Told DH he can't opt out of being a Dad

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DH runs his own company, the past few weeks parenting our 5 month old has been on me as he's working a lot to get a project done but I am exhausted.

DD has had a cold and cough so sleep has been limited. I'll add that I do 100% of the housework and laundry, dog walking and appointments etc.

DD goes to bed at 6, I've tried to stretch it to 7 but she refuses daytime naps and ends up screaming where she's overtired.

Last night, DH went to bed at 10 and I stayed up to watch something until 11, I know I should sleep when baby sleeps but it's my only alone time from 6:30am, when everyone is in bed.

I went to bed at 11, changed DD's nappy but she'd wet through so I had to wipe her down properly and put her in clean pjs and sleeping bag. 15 minutes later she had done a poo so I changed her again. It took another 45 minutes to settle her. At 4am she was really fussing, I woke DH and asked him to please do her a bottle and check her nappy as I was so tired.

He was annoyed and said he's tired and can't keep up as he'll start making mistakes at work.

This morning as he was leaving I said this comment wasn't fair, 99% of the parenting and housework etc is on me and I'm really tired and he can't opt out of being a Dad because it's 4am and he's tired, he's left for work in a mood with me.

What do we do here? I'm genuinely knackered. AIBU for waking him to do one bottle/nappy?!

Wether you work or not he’s still a dad fgs what is wrong with people .
He should have down the 4am he had 5 hours sleep before that and could have had some more. .
He’s not to knackered commiting to other people or things at the weekend.
He’s also certainly not too knackered to do his hobbies.
Tell him to shape up or ship out

YABU to wake him up when he’s working the next day, especially if he’s working on an important project.

It was also a bit silly going to bed at 11pm, 5 hours after your LO went to bed.
You know you’re going to be tired if you stay up late.

But when he gets home from work he should be taking over the childcare, to allow you time to shower and have time by yourself.

What time does he get home?
If he’s getting home before LO goes to bed then he can take over and then put them to bed.

The weekends should also be 50/50 and he can get up in the night because it doesn’t matter if he loses a couple of hours of sleep as he gets to catch up on them during the week.

He should also be taking the baby for at least an hour a day on the weekend, so you can go for a walk or nap, read a book etc.

You say your DD goes to bed at 6pm and you went to bed at 11pm. Apart from dinner, what are you doing for 5 hours?
Sorry if i’ve misunderstood that.

I also understand the importance of having time to yourself, but I would really recommend finding a happy medium and going to bed slightly earlier. My son is 3 and doesn’t reliably sleep through the night, so I have an hour peace between 8 and 9 pm and then I go to bed at 9.

I would say definitely have a talk with your DH about his football, especially if he has hobby and free time and you don’t. That’s absolutely not fair.

It’s also not guaranteed that your DD will sleep through for another year or longer, so realistically ask your DH if he understands he will need to help with nights when you also go back to work.

But surely his football isn't every day?

Pick a day when he isn't doing football. He gets the baby and you go and do your hobby and have some time off.

I came to this thread ready to say 'this is what me/my DP do, this is what is reasonable.'

But from reading through this thread, everyone has a different idea of what is reasonable, so what we do is irrelevant.

Your current situation isn't working. You and DH need to talk when you're both rested and come to an agreement. None of us on here can tell you what that agreement is.

If he refuses to change or compromise, he is being unreasonable.

It’s really not a good sign when you can’t ask your husband to cut back on his hours and hours of hobby time each week in order to meet you halfway in parenting your small baby, because you know and fear that he will just resent you 🙁

Question OP - how much does it bother him that you might resent him for not pulling his weight at home? How much time does he spend worrying about that?

Something to think about.

I'd suggest adding up how many hours downtime and hobby/exercise DH has a week and saying that you need equal time away from being responsible for baby. If needs be take yourself out the house to a quiet pub to just read a book for a few hours as many nights as he is out in the week. And if he is getting lots of rest each night he can tend to baby in the mornings before work/football too. The alternative can be that you as the do-it-all parent ends up deeply resentful of DH - I have seen lots of relationships end in the toddler years on those grounds and think you are right that he needs to start finding opportunities to step up.

Waking up once at 4am when you do it 99% of the time isn't going to kill him or get him fired at work. Working outside of the home doesn't give you a free pass to opt out of parenting.

You are also on maternity leave, you aren't a SAHM. If you are going back to work, I wouldn't be getting into the habit of you doing everything because that will continue when you do go back to work.

