AIBU to expect DH to spend 30 mins/an hour per day with 4 month old DD during the working week?

[Hydrangea91]

DH is self-employed but works outside of the house (a short 20 minute drive away). He normally gets home about 30 mins to an hour before 4 month old DD goes to bed so gets to spend a bit of time with her and help me with her bath and bed routine.

For the past few days however, DD has been napping less during the day and is therefore getting tired earlier in the evening, so have decided to move her bedtime forward by an hour as she is noticeably tired by this time. DH now says I should do the bath myself and put her to bed as his work is too ‘unpredictable’ for him to get home an hour or even 30 minutes earlier than previously. This would mean him not seeing DD at all during the working week, as he is normally gone by the time she is awake (approx 7am) and would not be returning home until I’ve started nursing her and putting her down to sleep (was 7pm but will now be 6pm).

He is self-employed and director of his own company, so despite his work being ‘unpredictable’ with client calls, he controls who he speaks to and when. Should he not therefore make the effort to be home by 5/5.30pm as opposed to 6pm to see his 4 month old DD for a mere 30 mins/an hour per day?

I would want to understand the exact reason why he can’t finish work earlier. It sounds like you are assuming he doesn’t want to but is they actually the case. In any case, can he finish work early a couple of nights a week as a compromise?

This isn't likely to last forever, could he have her more at weekends to make up for it and try to come home early when he can?

Is your husband upset over this change? My husband is obsessed with our son and would definitely be very disappointed if I was putting him to bed before he got home from work - irrelevant because he works from home most days but I'm trying to imagine ourselves in your circumstances.

It does seem a very early bedtime. At that age we never left our son with anyone so he joined us on all dinner dates, after dinner walks and visiting friends and family in the evenings and we'd rush home around 8:30 or 9 to put him to bed. I would have hated to be trapped indoors from 5pm every night. Especially with a 1.5-2 hour bedtime routine if I'm reading that right!? 30 minutes to an hour downstairs and then another hour upstairs?

Maybe he can't afford to reduce his hours. It's not as though they're unexpected, OP says he's always worked long days.

This is all stuff that should have been discussed before the baby arrived, really.

I have never known a 4 month old go to bed and stay asleep that early can't baby nap late afternoon?

I think you are perhaps being a little unrealistic. I suppose it depends on how flexible things are for him. I know quite a few self-employed people and just because you are self-employed does not mean complete freedom to change your working patterns at any time. Some people do have complete and full flexibility on when they work/their schedules and others don’t. Some have a degree of flexibility but times when they have to work to deadlines which are totally inflexible. So you might be right in that he is choosing not to finish early, but equally he may be saying that he needs x number of hours at work to complete what needs y too be done and that he can’t commit to leave an hour earlier than usual because of that.

I would also suggest that you are being a bit unrealistic in your expectation that he will vary his work routine every time your babies routine changes. This change may be her routine for now, but could it change in a week, 2 weeks or a months time. And then change again a short time later, and so on. Then what? Your DH is expected to change his work routine again every time? I think you have to look again at your expectations- I imagine he could be home earlier some nights but not others. That is a more realistic expectation. You do need to remember that sleep patterns can change quickly and he may not always be able to adapt to a change in routine. It’s just the way it is.

Being self-employed does not mean he can always finish at his (or your) desired time- if there is work needing to be done, then it need to be done (or you don’t get paid). If you get a reputation for not meeting deadlines/agreed timeframes etc then that business will suffer. I would ask him to try and be home if he can, accept that if he is home some of the time that he is doing his best. Unless you genuinely believe he is deliberately not coming home when he finishes in order to avoid spending time with your daughter- in which case you have a bigger issue to address.

This is a very short-term situation. Most babies do not go to bed at 6pm and realistically, most FT working people do not get off work until 5-6pm, so I don't think this is a situation of your dh being a jerk. It's just the nature of life that he has to work.

She will more than likely be back to a later bedtime soon. But it would be worth giving some consideration to what the future looks like. If 6-7pm is likely the time when he'll be home, then I'd adjust everything later. Babies are very adaptable as a whole. If he gets home at 6-7pm, then aim for later and he can take over the second he walks in the door to do her bath, get her dressed, and you can sit down and relax for a bit.

I pretty much never did mine's bath from the time they were babies. Dh home from work and off they went to him. So much so that when dd was about 3 and dh went away for a weekend, she told me that I didn't know how to do bathtime right! Which was true. I'd hardly ever done one. I was with them all day until I went back to work and then still home 2+ days a week as part-time. So dh got them the second he walked in the door. I took over again to do actual bedtime at least when bf, otherwise, we did one each. It meant he had as much time as possible with them. We didn't do early bedtimes though - 7:30pm at the earliest, but probably closer to 8-8:30pm.

If you really can't keep baby awake any later, then fine in the short-term, but I think babies can adjust to life. And you have to as much as possible fit them around the life you have, within reason.

@cinnamonfrenchtoast then maybe it's time to think about ways to earn extra income without exchanging your time for money. This is something business owners have to think about, and the power of running your own business means you have the ability to do this.

She won't see daddy. It won't matter. Mine saw theirs every 3 mths. They have a wonderful relationship now ❤️

Until you've been self-employed its difficult to appreciate how difficult it is. People might think that means you can work when you choose but its the opposite. YABU

For me it’s about attitude. He may not be able to see her. But I would hope that he would want to do all he could to see her, and seem upset at missing out. I would need to see that he had a genuine bond and yearning to be with his baby. Even if the demands of his job precluded this in practice.

Yes this. The headsets are not expensive snd they are amazing. My ds can be shouting less than 2m away on the other side of the wall CAN SOMEONE WIPE MY BOTTOM and my team mates can’t hear a thing on calls. Problem solved.

Sorry not much to do with the thread, which is old anyway, but I didn't realise 4mo had bed times... what am I doing wrong! 🤔 😂

@Hydrangea91 if you come back to this thread: I have had to remind my husband many times that for his kids, seeing was way more important than money, and so extra hours were only a last resort option.