Resentment after baby

[WheelsOffTheBus1989]

Had a baby 11 months ago. Just went back to work. I know work is meant to help but I'm just more tired and have less time. I can't stop resenting my DH. How enormously my life has changed and how little his has. He's actually a lot better than most dads around but that's a pretty low bar tbh. Things are starting to level and after many, many arguments, and baby starting to be less dependant on me, we are starting to get closer to some fairness, truly. We also have more paid help so he's not actually doing a lot more but whatever, I have less to do.

I just can't let go of the resentment. It's like I'm about to get out of the trenches and I look at how useless he's been at times and I can’t forgive him.

That's his biggest fault. He can be amazing for a while, then he gets bored, then comes back around and I'm supposed to be grateful for it.

Like, he went on a holiday when baby was at a really difficult stage. He was amazing in the run up and amazing afterwards. Couldn't do more. But wtf leaving me with a non-sleeping baby for a week? I begged him not to go. He did. He also volunteered for a 2 weeks work trip when baby was a newborn. He cut short his paternity leave to leave me with a screaming tiny colicky baby. My parents came over to help but really, i needed my husband.

One morning, when I had just gone back to work and still doing everything for baby, he was standing in the kitchen, watching me prep my pumping parts, baby's food and bottles for the day and lecturing me about how I should take 15 minutes in the morning to exercise. How he's started doing it and feels amazing. I looked him dead in the eye and said "I would, but then who feeds this child??". He just went quiet. Didn't take over meal prep or anything.

He says I expect perfection and I should let it go. But he doesn't get that I don't get to fail. He drops the ball, I have to pick up the pieces. Is this motherhood? Because if it is, I hate it.

It sounds awful. No advice except to insist on more fairness. Sympathies.🌺

@GreenCandleWax we do have a lot more fairness now, genuinely. I'm just finding myself being a bitch. I just can't let go of all the hard times when he failed me. I know I have to, but I can't. And now I'm the one killing this relationship.

My sympathies OP - I think this is incredibly common (dare I even say universal) when you have a baby.

Even with dads who are very good… mums seem to end up being responsible for 10x more.

You have to address it head on to stop it killing you though.

Is this motherhood?
In my experience yes. You’ll probably get loads of people with a counter position but I had a similar experience and it didn’t change as the kids got older. Had to chose a nursery? On me. Same with school. Need to remember mufti day? On me. Same with parents evening. No it didn’t get better, I just became a resentful nag. Sad but true.

@ThriveIn2025 I have a very deep understanding of my own mother now. She was always stressed, always nagging my dad. And I look back and think wow that woman was doing a lot. She kept her career and did everything at home too.

I don't want to be that unhappy and stressed for as long as she was though 🙁

How does your DH act when you broach it with him? Is he open to the suggestion he didn’t pull his weight?

@ThriveIn2025 admits some, denies some. Praises how amazing I am (which is BS meant to placate me). Thinks we should just move on and not bring up shit.

You say he's better now but is he actually pulling his weight or is it just better than it was? Honestly, the resentment won't disappear if he still isn't doing his share.

His share could be in lots of different ways. Eg my DH wasn't really around for the bath and bed routine but by the time I got back downstairs, all the toys would have been put away, bottles cleaned etc.

@AngelicInnocent it's better than it was because I've cut down on breastfeeding/pumping and we have a nanny who does a lot of the cleaning and tidying up in the day.

Baby has a lot of tricky allergies so food making for him is on me (should be us....but mostly me)

Words fail me when I read all these threads on MN where a woman carries the baby inside her for ( generally) 9 months, goes through the experience of birth and then the baby's father thinks its normal to disappear for a holiday with his mates while the woman is left looking after the baby by herself.

That's if they haven't disappeared off on holiday in the final stages of the pregnancy already. Some do both of course.

I know some men are good partners and actually take fatherhood seriously and do their share. But it just is still the norm that the womam is the default parent and home manager, as well as often having a full time paid job as well.

It's a pity parenting classes for both sexes isn't the norm in schools. So young guys can actually gain some knowledge of what they should be doing before they actually become fathers.

TBH, and I hate to say it, but, if he can't step up then this is likely to kill the relationship.

I can absolutely point to the point I lost any respect for my ex, the beginning of the end. There had been issues with laziness, but I loved him and ignored them until this one point broke the magic spell, and we hobbled on for another few years before I realised I had to call an end to it (by that point he was cheating on every work trip, and many weekends he was home)

One of the symptoms for me was I just stopped doing his stuff. If he stopped doing washing (or worse, when he would cram too much in the tumble dryer, then take it out of the tumble dryer slightly damp and cram it into a washing basket where it sat getting hopelessly creased and smelly until I redid it), I stopped doing his washing. If he sorted himself out lunch, then I sorted mine and the kid's lunch another day and ignored him. I organised trips out with the kids and didn't bother trying to persuade him to come (I didn't hide we were going, but I didn't keep reminding him either)

People are going to say kids get easier - but not exactly. Mainly they get different. I'd say they're only really getting easier for me now the eldest is 14, so he can get himself places, and stay home without a babysitter.

