39w pregnant and feel alone

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The title sounds more sad than I am...I'm more just annoyed, exasperated, at my wits end....but also really doubting myself. I don't know if I feel like this because it's actually justified, or because I'm a crazy pregnant lady, or because I'm some sort of spoiled princess with expectations that are far too high, or what. But I guess this is what MN is for...no doubt people will put me in the picture.

As the title says, I'm 39w pregnant with baby No.2. I've been on mat leave for a while but I'm desperately trying to get through a bunch of postgrad coursework before baby comes. If no.1 was anything to go by, I'll barely be a functioning human until they're 6-8w old.

My issue is this: the whole way through my pregnancy, I'm not sure my husband has really registered it. He's a great dad, really brilliant. Can't fault him in that. But w/r to his attitude towards me, I don't think he's really seen any reason it might alter anything I'm able to do/ how he behaves towards me.

During my first pregnancy, I was self-employed, and so was able to scale up my work and save up a pot with enough money to fund my mat leave. This time round, I'm an employee, earning less, plus paying uni fees, and so he's the one who's been taking on more overtime at work etc to try and save up some money. Which he has done, but it's not been without its sacrifices - he's had to travel away for work several times, leaving me with a toddler, he works long days so it essentially feels like single-parenting as DC1 is up after he leaves and in bed by the time he's back....just lots of ways that it hasn't been easy, but ultimately it was for us, and I was happy to pick up the slack at home.

While I've needed to focus on this coursework, though, I don't necessarily have the hours to spend on the chores or the grocery shopping or whatever it is, I just do it as I'm going around the house, little by little. And the place has just gotten messy..messier than it would if it didn't just rely on 1 person. He is at work, comes home, sits in the driveway on his phone for about 30 mins before coming in the house, pulls all his Tupperware or whatever out his bag, leaves it on the counter, asks if there's anything he can take for lunch the next day, if I've made dinner he'll eat some of that but if I've just got DC1 down and haven't had time to think about it, he'll just go upstairs to sit on his phone in bed (he'll probably have had some sort of snack on the way home from work anyway)....and then that's me. Left downstairs to talk to myself, make something to eat, maybe attempt a bit of coursework now that the DC1 is asleep, but tbh by 8pm after a bedtime battle I'm usually pretty spent myself. A couple of weeks ago he came home while DC1 was having a bath. He knows you need to crouch down and lean over to do it, lift her out...and just walked past the bathroom door and sat in the bedroom. Didn't help, or join in. Left me to it. There will likely be a load of washing that needs hung up, or put away, or a dishwasher that needs emptied/ stacked....something that needs done. But he doesn't do it. Doesn't even seem to see any of it. That's not to mention just general conversation....like, me? I don't get why he doesn't want to even speak to me, if not help me?

I've just had to spend the whole weekend at my parents' house (hours of driving) to get away from the housework and focus solely on the coursework. He was off all weekend, but I just knew he'd not be on top of it, and then I would have to load the dishwasher while making a cup of tea, or hang a load of washing up because it had sat in the machine for 2 days, or stop to cook dinner, or something. And I just couldn't take it. So, on Saturday morning, I left him with DC1 and went. It was heartbreaking being away from her, and I couldn't shake the feeling of me and DH not being a team anymore. Who, honestly, would rather see their heavily pregnant wife drive hours away, rather than just keep on top of the housework? Or make dinner for her every now and again? Or give her peace while she works?

To make matters worse, I got back today and discovered he'd started vaping again, after months being off it. He stopped because it had made him ill with a stomach ulcer (right around the time I fell pregnant), and its taken months and a referral to gastro to get it healed. Needless to say he was more preoccupied with his abdominal goings-on than mine. He'd spent about an hour in the bathroom this evening, and when the door opened this fruity sort of smell followed him. I asked him, he denied it, I told him I could smell it and he said he had, with an insinuation he's stressed out by being left to deal with the housework for 48h. I just don't know what to even do with that. Vaping in the bathroom like some sort of teenager. I've moved into the spare room as of tonight, because I feel alone and being around him with this sort of nothingness between us just makes me upset. I'm facing childbirth in the next couple of weeks, and I don't even know if I want him there now, while I'm in pain/ scared. I'm just tired of this all now, there's no excitement, or anticipation. Dread, if anything. I now don't like the feeling of needing to ask him for access to the money he's saved up for my mat leave, so I've transferred the big direct debits to him to deal with, and am considering doing a bit of self-employed work after about 6w/ whenever I feel physically able, when my 90% mat pay runs out, to pay for what I can.

So, AIBU? Am I reading too much into this/ expecting too much attention for a 2nd pregnancy/ not appreciating what he's doing re work/ just being a neurotic bitch? Or are DH's supposed to at least acknowledge that you're pregnant? Offer to do a bit more, lift things, do the chores that make you bend over, try and keep a tidy kitchen tidy....ask about your day? Talk to you a bit when they get home from work? I just don't know what I even think or feel anymore. I just know that I don't feel like I have a partner. I sometimes wonder if I'm so insufferable, that he just can't bear to be around me or something. He tends to snap at me if I do ask him to do anything, or tell me he was going to do it anyway. I don't want to be a nag...but I do, literally, need help sometimes.

