A few years ago when my daughter was born my mother in law made a complaint: that I don’t do enough and that her son is doing all the work.
We now have a three year old and a one year old. My mother in law’s comment has been playing on my mind so much - mainly because of things like:
- my husband is out of the house from 7.00am -7.30pm, so I do every single morning, drop off, pick up, dinner bath bed. I wfh, but by the time he comes home the kids are clean and bathed and fed, the house is clean (mostly), and they are ready for him to read a story and go to bed.
- Weekends, I get to have a lie in while he gives the kids breakfast, or occasionally he gets a lie in. I still wake up to feed our baby multiple times a night.
- When we were both on parental leave and I was waking up every few hours to feed the baby, my husband would do mornings to allow me to have a lie in. My mother in law complained that ‘she just sleeps until 11 while my son does everything’
- when older daughter was born, she gave my husband a long lecture on how the relationship is too one sided. She couldn’t understand why my husband was helping out so much. When he explained that I’m up all night with the baby and so it’s ok to let me have a lie in, she said ‘well other women can do it’.
- After the lecture they had an argument - this is where the detail is important. Husband said ‘you keep saying the same things’ and she said ‘ok fine I’ll just shut up then, you know best.’ She stopped talking to him for around six months.
- They’re French. For cultural context; they say things a lot more bluntly than we do.
- We are now moving abroad, my husband is being relocated to SE Asia. Husband will do a week reccy trip, leaving me with the kids. I will do a week in Easter, leaving him with the kids. First time I’m leaving them overnight.
- Parents in law, sister in law and husband, and their two kids are coming to stay in our house while I’m away.
- I can’t articulate why this upsets me so much, but it does. Partly I desperately want them to love me and we all be one big happy family. Partly I am just so overwhelmed and exhausted from looking after the kids, that having it in the back of my mind that ‘I do nothing’ just feels so cruel. Partly it’s frustrating that when the kids cry, I go to them because he won’t. When they need something, they want me. I know their routines, their favourite toothbrush, how they like their food laid out, which bottle to use, which cry means what. Husband didn’t even realise that the baby had dropped a nap a month ago. When the baby cries, he has no idea what’s up.
- I feel the most tremendous guilt leaving them.
Anyway now to the point of the story. My husband is now just not talking to me. I think I pissed him off because on a few occasions over the weekend I snapped and said ‘can you just help me?!’ - when a glass had just broken and the baby was crawling around, when I had to get things ready for fb marketplace pick up but the kids were crying.
I know he will be upset at me being upset his family are coming.
“You always make a fuss and you don’t want me to see them” will be the line.
“I’m exhausted too, you don’t have a monopoly on exhaustion” will be the other line.
Anyway please advise x