Husband who is hopeless with the baby

[SunnyAutumn24]

Am I being unreasonable? I've lost the plot with what is reasonable or not. We've got a two month old baby and two older kids. This time I said I needed their Dad to be involved overnight. I had a c section. He managed two broken nights (which involved him stomping about, huffing being generally p*ssed off, out bursts of anger throughout the day due to feeling "so tired"). I've done broken nights for SIX years. I was in pain overnight recovering from caesarean birth putting baby back in the cot. I told him this and he still didn't get up. I wanted him to do the settling after the breastfeed and put baby down. He said he would do nappies overnight, but I could settle them essentially because he says it's easy for me.
I explained in the first week that if he doesn't learn to settle baby it will go the way of the other two children who massively favour me. Particularly when small. I know it's normal for primary caregiver to be no. 1. But is it normal for a baby to scream bloody murder with their Dad at two months old (supposedly younger than separation anxiety hits, and was recently settled with a range of extended family who baby had never met before.). He gets angry saying it's the baby being ridiculous (makes me beyond angry) I feel it's that he only takes a happy, fed baby. Or a fast asleep one who is transfered onto him lying down. When baby is grizzly if I give ideas of what might help he gets furious with me and it causes arguments. But he's so quickly angered by a crying baby I can't help but feel it's his fault they don't settle. 1. He doesn't try and 2. He loses his temper and is tense and angry and in no way soothing. Is this normal?? I don't know any other dads who are incapable of settling their baby (has been the case with all three children) but he tells me it's easy for mums and awful for dads. Am I being unreasonable to think it's his laziness and anger that are the issues? I'm fed up of having to do all the parenting of any child when they are upset as he's unable to manage his own emotions enough to help. Please help. I'm so lost with it all and staring down another argument if I try and bring any of this up. 😕

OP do you have cause to fear for the safety of the baby?
I’m sorry you are going through this at your most vulnerable.

It’s not that he CANT settle his children, it’s that he doesn’t WANT TO . He only want to do the small parts of parenting that he find fun and rewarding.

So he’s bad at in on purpose so you have to step in.

I understand why you hoped it would be different this time OP , because you had a CS. It’s hard to accept that your partner is a shit, especially when he’s been blaming you for everything for years. You just think that it will be better in the future and you will try harder to keep him happy.

I'm just so appalled that he is prepared to let his wife and the mother of his children struggle like this after what is a major operation.
I wouldn't be able to get past that ever. I wish you would show him this so he can see how other people see his quite frankly abusive behaviour.
When I went to see my sister who had had a CS her husband helped her with everything, she didn't didn't have to lift a finger until she recovered from the surgery.

I agree with this completely. I'm so sorry you're in this situation OP

He thinks the baby is your job and he will get angry and huff and puff until you stop asking him to parent his baby. Men like his don't change, no amount of discussion is going to change his attitude.

I don't know :(

Thank you.

That's exactly how it felt. I was recovering from birth and it seemed like I was a burden and there was a lot of pressure to get back to doing things quickly :( I didn't think he would behave like that in all honesty.

Thank you. I'm not sure what he would say / do if he saw all of these replies. Probably would say I'd not given a fair view of how things are. I suppose the first couple of days he did do more to look after me, but that wasn't enough and as soon as he was back at work it seemed that the responsibility for the house and children was all mine again. I consistently refused to walk the dog (she pulls a lot on the lead) while I was recovering and he kept asking when I would be doing it again....I felt a lot of pressure to do things that I didn't feel safe to do, in terms of my stitches.

Yes, that's exactly it. He's good when the kids are older and fun and having a good day. He's awful when they are angry and has limited patience when they are sad.

You're right, I don't think he does want to settle the baby. He also gets annoyed if I tell people the truth about things, so on some level he knows its wrong, or at least doesn't sound good. E g. When his mum asked about sleep, I told her he only woke up for the first two nights and does the odd nappy. He tried to argue that wasn't true

This. To see the light after baby no1 is understandable but why carry on bringing children into this terrible relationship where he really doesn’t care? I hope you have a steady job and plenty of support OP because with 3 young kids you are going to need it at some point.

Because we were both under immense pressure with significant traumatic events in our wider family, which meant that I imagined his behaviour was due to those huge levels of stress. As each child moved out of the baby stage everything improved. Unfortunately we had two phases of incredibly stressful events and both timed with the older children being babies. So I thought it was those added stressors that were more of an issue than the relationship if you see what I mean. It's only with the third newborn that there's no reason for him to be so unreasonable.