I'm just too tired for my DH and I know it's going to blow up again soon

[gogaah]

I've recently returned to work from maternity leave. ( new job ).

I've got child care covered for my 1 and 3 year old.

My H is self employed, extremely busy and out of the house or on business trips, most of the time.

He's never there for getting the kids up in the morning or dinner / bed time at night. I work from home only, which does help.

H is here for 1 day at the weekend with us and occasionally 2 days. He's on business trips a lot, that take him away for 1 week at a time.

Anyhow, even when he is here- he doesn't get in until after the kids have gone to bed. Ever.

This would all be fine, but the kids have been torturing me recently at night time. The one year old wakes a couple of times a night and the 3 year old sometimes wakes up and is just awake for a few hours and keeps wanting me to soothe her back to sleep. To say I am shattered is an understatement.

I often fall asleep with them at 8-8:30. My husband gets annoyed if I do this too often, because he wants to be entertained / see me too. I'm finding it so difficult. I dread him coming home and just wish I didn't need to worry about him too.

I've been unwell recently a lot too and it's just a lot for me to keep going. At the weekends I also have no energy, especially when I'm alone with them. I don't take them out nearly enough, because it's so exhausting for me. Anyway, it's been a tough couple of weeks. Early bed times for me, no intimacy for my husband and just generally pulling through somehow.

I can accept life is like this at the moment. The only thing dragging me down is my H complaining about how he never sees me/ I'm never intimate with him and how he's just eating dinner alone a lot.

But his schedule can't change right now and neither can mine. So why can't he just accept that this is the sacrifice that has to be made for now ? Unless he closes his business ? We haven't argued a lot lately and I'm feeling like soon he's going to blow up about it again. I just don't feel at peace.

I just don't think I'm strong enough to leave. I am not even strong enough to come away from an argument with him and not feeling wrong. I know logically I'm right, but there's this uneasy voice inside that says I'm the one in the wrong. Every time. In every argument, with pretty much anyone. It really, really sucks.

I do argue and I am strong in the moment, but I always walk away feeling wrong. If I divorced him, it would be so hard for me not to think it's all my fault and I've failed. That would be really difficult to live with.

It’s really sad. You stay in a shite marriage with an arsehole because you don’t have the strength to leave and will believe the marriage failure is your fault. It’s even sadder that you have a mother who will be happy agree it’s your fault and tell you you’re nothing like as good as she is.

The answer to all of this is psychotherapy and the Freedom Programme. You need to free yourself from your ghastly relations and your own low self esteem and self confidence. Divorce will get rid of DH and MIL. DM needs to be seen only in small doses.

It’s so easy to get ground down, exhausted and ill from theses kinds of relationships. That’s what is happening right now. You’re basically a single mother with a demanding DH on top. Your life would be so much easier to cope with without him.

So he sees you struggling and still does nothing - has he always been like this.

yiu seem unwilling to see that his disinterest and unwillingness to help is an issue and that somehow yiu should be able to cope

Maybe I'm old but an 8.30 bedtime for babies this young is not my idea of a good routine.

5pm is teatime followed by bath with a few bath toys and bed with a book and a cuddly toy.

It's supposed to be a calming routine to bring them down for sleep by 6.30 or 7.

Having 3.5 hours of maximum full on play time with all the toys out again isn't go to lead to a settled night and if this is the only way they ever are no wonder they wake in the night for more. Mum cleaning in the night with them is simply perpetuating this 24 hour day normal for them.

Their circadian rhythms are messed up.

Why not work out a timetable that works better for you?

My second baby arrived to a home with a routine and was a calm and happy baby as a result. He never followed me around screaming, he watched his older brother and slotted into his routine as naturally as anything.

It took a while to achieve that routine with the first but it was actually the nanny that taught us this, that a calming early evening was absolutely essential for a little one and the whole family.

Yours sound overtired because they are operating at 100 percent for too many hours of the evening.

I watched my brother do that with his, they kept their baby up playing and stimulating and walking around jiggling her and having her scream in their ears until she passed out exhausted at midnight every night and she was a screaming monster 24/7.

Easily done. They didn't stay married.

The younger one tends to go to sleep at 7:30.

If I put older one to sleep before 8 she wakes in the night or early. 8-8:30 is ok for a 3 year old in my opinion.

I know they're all different. But 8.30 does seem late for a 3 year old. Is he having a nap in the day?

Frankly she can do lunch every bloody day she works. It's one child fgs.

You say she's off? Off where is she throwing sickies? If so replace her.