Yep, same.

It is hard to let go of the resentment once you’ve recognised that when the chips are down your partner is always going to be looking out for number one, ringfencing time and energy and money for his own social life / entertainment / career ambitions and screw the rest of you.

I honestly have not seen any hetero relationships that don’t go this way to one extent or another once DC are on the scene. Families who can pay to outsource domestic and admin work are more able to kid themselves that the man is pulling his weight (when actually it’s underpaid women). The only 50/50 equitable marriages I hear about are from strangers on MN.

@UpsideDownChairs Yeah i can pinpoint a moment I can't come back from and it's really small which makes me feel guilty, he's not nearly as bad as that.

I purposely go through the laundry basket and carefully remove his items so I only wash mine and baby's stuff. First time I did it, he kept going round the house for 3 weeks muttering how he can't find stuff to wear.

He ended up wearing a shirt with holes in it to work because he had nothing else before he clocked and put on a wash...of his work shirts, only.

@VoltaireMittyDream that's exactly it. When the chips are down, he looks out for himself only. That's it. It makes me feel so alone.

Oh, the cheating wasn't the bad thing, the bad thing was just a total failure to give previously promised support, which left me unable to take a job (which I'd already accepted, based on his previous commitment to drop the kids to school/childminder - which I had sorted out, and I was committing to the pickup which was going to be much harder and career limiting).

Just the fact I can blithely say that the cheating was a minor thing shows what a mug I was waiting so long to end it TBH.

VoltaireMittyDream has it - he used to say that "it'll all sort itself out" - but it wouldn't, what he meant was I would eventually have to sort it out. And YES the idea of paying for a service (which he would take weeks to find, then when it was actually in place, it would fall to me to manage), to reduce his workload, but often end up adding to mine somehow was another straw on the camel's back.

I don't think he's as good as a dad as you think, and not better than the majority, unless I'm delusional and most fathers are really, really shite? I couldn't get past him cutting paternity leave early and leaving me with a colicky baby, nor could I get past him going on a holiday I'd begged him not to go on. And he only does his washing? I honestly don't understand and I'm sorry you're in this position, I would massively resent him too!

My partner is not like this, at all, we have an 8 month old baby. I don't resent him one bit because when he's home it's 50/50, as it should be, it has never been anything but.

I dont understand why so many men are useless, I really don't. My partners mum was a single parent and his dad wasn't involved at all, his mum worked 3 jobs to keep a roof over their heads so he had to cook them all tea, help clean the house etc and that's just continued into adulthood.

I'll certainly do my best to bring my baby up to be like his dad and not like a lot of the useless men I read about on here!

I would have a serious conversation with him about what you do, what he doesn't do, and if he doesn't change then I'd leave. He'll have to do 100% when he has your child on his own. Good luck x

I think he needs to acknowledge the depths to which he has let you down before you can begin to move on.

How can you let go of resentment when the problem is not fully acknowledged?

I ended up getting divorced because of the inequality and resentment though.

If it’s only better now because you got in a nanny, it’s not better, he’s just outsourced his portion of the load.

Sounds like you’re already checked out and I would advise, if that’s true, to leave now rather than waste years and years more of your life hoping it gets better or trying to make it work before leaving and then having to start from scratch when you’ve wasted your best years.

I promise that doing it alone is not as hard as doing it with a dead weight tied around your neck. There is no resentment when you’re doing it alone, no second child to manage and wash and cook for, nobody to let you down.

Men rarely ever do as much as women and yes, when the chips are down (or even if they're not) men look out for themselves. It usually takes giving birth to wake up to that fact. You realise that you can't "baby" two human beings and your child will always be the priority, not your husband. It's a very common experience for women, once they are mothers, to become bitterly resentful of their partners - often with good reason.

Please tell me you’ve have water-tight contraception in place. There are so many posts on MN along the lines of “my husband was useless when we had our first and now he’s even worse after the second and I’m trapped”.

I think you need a business trip or a solo holiday to "recharge". Residential, at least a week. How hard could that be to sort? 😄

My husband was substantially less of a dick than yours but when I went back to work, I had to travel frequently, long haul. It was the making of him as a competent parent, as a partner and his relationship with his children.

It might have been better to say "oi mate, do your washing...do mine too whilst you're at it". Not communicating isn't helping.

I think you have every right to be totally pissed off about being deserted tho but what can he actually do to fix it now?

Not a lot, so I think I'd invest in some talking with someone to decide how you want to proceed.

LOL I wouldn't let him near me 🤣 I don't think you understand the level of anger that I feel.

@Chazbots yes, and I do say that a lot, that was an instance where tbh I was testing him. Because the problem is, that also becomes my responsibility. Reminding him of laundry, appointments etc. It's never ending.

He had the gall to tell me he doesn't know what his nap/feeding schedule is at the weekend as he's not home in the week. I reminded him that neither am I (!!!) and he can check the nanny's messages and baby monitor logs. He muttered sth about it being easier to ask me.

You need therapy so you have a space to get it all out and he needs to acknowledge your points and make amends