Plenty of people manage to work full time and deal with night wakings, cleaning, cooking etc.

All these people saying they would understand not waking him if he had a job like being a surgeon… what do you think mothers who are surgeons do? Or two surgeon parent households?

OP has to be up for work too: childcare is work. And she does 100% of everything else. Unless he flies planes or performs surgery for a living or anything chainsawy, he can do some night wakes. Sick of these lazy men all over Mumsnet.

What an utter pile of shite i'm reading on here from some posters.

Yes DH is working - so what...? You are supposed to do 100% of EVERYTHING in the home. So you are expected to work 24 hours a day, and not get any alone time ever, as you have to go to sleep at 7pm to cope with this utter bullshit. Fuck that.

Please ignore any of the comments spouting this shit. It makes me so angry to see women expected to be treated this way.

Yes - you're on mat leave so you should be doing the majority of the child care and a good portion of the housework. BUT not all of it! When DH is home he should be playing an equal role. And yes, night wakings, generally its fair if you do them. But in a scenario like the above, you're not being unreasonable, as a one off rare occurence, to need his help. You are a human bein. You are not some sort of service robot. Don't put yourself at the bottom of the pile - you need to look after yourself as well, and DH needs to step the fuck up. Working long hours, pissing off to football multiple times a week - and you just have to suck it up and run the house, cook, clean, do night wakings and look after your baby all day, every day. Nope. Don't let anyone try and convince you this is your duty as "you're not earning money". You are doing vital unpaid labour which is enabling your husband to go and work these long hours - which this patriarchial society we live in has convinced us is the only valid and valued form of labour. It's not. And you are valuable and worthy and deserving of a partner who respects you, all that you do, and supports you to get your own leisure time (or at least some fucking sleep once in a while!)

And this is how the rot sets into many marriages.

Tell your DH that he is sowing the seeds of your future divorce.

If he won't step up now at all to give you a break, he's unlikely to have an epiphany when you go back to work and share the load with you.

You will end up working and doing everything child and house-related and you will be exhausted.

At some point, you will start questioning what he is for.

And then the resentment will set in. You will resent him not doing his share, you will resent his hobbies, you will resent the plate he doesn't put in the dishwasher until eventually you resent his very presence in the same house as you.

I wonder whether he really understands the chain of events his selfish behaviour at the moment is potentially setting off?

Hey OP,

I don't think you were being unreasonable for asking for help once last night when you were feeling overwhelmed. I have a 7 month old baby and find on the whole I do most of the "night duties", however my DP is incredibly supportive and will happily get up with baby after I've fed her in the morning so I can get a little extra sleep before he goes to work. He also has a time consuming weekend hobby but we have an agreement that this hobby is not every day of every weekend - if that is not possible for your DP (which if its an ongoing kids' football commitment I guess it's unlikely), I do think this is also not fair as you are really not going to be getting any time for yourself.

Appreciate this wasn't the point of the post but I noticed you mentioned that baby is skipping day time sleep? This could be worsening problems at night which could be making things more tense so might be worth looking into as well as if my baby skips a nap (even worse at that age) she will definitely wake up more in the night from being over tired.

You were absolutely right to wake him up.... he should be doing his fair share of the night times. From the sound of it he has been happy to leave you to everything at home so it's time he steps up or he will have to stop his hobbies to support you. Parenting is as much his responsibility as it is yours and looking after a baby constantly with no support is hard, especially when they have been sick. Your really need to have a conversation with him.

So he’s worried he might make a mistake at work if he’s too tired but not worried about you looking after a baby all day on hardly any sleep? Fuck that. He’s lazy OP, and happy for you to make all the adjustments to having DC whilst he swans off doing the same as he’s always done.

Stop worrying about him resenting you if he has to give up some evening of sport because he doesn’t give a shit about you resenting him for leaving you doing all childcare and housework!

You need a plan of what you specifically want him to do, so for instance splitting the night so you each get a decent block of sleep, him taking the DC when he gets home from work for an hour or him doing bath and bedtime, reducing his evenings out or him taking over the housework. And have a frank conversation because otherwise it will only get worse from here and you will resent him more as time goes on.

DH and I nearly split after DC2 because Id just had enough of him thinking things in his life didn’t need to change, but until I laid it all out to him I think he just thought everything was fine so why change it. In hindsight I should have said something when DC1 was young.

OP have you discussed what is going to happen at the end of your maternity leave ?
I fear this will get worse for you as time goes on. The common scenario :

You go back to work and your DH is suddenly expected to step up to do equal parenting. He will not like this.

