Stay at home husband - are my expectations too high ?

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Long story short, OH and I have a beautiful daughter age 6 and had a beautiful baby boy 11 months ago- shortly after he was born my husband was taken unexpectedly ill, he caught sepsis and ended up spending time in ICU and his recovery has been slow due to ongoing fatigue. He’s now in the process of being medically retired from work and will likely get a (£25k ish ) payout. I had to return to work when my son was 6 weeks old and have been working ever since. I’m fortunate that I earn a good wage and I can support us all on it but AIBU to expect my husband to do the bulk of the chores / childcare if he isn’t going back to work ? Currently I’m WFH but also juggling our children, cooking, cleaning etc - spent yesterday cleaning the bathroom, mopping floors and meal prepping. I’m really unwell with a cold right now, I’ve worked all day flat out, cooked dinner for everyone and bathed both kids and my husband just got annoyed at me when I said I was going to go for a bath and leave him to clear up. What’s reasonable to expect from him if he’s at home all day? When I was a SAHM to our daughter I did everything.

Is it essentially just redundancy u der another name, or is there an ongoing wage? Who looked after the baby from 6 weeks when you returned to work? I can see why you would be frustrated, but we don't really understand what his medical needs are. Can he get another job at some point, or is that it?

Either way, use some of the money to get a cleaner and some of those recipe box things like gusto or hello fresh. Then at least you can have a clean house and quick healthy meals for him to do while you get past the small baby and recovery stage.

is a good dad

Uh oh! 🚩

He is your finances divided?

if he is well enough to work, but does not want to and is choosing to do very little in the house, how do you see this going forwards?
how can he support himself with no income?

A SAHP does all the daily tasks on the to do list. They do not sit around watching tv. So either he wants to be a SAHP or he can go back to work. Which is it?
Id give him a small amount of leeway if he’s still recovering that maybe he wouldn’t manage 100% of the jobs but instead would manage 70-80% of them.
He doesn’t get to stay at home and be a lazy cocklodger whilst you burn yourself in to the ground keeping the family afloat. Because that will lead to resentment and ultimately divorce. Is that what he wants??

Assuming he is physically well enough can you go and work from the office so he has to parent?

Would a cleaner be an option to lessen the load for a while longer?

A SAHP needs to do the bulk of the household/children chores.

Assuming it's been 9 months or so since he was hospitalised I wouldn't think its unreasonable to expect him to do more, no.

If my husband didn't work I'd expect him to do pretty much everything in the house. I can spend an hour a day tidying/cleaning and the same cooking max so I wouldn't think it too much to ask at all.

But as most stay at home parents on here are women, the party line tends to be that the father should still do half of all the household tasks.

Yes, your expectations are too high for your disabled husband.
You can’t expect him to do what you did as a younger, perfectly fit and healthy SAHM.

Getting medical retirement for disability from a job is extremely hard to get. If he had any chance of a full recovery, he’d not be pushed into early retirement for disability.

Try surviving sepsis and being medically retired and then write that post

Of course he should be doing the bulk of it, same as most women do when they're SAHMs.

Time to lay your cards on the table and have a serious discussion about expectations.

He can’t be both “generally fit and well” and “in the process of being medically retired from work”

I’d be furious! Send him back to work

Also honestly 7 months can still be early days post recovery from sepsis.
I had a milder version of what your husband had. 12 months on I'm still working PT, and my energy levels seem to bottom out at times. I don't seem to have the ability to "push through" tiredness. It's impossible to say whether that's what he's experiencing, but it's definitely a possibility.

He's not "fit and well" he's recovering from a major illness. Because he can potter doing a little DIY doesnt mean he can necessarily do cleaning the kitchen floor.

You need to be open about needing him to do more housework instead of diy but you cant expect him to do everything you did when fit and well.

Your problem is his attitude. He should be doing what he's capable of, not doing as little as he can get away with. It seems like you don't trust him to not be taking the piss.

You need to communicate. He might be having a big reassess after what's happened and housework seems humiliating etc. Not good enough to leave it all to you though (even if he was working).

Hire an office desk and leave the house for best part of the working day. Or use your local library (if you aren’t incalls?) Only way to guarantee that you stop yourself from picking daily tasks/ childcare ( and make sure that DH has to),
I can sympathise, literally have wear my headphones all day (even when I am not on a call) and shut myself away , with a do not disturb sign on the door to avoid being pulled into the SAHP’s job.

He should be doing all the childcare while you're working. I don't think he should be doing all the household chores though. I'd expect him to be doing more but there should be some kind of split

I would give him an ultimatum. If he's being a SAHP then household chores and general childcare are his 9-5, you're at your desk working and that is that. The rest of the time if one of you is working (ie chores) so should the other be as a general rule. If he can't agree to that then he needs to be getting a job.

If he doesn't think that is fair he needs to set out explicitly why it is fair that you should do everything and he should do nothing, or near to nothing.

Apologies for the full quote. But this is what lots of people are not getting. Somebody very close to me went through this process. It was long, it was hard , they assessed the crap out of this person's medical history , repeatedly . It's not handed to a person like a tube of smarties.

A lot of people are making assumptions about what 'medically retired' means. From the OPs description it sounds like it was a convenient way to end his employment, rather than something more formal. The OP hasn't said anywhere that he has chronic fatigue or anything like that. Obviously recovery from sepsis varies hugely and only she knows whether he is properly fit and well or not.

OP it sounds like you need to find your fight a bit. I imagine with his illness you have got into the habit of doing everything and tip-toeing around him. Enough of 'gently suggesting' things. He doesn't get to unilaterally decide that he is being a SAHP. Is that what you want?

A SAHP should do basically everything during working hours. If he's the SAHP he also needs to be the one getting up in the night with the baby. If he's not up for this then he's not really a SAHP, he's just using it as a cover for doing nothing. Tbh I think this happens to men sometimes: they think they want to be a SAHP because they think it involves sitting around watching TV or going to the gym all day. He still thinks this because you are picking up everything! You need to stop.

Does he show any signs that he cares about your wellbeing at all?

I had sepsis. Didn’t get me out of doing any housework. I obviously missed a trick! If he’s generally fit and well he should be doing way way more.

Oh dear. We have three children. My DH gave up work when the youngest was about 2. She is now 6 and our oldest is 11, so he has more time for admin. I work 12 hour days in london. He does all the washing, tidying, errands like posting stuff, home maintenance, ferrying kids around and volunteering in his spare time. I retain all the batch cooking at weekends because I want to feel involved, and all related admin, clothes buying, bills, holiday planning and most of the birthday party stuff. Works well for us, mostly. Your DH should do more.

I have scoliosis, sciatica and a bad hip. I can still make beds, hoover through, mop, walking stick in one hand, clean the bathroom I can cook, struggle around a shop. I do have to stop to rest now and again. My husband moans about taking the bins down the steps 🙄.

Your OH is swinging the lead now.

I'm guessing they're both pretty snappy ATM, I know we were when ours were little and we were exhausted and that was without life changing illness. It's going to take them a long time to find their new normal and there'll probably be a fair amount of crankiness along the way because that's fucking hard.

I couldn’t live like this the resentment would build up, I’d tell him what your expectations are and if he won’t do them then he can’t have the luxury of being a SAHP I’m sure there’s office work out there that isn’t too taxing on his body and mind

All of those, military/police/fire have desk jobs and if you can’t do the active role you had it’s required that you be moved to a desk job instead of medical retirement if you are still able to do a desk job. Only if you can’t do any job, does military/fire/police approve a medical retirement.