Am I in the wrong here? PND trigger warning

[letmecomplain7]

I want to start off by saying that my DH is a good man on the whole, he works hard, he loves our children and puts in time and effort with them (as he should) etc but I’m beginning to wonder if he actually loves me or if we’re together out of conveinence/routine/for the children?

We are childhood sweethearts, married at 19 & 20, now mid 30’s.

We had fertility treatment to conceive our 3 year old after recurrent miscarriage and it genuinely was the happiest time of my life. I LOVED everything about it, our first born was calm, slept 10-12 hours straight through from 12 weeks old. She was a smiley baby, didn’t even know she was teething until one day she woke up with a bottom one. We got lucky and had an “easy” one.

I fell pregnant naturally 2024 and we were ecstatic, I gave birth last year but this time, I feel empty. I know I love him/would protect him but I don’t enjoy being his Mum. He cries a lot, whinges non stop, he’s been teething for the past 3 months with no signs of teeth coming through. He’s had multiple health checks, he’s on dairy free formula, gaviscon, omeprazole, we’ve tried everything. He’s had RSV twice and been hospitalised twice with it and spent around 3 months of his 6 months unwell, very snotty, antibiotics for recurrent chest infections, RSV, colds. This has made it impossible to do proper “tummy time” with him, he doesn’t roll or show any signs of trying to, he can’t hold his head up straight for long enough for me to wean him safely. Drs tell me all babies are different so I let it go.

I’m exhausted. I’ve slept on the sofa for the past 3 weeks with him in his swinging chair (it lays flat so no chin to chest) but is very slightly raised because he’s full of snot again and can’t breathe in his cot properly. He has a bottle at 8 then 11 then he wakes at 1:30 then again at 4 then he’s up at 6.

Yesterday, DH came home early from work (runs own business), I asked if he had paperwork to do in the home office but he said no he’s going to go to bed for a few hours as he was tired and had an important football match (semi final for the team he plays for). He knows I’d been up 3 or 4 times in the night with baby yet he went back to bed and slept for 5 hours whilst I dealt with toddler and baby even though I asked if I could get a couple of hours, he said he needed the rest for the game.

I was giving baby a dream feed at midnight last night sat on the rug next to his chair and fell asleep whilst I was giving it to him, I fell back and smashed my back and head on our solid oak toy box which really hurt. I carried on feeding baby, took some paracetamol as my head was pounding and went to sleep on the sofa. I told DH about it this morning (I was up at 7 with toddler and baby, he was up at 9) and he said “it’s normal, you’re a mum you’re going to be tired” and I just lost my shit. (My daughter was at my mums baking cakes so it wasn’t in front of her) but I cried and told him I’m so exhausted that I feel it in my bones, I worry about driving our daughter to preschool the 3 days a week she goes, I worry about falling asleep when baby is awake and not waking to him crying but instead of comfort, he shouted at me to go and sleep then instead of cleaning whilst I had a a couple hours free of toddler (I’d asked him if he could keep baby with him and run hoover around so that I could go to my mums with DD and have some quality 1-1 time baking with her) but he said he needed to clean fish tank/baby whinging/impossible to hoover as well so I dropped her off then came back because if I don’t do it, who will? There will be no clean clothes, no clean floor, no changed bedsheets.

I admitted to my dr that I was struggling a few weeks ago and they very quickly got me seen my a post natal psychiatrist (I have quite a long history of depression and anxiety) and she doesn’t think I have depression at all, she thinks I have inattentive ADHD and OCD and I feel depressed because I’ve been misdiagnosed since I was 15 so she has changed my medication and will continue to see me as she also thinks I have PND.

When I got angry and said “you even went back to bed for hours yesterday knowing you’d had a full night sleep in our bedroom without a baby disturbing you, knowing I’m exhausted” and then that was it, he then blamed everything on me being “angry” about that because it all come spilling out, I do all of the washing, all of the cleaning, he’ll leave empty wipe packets next to the bathroom bin, socks on the living room floor where he takes them off, if he uses the last of the shower gel it stays there until I replace it and I’m sick of it. I’m at breaking point.