Childcare will be very expensive and you'll feel the guilt about leaving your little beautiful baby. DH most probably earns more due to owning own business and being able to continue his career uninterrupted. You'll be run ragged, working, doing housework and caring for baby when not at work. DH will encourage you to quit / really reduce hours so he can carry on his lifestyle whilst you continue to do everything, whilst becoming financially dependant on him.

Stick to your guns and get his lazy arse out of bed to look after his baby.

Personally, I think you are both being a bit ridiculous. Sorry.

For my first (second was BF so different), we split all nights equally (or alternated) and in very much of the view that irrespective of work, both parents need to do some of the night shift. It's not fair for one person to be fully rested and the other going crazy with exhaustion, reserved than both a bit tired.

He will have almost had 6 hours, so getting up at 4 (and then hopefully back to bed for a couple of hours) is loads of sleep.

However, you choose to stay up later, you have the potential of some sleep in the day, and from the timing you've given, you'd have had from midnight -4 as a block, and again potentially an hour or two afterwards. You've literally only had one wake up, which is pretty good for a 5mo, and it's pretty good sleep for you. To put it in perspective, my second woke 10 times a night at that age and I was working and looking after a toddler at the same time. Even now, my 4yo (some special needs) is usually awake at night more than the night you've described above.

It's not a race to the bottom, but it doesn't sound as if your baby is a bad sleeper. Tbh it sounds as if you are both being a bit daft/precious over your sleep.

I agree, and just because OP is on mat leave doesn't mean she can exist on no sleep and no down time at all.

Looking after a baby is hard work, harder than many jobs, and if OP's baby doesn't sleep in the day then where does that leave her? She can't sleep in the day either, or get a decent stretch during the night if her husband doesn't help.

I breastfed my baby so did all of the nights but my DP always got up with her early in the morning so I could at least have a couple of hours then.

My DH had to do all the night waking and feeding of our second child for nearly a month after his birth as I was too ill. He also worked full time, he never complained about looking after his child and even when I recovered he continued doing 2 nights a week.
We always share the load....yes he is really a Prince amongst men and I am very lucky but so is he. Having children is a partnership and your DH should be getting up at least 2 nights a week. Don't let people tell you that you have to do it all...if you were working and he was at home I would bet my last penny that he would not be doing everything.

I think your financial set up is an important factor in this situation. My DH and I had separate finances when I was on maternity leave so I was still paying 50% of all bills, he was not financially supporting the family.

DH thought I should pay 50% of the bills and do 95% of all childcare and housework on maternity leave.

This would have meant he paid 50% of the bills whilst doing 5% of childcare and housework, so not a fair split.

I pointed out I was funding my own time off to recover and bond with the baby and to the detriment of my career and pension so he still needed to do 50% of the childcare and housework.

Not an ideal setup and it did cause resentment but I don't think women on maternity leave should do most of the childcare and housework if they are actually financially supporting themselves.

I would add that my DH does his fair share of cooking/household chores during the week. This should definitely be shared

YANBU

Presumably you don’t get to spend time at the weekend doing hobbies you enjoy? Thought not!

Tell him he has to do at least 50% of the parenting at weekends and during the evenings. It’s his choice to do the football but the 50% parenting over the weekend is non negotiable.

You need to be much firmer with him as he’s currently taking the piss at the weekends and treating you as a lesser person.

A LOT of men do turn their backs on being a dad. They think a 50 /60 hour work week is somehow draining, despite rarely engaging in cooking/ cleaning/ organising in their home life either they just can't be bothered to compromise their own interests and needs and manage badly without support themselves. . Unfortunately whilst many women dig deep and adapt to doing it all men are not held.to the same standard. You'll see a lit of sympathy for the poor guy having been asked to have an early start just once. Poor overwhelmed guy

Please don't listen to the ramblings of the mumsnet stepford wives. He is absolutely not doing enough. When he is not working childcare duties should be shared between you. He should also be doing his share around the house.

He needs to care for you and his child, if it means going to work on 2 hours sleep a couple weeks then so be it.

I think you should allow him to sleep during the week when he has work. But he could take over at other points to give you a moment to yourself and catch up on sleep. The weekends or a couple of evenings (his football commitments may have take a back seat for a while).

So yes, I think YABU to stay up late then expect your working DH to get up in the night with the baby. But he does need to give you a break when he can in whatever way works for you both.

Also, if he gets some evenings/weekends doing football. You get some evenings/weekends doing whatever you want!