I had a play pen for my one year old threw in some toys put the TV on and cleaned. Do you think nursery would stop everything for your child.

You say you are ill a lot. Is this a chronic ongoing condition??

Again, your husband is a selfish arse but sounds like you're not ready to deal with that.

In the meantime, you're effectively a single parent (with an extra child when your DH is around).

To help you in the now, ask your nanny to work longer hours and to make lunch and dinners when she's working. This is standard- your job is to stock up (book a weekly online shop) and hers is to cook and feed the children. If she needs a break, she can take them to soft play for lunch.

Put an earlier bedtime routine in place. Nanny feeds children and has things tidied by 6. You start the wind down routine then and keep it consistent and exactly the same each night. What worked for us was lots of cuddles and attention when I got home, bath, 20min calm tv (In the night garden and cbeebies bedtime story back in those days), milk while watching TV, upstairs for bedtime stories and cuddle in bed, lights off. You can do the younger one milk and cuddle in bed while the older one is watching calm TV. No toys. And all done by 7 / 7:15.

That gives you time to sit, grab yourself something easy to eat, then tidy (although you should not need to tidy much, nanny should have dishwasher loaded from DC dinner time).

Spending an hour tidying or cleaning when you've dropped off older DC to nursery is bonkers. What are you doing? Are you trying to achieve a perfect house? If your cleaner and nanny are doing their jobs, there should not be much for you to do.

I think in your head, you have childcare jn place and you should be able to cope. But you don't have the right childcare or for long enough, an unhelpful partner, and perhaps a bit of a perfectionist issue from your childhood? Give yourself credit for coping as well as you have. Recognise that something needs to change to improve your life.

I mean, firstly, you have a DH problem. He knows you're struggling at the moment and instead of trying to support you, he's whining for alone time and sex. What a prick.
Secondly, I think you need to restructure your timetable. The nanny clears the toys away before she leaves but you then let the children get them all back out again!!! That's mad! If she can prep the kid's dinner when the baby is napping, that would be a help but you said the baby is miserable if they're not constantly entertained so that might not be possible.
Do they have a cooked lunch? So then maybe beans and cheese on toast or similar for tea?
Tea, bath, story and bed. I really wouldn't still have the 3 year old up at 8.30 if I could help it!
Maybe less toys at any one time too?

Having said all that, you still have a massive DH problem. He'd either be seriously acknowledging that, or he'd be out on his ear.

This would all be fine, but the kids have been torturing me recently at night time. The one year old wakes a couple of times a night and the 3 year old sometimes wakes up and is just awake for a few hours and keeps wanting me to soothe her back to sleep. To say I am shattered is an understatement.

From your first post. The current night-time routine results in you being shattered.

It's a good place to start. When there are lots of moving parts to a situation examine them one at a time and deal with the one that is keeping you out of bed for three hours in the night as a priority. For your sake.

I found babies were often counter intuitive for me. Your instincts tell you to keep them up later to make them tireder and sleep better but over tired babies can't sleep as well.

Anyway, I know how contentious this is and there's a baby and toddler sleep board on Mumsnet. I would have loved it when mine were tiny, I had to hire a nanny to teach me as it never came up in my working life beforehand obviously!

You have my sympathy for this, many of us have gone through it. It's so complicated working out what it is that the adults or the children are doing that is causing things to be so hard.

I get fed up of woman talking about their blokes wanting more together time, intimacy or quality time- it rarely seems to involve nice meals on your own or watching films or playing a board game- it nearly always boils down to moaning about wanting more sex. Maybe just maybe they might want to think of reasons their partner doesn't feel like it. The beginning of the end in my first marriage was when my H banged on about it but wasn't remotely interested in why I was no longer interested. At that point I felt like a very convenient housekeeper/ hooker combination

So the husband away working alot trying to earn a wage, to keep family with roof over their heads, and he is the Dick,
Why doesn't the husband give up his job, stay at home and look after kids, but then you will be calling him a lazythe OP can then gett a full time job and be the main earner, I know op is working at the mo as but she is working from home surely it is easier for OP to look after kids,

If it's easy for OP to look after the kids, it should be easy for him to do his share of it when he is actually at home, no?

He's a dick because his wife, who also works full time for a wage to help keep family with roof over their heads, also does ALL the lifting at home.

Her job appears to be 24/7 while he has all his evenings, mornings and weekends free with lovely, childfree breaks. Oh, and he claims the lie ins at weekends when he is home, even though OP has had disrupted sleep every fucking night due to toddler and baby.

