Am I being too demanding by asking for 1 hour a day to exercise?

[Dad12344444]

For context, I am a 35 year old guy with 3 kids, 9 7 and 6 weeks old and a golden retriever. I work a fairly high pressure job and earn in excess of 250k a year and I’m very proud of the life this enables my family and I to have.

I do almost all of the school runs for the eldest and all of their club pickup/drop offs (4 days a week). I do the 3am night feed for my youngest, so my wife can get a block of sleep.

In the house, Im almost exclusively responsible for the laundry, make the majority of kids’ dinners & bed times. I probably do 50% of the food shopping however, maybe 20% of my wife & I’s dinner.

In addition to this, we have a cleaner, a sleep nanny 2ce a week, a tutor for eldest & a dog walker which I pay for to try and provide support & free up some time. I am fully aware how privileged we are to be able to fund this help.

My wife is on maternity, however just prior to this she had recently qualified as a therapist and working 2 days a week. She suffered from post natal depression with both of our previous children and i has been something we have been really aware of this time & have tried to take into account ways to give her the best chance and space to mentally recover.

With all of this said, I feel like I need to be ‘on it’ most of the time, I don’t drink anymore as I found this was really contributing to this. It led to my mood being irritable and generally not as sharp.

The other thing that I find enables me to function to a high level is exercise. I recently made the ask of 1 hour a day to do this, I can do this in the middle of the day or night, i don’t mind getting up at 4 am or going during my workday.

However this request was met with: ‘I have carried this child for 10 months and now breast feeding and you are putting your own needs above me’. And ‘give me my time. If there is time for you great, but stop demanding it’.

This is the reason for my post. I feel like I go to the extreme to carve my wife out time, which she wastes, scrolling or lying on the sofa. So when I then try and take an hour that I work really hard to create, her response is ‘well i haven’t had any time’ and it becomes really difficult to swallow for me.

The logical side of me understands that her needs aren’t being met somehow and she has been though a rollercoaster of emotion. But I don’t know how to meet those needs to enable her to feel safe and happy.

I suppose I am asking to hear that I am not alone and that I am doing a good job. And words of wisdom from mothers as to where I am falling short as I’m not meeting my wife’s needs somewhere.

Thanks

I was extremely harsh with the lazy comments, apologies, I got a bit worked up as I could already predict the comments and opinions you were going to get (men don't deserve an hour a day like a woman, you should be doing 190% of everything so that your wife can recover 3 years after childbirth blah blah blah, exaggerated obviously you'll have seen what I mean already).

What does your wife do on a daily basis though? Does she go out and meet people when she isn't scrolling on her phone, as with all the paid help and everything that you do, it seems there isn't much left for her to do. Would she maybe enjoy taking the dog a walk with baby in the pram? Things like that.

We have less kids but similar lifestyle so i hear you.
At 6 week pp woth 2 kids already you do need to be doing more 🤷🏻‍♀️ but amazed your havent outsourced more of the house stuff. (Washing ironing food prep if only gor 2 -3 months)

If you have the night nanny 2 days a week you have time for 2x hour of sport already if you go at 9pm or 7am or something.

If you aim for 4 x hours per week which is fair for now all you need to do is putsource

Personally i'd encourage you push the iron man out one more year as once babies hit 1 its all easier and you will have loads more time to exercise. Also once baby gets to 6 months and does bigger nap blocks you can run in your lunch hour

Does your wife scroll through Mumsnet when she's 'wasting' a few minutes when the 6 week old isn't feeding, screaming or shitting by any chance? Are you hoping she'll see this and a thousand posts of 'lazy bitch should be up and scrubbing the floors and begging for your forgiveness, you fantastic, adorable, totally high value and not misogynistic in the assumption that your salary makes the slightest bit of difference to what you see as a bunch of women on the internet, utterly desirable Man'?

Your Nice Guy persona can't hide the way you speak of her wasting her time 42 days after having given birth.

If this were real, of course.

where is the exercise, have you got equipment at home? If you say hour at gym, that's probably travel/changing time to add on too.

I definitely think exercise is not a luxury and is essential.

Baby is very young, tiring and very time consuming but surely she could have an hour off to purely doss around/waste while you sit/walk around holding your newborn in return for you doing exercise?

Would you like to marry me instead OP? Your wife has a cleaner and a night nanny 2 nights a week?? and she doesn't even have to do school or sports drop offs. Lucky bitch!! I hope she realises it.........

Honestly the pick ups / laundry you are doing now is fair enough, at 6 weeks post partum she is only recovering and her sole focus rightly is the baby. I think its fair enough that she spends her free time doing what she wants, i dont think its wasted. She is probably not physically and mentally able to do much else so I don't think you should judge that. An hour a day every day is a lot though, this is probably the busiest time in your lives so I would work towards either a shorter daily window or 3/4 times per week.

So you have a swimming pool at home? get a zwift set up for yourself? You'll 100% need more training away from the home in a few months when baby is older and more settled?

Responsibility of cleaning, breastfeeding and keeping a tiny baby safe and happy is very time consuming and unrelenting. I doubt she's wasting her time.

