pm on the Saturday and sunday. By that point I’d have been up since 7am.

I currently get a reprieve from this once or twice a week when I go over to my parents’ house and they take care of baby so I can speedily rush through a week of paperwork in a day. I have a very understanding workplace.

I started a course sponsored by my workplace which is on Saturdays, and quite intensive, and on the first week of my course, he didn’t wake up until 1pm (my course started at 10am) and then upon waking needed to go out to get coffee and food, by which time he could help a bit at 2pm, but because he decided to feed baby NEXT TO ME whilst I was doing my online synchronous class, and then when baby got fussy, he handed baby back to me in a way that disrupted me in my course. I decided to hike it to my parents ever since on saturdays for baby care, they understand that when I need them to help with baby care, that I don’t want to be abandoned half way. They anticipate my needs and help me where I need it.

With regards to the upcoming Saturday - he won’t be working anymore. I told him that I would still go to my parents with baby, and said we should ease into things, and that I would like to teach him how i currently run the household first, and let him take time to get used to taking over.

He huffily told me that these (learning how i run the household currently) were nonessential to him being able to take care of baby. I told him that when he says that, it makes me feel like he is saying that all my childcare and domestic work at home is nonessential, and that there is no reason to reinvent the wheel or throw out baby’s entire schedule. He got argumentative, said he meant no such thing and that I was wilfully misreading him, and that there was no need for him to follow any thing that I am currently doing and that he might prefer to do his own thing entirely.

Please tell me if I am IBU when I said that I prefer to teach him how I run the household and take care of baby before I leave it all to him.

Should I let him take care of baby without any instructions on the current routine that baby has? Am I supposed to just leave him in the deep end suddenly after 14 months of him being minimally involved? He doesn’t even know where I fold away laundry, how I make her pasta, how to put away her bath things. I want to attend my course fully, not feel like he has created more work for me by the end of the day - every time he currently helps, the house will be a tip, and baby’s care and routine may be compromised, on countless occasions I have had to work more or clean up more things after he helped.

Did i disempower him by not giving him enough chances to learn how to help me properly by having been so thorough in taking care of everything in the household?
Did I fail to train him up to help me?
Am i supposed to pretend some ‘learned helplessness’ so that he can build his confidence again?

I also just feel like he is not so kind or fair to me. Even a nice word or an acknowledgement of the work I put in with baby would be nice. Doing anything, cooking a meal for us as a family, it is always thankless, silence, walking in eggshells because of his depressed mood, and half the time if I ask him for a favour I worry that he will reject me or argue with me about it just for the sake of arguing (or even better still, his phone will have been off for half the day and he will be uncontactable in our own house). Usually he has noise cancelling headphones on.

Ultimately, I am also worried he will let me down by not stepping up to help with baby. It feels like a solo endeavour so far.

Not sure how to broach that maybe he should see someone about his depression too. He’s understandably pretty bummed out about many things beyond his control at the moment, job precarity, feeling socially isolated, mains hum, insomnia, etc... the list goes on.

Sorry for the lengthy rant.

He doesn’t even know where I fold away laundry, how I make her pasta, how to put away her bath things.

Seriously, if my DH tried to tell me how to make pasta or put laundry away I’d be telling him to piss off in no uncertain terms. So the bath toys might not be as you like but it’s not going to hurt anyone.

Treat him like the adult he is, he may surprise you.

You followed the 'drama triangle' roles: he was the victim with his work the persecutor and you were the rescuer running the house.

You now need to step back and talk as though you are an adult, not his rescuer controlling parent, and he needs to listen as an adult, not a victim sulky child.

You may find some of the things he does differently work better.

I think it's important to feel like a parent, not an assistant. It'll be good for them both to find their feet together.

neverenoughchelseaboots I completely agree, if you leave him step-by-step instructions on how to do everything in his own home then he will feel resentful.

He'll figure out how he likes to do things, same as you did.

I'm in the leave him to it camp. Loosen your control. He'll need time to learn his own systems but when he has it'll be better for your whole family.
Write down the general routines, give him a kiss and go out for the day. He won't be perfect instantly and may do things differently to you. But that's fine.

He's been a massive twat to pretend the baby is essentially nothing to do with him all this time, especially while you've been holding down a fulltime job as well.

I'd think long and hard about staying with him before he becomes the primary caregiver, which he's about to become. If he does, and your relationship breaks down (which frankly might well be the best thing ever for you since you've been doing it all yourself anyway, why keep the arsehole around?), he may well go for primary custody.

Rough routine stuck to the fridge, leave him to it and turn off your phone to concentrate all day - that's what he does so it must be ok...?

Bloody hell! How did he get this far? He shouldn't need 'training up' - neither of you had any experience of a baby before DC was born. You had to learn, he should have been learning along side you. Not because you 'taught him' but because it's his child!

DH used to have DS for the whole weekend when he was 6 months old (bottle fed I'll admit) and took him away for a week to visit family at the end other end of the country when he was a year old. He's our son's father. He knew how to change the nappy, did the night feeds so I'd get some rest and gave DS his bath for the first two years of his life! We learned it side by side, each supporting the other, each giving each other tips if we'd learned a good way to do something.

I'd leave baby food (when DS was at that stage) if I was away for the weekend. But only because I was SAHM and DS's tastes or routine were changing so rapidly sometimes.