You poor girl! I thought my husband was demanding but he at least realised we had a third baby that hardly slept and was awake a lot in the night which meant I had to feed her and sooth her until she finally dropped off to sleep around about time to get her older sister ready for school...

If your husband cannot see how much you are trying to do and at least acknowledge that you desperately need sleep he is a very selfish man and I would tell him so.

I cannot see how you can go on like this much longer. It's not possible to do everything at the expense of sleep and your health. He has to be made to see this.

I might suggest you see your GP and get them to write you off sick so your husband can't argue about how the demands on your life are running you into the ground. You just have to do something. Being awake all night and working all day is impossible.

Good luck.

What's the point in saving instead of spending out more money on a Nanny? A Nanny or Au Pair who can cook, clean, laundry, put kids to bed so you can spend more time together and take a load off of your shoulders. Saving won't mean diddly squat at the end of the day if your sacrifices are tearing your marriage apart.

You'll end up divorcing and fighting over who gets most of those savings.

Health before wealth. Having money should be used as a sustainable source to co-exist comfortably.

However, emotionally blackmailing you, forcing you to have sex when you don't want to - There's a word for that and I don't need to tell you it.

It's also abusive. Making you feel like everything your fault is also called 'Gaslighting'.

He needs to change his hours. Both of you do. Or you both need to pay for some extra help. You're not a martyr, so don't turn into one.

@gogaah you are stronger than you think. For me, I wrote a list of reasons to stay and reasons to go. Be honest. Things like:
Leave.
The kids will have a better relationship with dad if I because he'll make time for them.

I'll be less stressed and therefore a better mum.
Stay.
This is a rough patch. He'll help when things settle.
We can work on this if he's here but not if I leave.

Once it was in black and white, the decision was obvious for me.
Good luck Gogaah 🌸

YANBU show him this thread

you need couples counselling - desperately. If he really won’t then go and get some counselling just for you.
May 1 and 3 an 8.30 bedtime is a bit late. Ask him to put one to bed and you do the other? Or you do bedtime and he cooks? I would be getting them to bed at 7.
the 3yr old waking up for hours needs to stop - don’t indulge.

I have been there and my advice is simple. If you can afford it get as much help as you can, even more than you think you need. Have a nanny and make sure she vones in begore you start work and stsys after you finish. Get a great cleaner who also doesvall the washing and ironing and changes the beds. Get weekend help as well. There is no point at this stage trying to save because your health will suffer with all of the stress and so will your kids and your relationship. It is important to throw everything at it because the kids will grow up quickly and times will change. Having enough support will benefit you all including your careers which in turn will bring in more money.

I think to address this you need to:

a) try and address the night waking - and in the meantime take it in turns to get up in the night
b) plan out chores for the weekend, whose doing laundry, whose getting up with the kids early etc
c) employ a cleaner for more hours, realistically you don’t have time during the week if working full time (and have small kids to look after once nanny left) to do cleaning and laundry
d) work out how to ensure that you both get same amount of sleep and do same amount of chores, perhaps come up with a timetable together
e) be clear to your husband that you can’t start cooking dinner until kids in bed. The nanny should be giving the kids dinner and clearing up after.

Once the loads is more evenly shared you’ll likely feel better.

You'd do well not to have anymore kids with him. For now you need some help and since he isn't stepping up either outsource what you can cleaning and laundry or even cooking wise and ask for help from parents, friends, look into a childminder for a few hours at the weekend if possible.

We have 3 kids, I work part time and despite having a hands on husband am asleep by 8.30pm some days. Some days my dh crashes early too. We laugh about it. He certainly doesn't raise it as an issue and I'd think a whole lot less of him of he did.

The early years are testing, especially when you are parenting solo. His working hours do not work for your family. You either grin and bare it whilst he supports you to outsource as much as you can or he considers a career change/makes changes. Best of luck op.

I personally think 8.30 for 3 is late.... its 7.20 and 3 year old is asleep. 5 year old is in bedroom listening to audio book and will be asleep by 8/8.30 but doesn't need to be supervised.

It does get easier when they are a bit older but even at 1 I would do the tidying up around 4 while they ate tea, chucking stuff in boxes etc and then quiet time which ceebeebies Is great for, with milk and a biscuit before going up to Bath and bed around 6sh

Getting a few hours to yourself before going to bed will really help you to relax as well.

So he wants a full time wage from you plus nanny, housekeeper, chef and sex worker duties. Jog on mate.

It sounds to me like you need some help - have you tried Homestart?