Thank you if you managed to read through all of that. It was unexpectedly long, sorry!

When you say he's picked up extra time, what does that look like? How many hours does he work in a day, if he's gone before your child wakes and back after they are asleep? and how frequent and how far is the travel away? It sounds like he works an awful lot, and is probably pretty exhausted, which he has done to save for baby while also enabling you to study, so it might be a lot to also be the one keep on top of the house as well. Sounds like you both have a lot on your plates at the moment. Definitely think he should be more supportive but just wondering how his days are looking as well.

Has he taken up vaping again due to stress?
It sounds like you are both under a lot of pressure. What was his communication like before as maybe he is bottling it up. It sounds like he has long days, and whereas last time he knew you were financially secure I wonder if he is now worried about being the main provider financially and any debt that is accumulating with your student loan.
However that doesn't excuse him from helping with the housework. Even if he now is regretting a second child it's too late to back out. I think you need to have a word with him about jobs around the house.
I think if you know he is getting in late each night and possibly eating something in the way I would eat with your toddler and let him do his own dinner. Why are you doing his packed lunch? When he puts his tupperware on the side then leave it for him to clean and repack.

I am guessing you are both at breaking point. He's dealing with it by vaping and being snappy. He probably sees it as you burying yourself in coursework and running to your parents. More open communication from you both over now you are feeling could help.

How many extra hours is he working...is the vaping due to stress. Sounds like you need to talk as adults. On the fence here

Thanks for the replies. I actually panicked after I posted this and tried to delete it...then realised you can't, ha. Not sure why, writing it down made it seem suddenly quite real, I read it back and felt so ungrateful and spoiled - because, despite all this, I really do love him. And I was terrified people would just think it was a load of nonsense. Might still be, but the replies have been really balanced, thoughtful and kind, so I'm relieved and grateful for that.

He has been working a lot the last couple of months, the most was 70 hours in one week. That was an outlier, though. I'd say he averages 55 hours a week. He's out of the house for 14 hours a day when the commute's taken into account, though, so all of this put together is definitely exhausting him. The truth is though, he's never done much intuitively, it's always been a struggle. And all I'm really asking him to do now is to maintain what I've done - put things in the dishwasher, not on the counter above it. Clean up beard trimmings from around the sink. If there's a wash hanging outside, and you're outside anyway, check if it's dry and bring it in. Just things that cross your normal, everyday path. Things I think he would have to do if he lived alone. There have been times when I've worked more hours than him, and he's lost it about how messy the house is because I haven't been there doing the bits and bobs he doesn't seem to notice are normally done automatically by me, and he was now having to do on his days off. I think there's perhaps a bit he's inherited off his (old-fashioned) parents about gender roles, and that the ultimate state of the domestic realm is the responsibility of the female.

Anyway, so although this is the first time he's had a legitimate reason for doing very little, it's not new. The new thing is it's the one time I've physically and mentally been unable to pick up the slack, and lacking the emotional resilience to deal with it. I'm tearing my way through the cw, it's v much quantity over quality...just looking for something to submit and be done with so I can focus on what I should be focusing on - baby. I haven't had a chance to sort their little bed out, find the steriliser, clean and put the pram together, find all the wee activity mats and bouncy chairs we used for our first, figure out if my breast pump still works or put together a hospital bag. And every fibre of my being wants to do all that stuff, not this uni work. I can feel myself getting more and more annoyed and neglected, more lied to, and more galvanised that, if I can find a way through this, I don't want to be in a position like this again where I'm reliant on someone else's moods, earnings, household contribution etc. I'll probably want to leave.

One last bit about the vaping thing - the reason it feels so hurtful, and almost passive aggressive, is because the ulcer issue dominated the discourse for the first 6 months of my pregnancy. He was convinced he was going to die, disappeared into quite a sad place, wouldn't talk much and certainly didn't take much interest in my pregnancy. It really wasn't like him, I felt really sorry for him, and together we got him in front of a specialist, put a new diet in place. I altered the things I bought, cooked with and researched medications that might help and slowly, gradually, his symptoms improved. He's always blamed the excessive vaping/ nicotine patches he was using at the time. So for him to be back doing this just feels like a massive FU. I tried, I put all the stuff I should have been concerned with/ worrying about aside - the morning sickness, the fatigue, the anaemia, constipation....just the normal pregnancy stuff - to focus on him. And it feels like he's taken all of that and thrown it back in my face. I don't know what to do with that.

It kind of sounds like you are in one of those stages where you are both super busy and things just drop a bit, i think everyone has these stages. The biggest thing to me would be the spending time with you and listening, I wouldn't be as worried about beard hairs on the sink but the attention to each other. I do think that the vaping sounds like it might be down to stress. I think we all have different ways of coping and showing love, and so you cant really just expect that he does things the same way that you would, but working all the overtime does sound like he's showing a lot of love for you and your family just in a different way. I hope that you get through your coursework so that you can just relax and enjoy your new baby, and I hope he is able to get some time off with you and baby as well!