But by the time DS was a toddler I'd literally take my case and go off for the weekend to see a show, see friends, whatever, twice a year.
DH and DS would do 'stuff' like the cinema, off to a farm then pig out on pizza on Saturday night.

The thing is who cares? It's twice a year - DS wasn't going to get obese from a huge pizza every 6 months! As long as DS was fed, watered, clothed appropriately and I could still see a bit of the carpet when I got back, that was fine. I'm not a magic mummy - I don't know everything about kids. DH would often tidy up whilst I caught up with all the 'stuff' from DS and had a playtime. That's fine. DS had a smile on his face and all his limbs intact. That's a result even when I was looking after him!

I think you need to hand over control a bit. It may not be pretty at first, the house may look like a tip for a while but it'll free you up eventually. Otherwise it'll be you and only you looking after DH, DC and the house for the foreseeable future. You have to go through the pain to get the reward!

Can you start this in an easy way? It seems baby is the priority here. Can you do an idiot's guide for DH (don't call it that, say it's a crib sheet) So write up baby's routine and what is needed perhaps? Like: 10am milk and portion of mashed banana
11am nap - make sure you wake baby at 11.30am or we'll have no rest tonight
2pm lunch (give all the baby food in the fridge - 1 minute on high in the microwave and test it first)
or whatever.

Don't fret about the state of the house yet. Get the routine with baby going. But don't clear up after DH. He makes the mess, he clears it up - whether it's during the day or whilst you're catching up with DC. Blimey even our 13 year old knows that!

Everyone has a different view on how things should be done.
Some people view a clean and tidy house plus happy kids as the Holy Grail. Others would just prioritise the happy kids and the house gets done in between. No one is right - it's compromise. Sometimes you just have to say 'what needs to be done a certain way vs what just needs to be done'. Folding washing - doesn't matter. It's a bit annoying if it's not done 'right' but no-one will die because of it. How pasta is cooked - maybe a problem if DC won't eat it any other way. Changing nappies/feeding/playing with DC - high priority.

Fight the battles you need to win.

Leave him to it. He may not do stuff exactly as you would; differently, but not necessarily wrong.

I'd make it clear that it's not just looking after the baby you're asking him to do and that you will not be coming back and cleaning up if he leaves the house in a mess.

Only problem is his weekend schedule - he should stick to normal hours now his work isn't going to cause a problem, because that gets the baby in a routine both of you can manager. My DH does pretty much all of the childcare for 75%, and does a wonderful job. I don't mess up his schedule when it's my turn, because that would make his life more difficult. If this isn't a forever change, or you'd still have significant responsibilities, I think you need to find a middle ground.

If it makes you feel better, leave him a written list of your baby routine. He'll probably ignore it but that doesn't matter. Just accept, there are many paths up the mountain; trust him to find his own way. He's perfectly capable of looking after his own child, just let them practise together.

  You'll all benefit from it. Baby and Dad develop a closer relationship, you get a break, and DH will appreciate  you a lot more.

Sorry if I’m being slow and if this isn’t relevant but why wasn’t your child in nursery or with a childminder if you were both working (I appreciate your DH isn’t working from next week).

It’s impossible to look after a baby and work FT (I know lots of people did it during lockdown but it’s far from ideal!)

Write down a rough schedule - nap at 10am, she'll need a bottle when she wakes up, lunch at noon, nap at 2.

Then walk out of the house and leave him to it. Go and do your course at your parents.

I'd probably 'forget' my phone too, but I've no patience with shitty dynamics.

@OlympicProcrastinator

Your problem isn’t the routine.

Your problem is that you are married to a selfish, moody, unsupportive, useless miserable twat who has no respect for you and won’t tolerate being challenged on his shitty behaviour.

Is this the relationship dynamic you want your child growing up normalising?

Nailed it.

I really feel for you and think you’ve had some harsh replies.
I’m like you - I figured out the house/baby routines that worked (plus what didn’t work) and tried to explain it all to my husband for when he had the little one on his day off or at the weekend.
Inevitably he would know best, and I’d come home to a grumpy, overtired baby who hasn’t had enough milk/sleep/whatever and a thoroughly fed up husband.
Personally I couldn’t deal with the fact that my baby was suffering for my husbands ego so I ended up continuing to be a control freak with basically no time to myself so I could make sure the baby had the best routine. Husband was not suited to all day one on one at home with baby!

I think every family is different but my babies and I had our routines that worked for us so we stuck to them and husband did the bits he was good at while I had baby most of the time.
Sorry that’s not helpful but the point I’m trying to make is that just because it is ideal for him to become the stay at home Dad now he’s not working, it might not be the Best situation for him or baby (or you).
Can’t he throw himself into job hunting rather than falling into this new role which he hasn’t really proven himself capable of handling thus far?
(And yes I’m a self confessed control freak. It’s not a bad thing if it works).

He sounds useless but you sound like you prefer it that way.

Baby is 14 months, how often a day are they beat feeding? I don't know what's normal and have no issues with people feeding until they're ready to stop but I would have assumed by then it was mainly morning and night, not every drink she has? If so, you should have left them alone king before now. If he makes a mess, come in and day ooh I'll take baby off you so you've got chance to get yourself straight out words to that effect