He’s taking both kids out to a nature trail tomorrow morning into the afternoon and acts like I should be grateful for this.

I love him and I don’t want to give up on us but lately I’ve been thinking; at least I’d have every other weekend child free and then I feel terribly guilty because I adore my children but I’m burnt out, sad, exhausted and overwhelmed that it really does seem appealing to me but I’m worried if I ask him to leave it’ll be the biggest mistake of my life. I know I love him, when we are good we are really good but when we are like this, it’s hideous.

What do I do? I feel like I’m genuinely going insane.

I think your experience with your first child was unusual. I had twins and my experience was like your second child. We were both bloody exhausted and had some horrible rows in the middle of the night.

no advice, sorry but I hear you

There's nothing loving about being in a marriage when one of you is visibly falling apart at the seams and the other proriotises THEIR rest. I'm so sorry you're this tired and run down - my middle one had RSV and ended up in hospital being ventilated/tube fed and it was a long long road back to recovery with them after.

I think you need a sit down together and talk - but calmly and not in a crisis moment. He needs to start giving here, and you need to make your expectations of him very clear. If he can't, then you've got a much bigger decision to make but I wouldn't make it while you're in the trenches like this. I hope things get better for you soon.

I agree with the pp that I think your first dc was an unusually chilled baby. You are both likely to be absolute shattered so you need to talk about it both calmly to come up with a solution.

Also to add, our sex life is non existent and he wonders why. I’m so tired that I fall asleep feeding a baby and smash my head on solid wood toy boxes, what part of me has the energy to have sex?!

A solution would have been him taking over and letting her have a few hours sleep instead of worrying about a sodding football match

I think youre just really really REALLY tired. Being this tired is awful. All I can promise you is it will get better. Your baby will become better company, youll get more sleep, you'll get in better with other half.
I do think you need to ask for a bit more help from your husband to get more sleep. I used to take microsleeps while driving when I was this tired. You both need to figure out how to get you a bit more sleep.

Maybe his sport hobby needs to take the backseat until things with the baby settle down. It sounds like he needs to shoulder more of the burden for a while.

He gets sleep though, he sleeps undisturbed in our bed and when I am in bed and baby is in cot he wears one of those headbands that blocks noise and light so every night he gets 7-9 hours sleep. He’s not exhausted from baby, yes he works hard but he does nothing apart from nappy changes and bottles. He’s never up in the night with baby.

I 100% agree that our first baby was so chilled that it was unusual, in fact we went to the doctors with her at 8 weeks old as we were concerned she was too chilled and sleeping too much and they laughed us out the door telling us people would pay good money for a baby that slept. She’s 3 now and still sleeps 7-7 in her own bed, pitch black, no problem at all.

We had my husband take babies from 8 - midnight so I could sleep a bit then. He got a solid 7h after that because he had a difficult job. You need to find a way to get more sleep.

If she's this tired why would the person who is meant to be there as her partner need to be getting 5 EXTRA hours sleep for a football match?

That will never happen as it’s his “outlet” as he calls it which I don’t deny, every person should do something they enjoy that’s good for them which it is, exercise, the men he plays with are actually big on mental health so it’s a really lovely team and support but where’s my time? I enjoy reading, I can’t remember the last time I sat down with my kindle and read for an hour.

Are you sure you have PND and aren’t just absolutely bloody exhausted and done in? I am not, by any stretch, minimising what you’re going through (and I know you’ve seen a doctor). It’s just that how are you expected to recover if you’re getting zero support, zero sleep and zero understanding from the man who’s meant to be your life partner?

I feel for you. He needs to step up and stop being so selfish 💐

I feel your pain. I have 4 dc and DH does absolutely nothing with the baby overnight, but is expected to get up with the older ones if they need something. It drives me nuts when he says he is tired, when I imagine I am getting 4 hours of broken sleep a night.