You are not being unreasonable at all. I'm sure she can manage an hour a day at 6 weeks pp. You're doing everything you can to make her life easier and rightfully so, but you also need some downtime. Don't beat yourself up, and don't ask as such, just say at a reasonable time, I'm just going for a run, or whatever it is you need to do.

On a hierarchy of needs I would put eating and sleeping before exercise. You need to eat and sleep to stay alive! I agree that it’s sad if exercise can’t also be accommodated but having a 6 week old and two other children is incredibly tough. Thankfully, it’s not hard forever and as the baby gets easier you get more time back to do other things.

I am second in line after @LaMaG !!

One further thing - you say your wife says her "me" time doesn't count if she isn't out doing something. No one i know (and I mean this) gets to go out and do stuff for themselves with a brand new born at home. It sounds like she is very entitled. I think to be honest you both are getting a little ahead of yourselves, its incredibly busy right now so just get through it together for a few more months and then you can both find the time you need for personal stuff.

@ZacharinaQuack im sure she did these things when we were younger. They didn't just start as we got older.
Even when my own dc were breasted newborns me and dh did things for ourselves. Exercise is essential not a luxury but even if we didn't we still did other things we wanted like meeting friends. I was back out having a meal with friends 3 weeks pp I just fed before and after.

People love to be martyrs on here.

YANBU

Marry me?

I juggled three kids, work, did all night feeds, and my husband had daily exercise and more.

For those people saying exercise isn’t essential, for some people exercise IS essential as part of their weight management

I think you are being more than reasonable.

Exercise is essential not just for physical health but mental health.

One hour a day is very fair and she should not be objecting.

Breast fed not breasted lol

I know right

cant believe some people here saying that having an hour per day for yourself is a thing of the past when you become a parent and that kind of thing is only for your pre-parent life! So Martyr

Oh ffs if this was reversed and the woman posting about wanting an hour to herself everyone would be saying the man needs to get off his arse and help.

you near enough do everything, the least she can do is give you an hour a day! To do some exercise.

the sexism on mumsnet is just unreal! Just because she’s suffering with post natal depression etc doesn’t excuse her to give you no life, it takes two to make a child! She should be at least trying to do something by the sounds of it to me she’s putting all the responsibility on to you..

an hour a day really isn’t much to ask for, she should be able to cope for one hour🤷‍♀️

id say she’s being extremely unreasonable tbh, myself and my husband get an hour each a day, I go for a soak in the bath as that’s what relaxes me, he goes for an hour in the evening on the PlayStation.. she’s being unreasonable.

What's the problem with exercising when the older kids are in bed? What are you supposed to do then, be on call just in case the baby needs a nappy change?

Ok so with update I think you need to postpone your Ironman dreams. Sounds like you’ve got enough time to get some exercise in, which is important for mental and physical health, but at this point with a newborn it’s ambitious and unnecessary to decide to do the Ironman with all the training that goes with that.

As many pps have said, and as you must know from your other kids, stuff gets easier and easier as the baby grows and can be away from your wife for longer (assuming she is bf). Even this time next year it will be doable.

With a very young baby AND two more kids often neither parent gets much leisure time. I have two youngish kids, DH & i each earn £150k+ and we struggle badly to fit in exercise for ourselves. An hour every single day is quite a lot - can you compromise on 3-4 days a week?

You will get told on here that you should never take even a second to yourself and you should never rest as your wife has had a baby. You should work and pay for a cleaner and nanny and then come home and do 100% of all house and childcare while wife rests. Its a ridiculous MN trend. Its not a reflection of the real world.

I've never seen posts like this at all, most if not all are women rightly wanting their men to do their share around the home and with their children.

On the face of it YANBU: exercise is important, you do do a lot and an hour isn't excessive.

But this bit of your post:

I feel like I go to the extreme to carve my wife out time, which she wastes, scrolling or lying on the sofa.

Raised a bit of a red flag. "Scrolling or lying on the sofa" is usually just about as much as most six weeks post-partum women can manage. It's really very very hard for a man to understand how utterly draining this period of your life is. If she doesn't have PND (and it sounds like she may) she is certainly completely knackered and finding her whole life to be like wading through treacle. I can't help wondering if you have conveyed to her, whether implicitly or explicitly, some contempt for her "scrolling or lying on the sofa".

She presumably isn't in a fit condition to exercise at all yet and wouldn't have time even if she were and she may feel vaguely resentful of you blithely going off for an hour-long run when she's desperately trying to move from a feed to a bit of desperately needed sleep.

This isn't exactly your fault, but it does sound as if your self-professed need to exercise has been delivered with a bit of a lack of sensitivity. I would also be very careful about conveying to her that you are doing a lot to "help" her.

This is the worst time for a couple so you may just be rubbing one another up the wrong way. Keep doing what you're doing, be as tolerant as you can: try to get some exercise in by all means but don't be really hardline about having to have an hour a day. She can't do that. And don't make her feel guilty about scrolling and lying on the sofa.

What is this magical job which pays £250k, can be done on broken sleep, gives you time to do all the things you have listed AND fit in an hour of exercise a day?

AND gives time to read the relationships page in Cosmo to realise that he's not meeting Her primal need to feel safe and secure and that his love language is not delivering to satisfaction.

... Meanwhile, in the parlour, She's all TikTok and PND.

Thais ain’t a dating site, mate.

LOL. Harsh but I like it.