It sounds like you resent his sleep and the fact you are always looking after the baby at night. Can you strike a better balance? We have never split nights but I know people who do successfully so both parents get some sleep. Or could he do nights at the weekend? I think you need to have an honest conversation about needing more support and exactly what that looks like.

I agree, both my babies would only breastfeed at night and were such bad sleepers there was no energy to push that really BUT from 5am or so they'd do a decent stretch and even if awake they'd go 2/3 hours without a feed if entertained. So my husband got up early and I got a couple of hours, sometimes the only couple fo hours, then.

I’m so muddled up where I can’t think straight that I don’t even know myself whether I have PND. I love him fiercely just like I did my DD, I look after him, I make sure he’s clean and fed and played with and cuddled. I don’t know. I’m in such a state of exhaustion I genuinely don’t know what or how to feel anything.

We did a shift system with ours after a while.

so parent 1 goes to bed 7pm
parent 2 deals with all child related stuff between 7pm and 1am
parent 1 deals with all child related stuff between 1 am and 7am while parent 2 has six hours of sleep.

that way you both get six hours of decent sleep. Downside is no evening.

He wouldn't.
Hopefully OP can make it clear she NEEDS more sleep before she crashes the car.

Sleep deprivation is the absolute worst. Its absolute torture.

Splitting nights is a no go as he is in a high risk job (can be deadly if he makes an error) so he won’t split nights. The most he’ll do is get up an hour earlier but by time I’ve got into bed and fallen asleep he wakes me up 45 mins later so he can have a shower and go to work.

Tough titties for him. He has 2 children, the way I explained this to my husband when his non football hobby was having the same impact was we were basically in a job share as parents and there was only so much available down time and every bit of downtime he took over half of that available he was taking directly from my possible downtime.

Another good way I saw it described was that mum is at the bottom of the hill, of he drops a ball it rolls over you.

Hes saying you're a mum, mums are tied, well eff that he's a dad, dads don't get to play so much football for a bit when hey have babies with medical complications.

My 2 were the opposite of yours op, my first was very very hardcore, my youngest easy peasy. You KNOW you're having a particularly rough time, people may not want to acknowledge it but you are. He's getting EXTRA sleep while you get none. That's not ok

Then at the very least he can do friday and Saturday ( or whichever days hes not working following ).
You NEED more sleep.

It's awful. I don't think I'll ever get over it. My eldest never slept more than 45 mins and took an hour to get back to sleep each time. Only the people who were here, my husband and sisters, really fully believe me. I didn't sleep a full hour in 1 go for months and he never slept through at all u til he was over 3 and then sporadically. He has a diagnosed sleep disorder and has melatonin now which has changed everyone's lives and even then he sleeps roughly 9-6 with 1 wake up on average at 8

I genuinely don’t want to drive anymore, I’m scared I’m going to end up killing myself or worse still my children or some innocent person or child but the 3 days a week of 9-3 where my DD is having fun at pre school and doing the things I do t have the energy for right now (messy play, building dens in the woods etc) is so needed for her and for me and I can’t even walk her as I need to drive on a dual carriageway with no path. It’s only a 5 minute drive
but it’s still enough time that I could fall asleep and kill somebody or myself/my kids.

I have a high risk job. Many women have high risk jobs and manage on broke. Sleep with babies, why can't men? Also 6 hours sleep is what he NEEDS. He can easily give you u til midnight, then take over again at 6. He's choosing not to.

Also parenting a breastfed baby is a high risk job. You're lucky you only hit your own head, what if you'd startled and chucked baby at the floor as you'd hurt yourself? Breastfeeding on no sleep can be deadly.

Yep I hear you. I can remember almost nothing from 6 years of my life.
Mine slept through from about 5 years old... but did 3 / 4 h stretches from 2 / 3. Everything before that was hell.

I think the OP needs to insist her other half helps in some way before there's an accident.