AIBU to expect some housework done during my partner's mat leave?

[Cljw]

My partner is on mat leave, I work full time. Then when i get home, i have to tidy up after her and the mess that has been made throughout the day, do the washing and cooking etc. (Woe is me, i know) but when i voice my feelings regarding this, i get the 'im looking after our child, i dont have time to do any of that.' So AIBU to ask her to do some housework?

I think it depends, if you want everything spick and span and you’ve made mess you want her to have cleaned up then yabu, also I remember a woman once saying ‘men seem to think if they put a ring on your finger or get you pregnant you automatically become a professional cleaner’. It made me laugh because dh knew me in college, he knew I could barely cook and was crap at cleaning and yet he expected me to become a professional when we got married.

How much time do you each have to do the following weekly:

• commute when you can listen to radio/watch streaming/walk or otherwise excercise
• have a lunch break
• have a coffee break
• sleep freely and uniterrupted
• do leisure or meaningful self care activities whilst the other parent is solely responsible for your infant (when they are sleeping does not count)
• eat breakfast, lunch and dinner using two hands
• direct your own time

This depends on lots of things. How baby is settling, how she's feeling within herself and how she's feeling, if she's breastfeed (I tracked that I nursed for over 9 hrs one day so more than a full days work). Are you tidy or do you leave mess you're expecting her to clean up?

I think you need to remember that maternity leave is primarily in place to enable women to physically and emotionally heal from a huge physical event (pregnancy and labour and all the hormonal peaks and crashes that come with that) as well as looking after a baby at their most vulnerable.

Is your wife doing the majority of the night waking? Is she getting much sleep?

Is she anxious? Depressed?

Is she prioritising getting out of the house to ensure she's not isolated and to protect her emotional health?

I found maternity leave necessary for my own recovery, but also incredibly intense. I also never had the opportunity to sleep for longer than 1hr40 min at a time which seriously impacted my cognitive functioning and ability to make decisions. At some points I was so exhausted I was hallucinating.

She's not on leave to be your maid.

Not unreasonable at all. There’s plenty of time to do a bit of basic housework.

Dh didn't expect anything to be done but I couldn't see any reason not to do things during the day. I had 11 hours from dh leaving g to go to work to coming back.

I mean with a hoover,washing machine, dishwasher,its hardly hard manual labour and doesnt take long to do. I didn't do all the house work in one day and had loads of time to dedicate to ds.

The only thing I didn't always do was make tea.
It would be unfair to have dh get up at night ( which he did to help me) go to work ( he was self employed) , come home start making tea, tidy up and help bath and settle the kids and then he'd have to do his self employed paperwork.
It would be different if id been poorly or struggling to cope but I had a normal pregnancy a tricky birth but things ended up OK.

I wouldn't mind so much if they managed to a few bits thoughout the day.

This. I honestly don’t get why it’s so hard.

How old is the baby? Is it just one baby?

Do you get housework done on the days you're fully responsible for looking after the baby?

My house was the tidiest it’s ever been when I was on mat leave and dinner cooked every day BUT I had a baby that napped consistently in a Moses basket or pram and slept through the night from 12 weeks. I showered and drank hot coffee too.

I can imagine if you have a baby that doesn’t nap or a poorly baby it’s a completely different story.

My DH worked away 5.5 days a week while I was on mat leave and I did fuck all housework.

Maternity leave isn’t to provide you with a housekeeper. Your dick won’t fall off if you have to tidy up.

Yes OP, give her the whole weekend off and show her how it's done.

YANBU but lots on here will tell you it’s not the Mums job. I think whoever is home with a baby can manage basic cleaning & making a meal. I always kept the house tidy when I was off on maternity leave. Equally DH used to do the same if he was home with the kids.

Well, in my case I was doing every wake up and all the feeding (exclusive expressing so took more effort than standard BF or making bottles), recovering from a traumatic birth which caused PTSD, and all childcare for 122 hours straight every week with at least a week a month of mastitis. The hoover could not have featured less in my thoughts.

@Cljw you're not going to answer any of the questions are you? You're just an entitled man who has absolutely no idea what it's like looking after a small baby during the day.

I'm going to assume - possibly rashly - that your baby is relatively young, so all of this is a bit new to you. So you have absolutely NO idea what it's like looking after a small baby. You jog off to work quite happily every day and have no clue what your wife is actually dealing with.

I could be quite wrong, of course - but as you're not answering any questions about age of baby, then I'll stick with that.

Depends on the baby. Some are very easy to get stuff done with. Others not so much.

Does the baby sleep for long periods and is mum sleeping through the night? If she’s up in the night then she should be free to nap when baby does in the day. Rather than worry about chores. Surely you want her fit and well and able to look after baby in this first year. And get out with baby, make social connections etc.
It is a full time job and very overwhelming especially with a first baby. Could you consider hiring a cleaner.

I don’t disagree here. I had a newborn and 13mth old and I was keeping our home the same standards as pre children while I was off of work.

My husband was also very hands on with our babies and the house work. We worked as a team.

Here’s what you need to do.

1. Book a week of annual leave
2. Spend that week looking after the baby and tidying and cooking, to show her how easy it is.

wow. no comment, such a small minded comment to make. I can't believe someone needs to teach you how to suck eggs, but seriously, have a think about what your partner is doing. How old is the baby, is it her first? If yes, she wants to bond and if the baby naps, it's most likely contact napping, so yes, impossible to do anything. Separately, deepening on the age of the baby, there are so many other things at play, for example hormones. Do some research and learn to empathise. Don't be a dick.

I personally found the first few weeks after childbirth quite boring. Mine just slept for hours.So it was quite easy to keep the house tidy.

Is she struggling with pnd? Then i can fully understand why she is struggling but otherwise yanbu to think she could put some washing on and run the hoover around if she's home all day

My first was fine too - for the first few weeks and then colic set in and it was a constant scream fest for months. In fact in the first 2 years she slept for 8 hours just the once. I was a zombie. Housework was done but more because the noise of the hoover or the washing machine blocked out the screaming for 10 mins.

I had a clingy baby who cried constantly and hardly slept. I got lots of housework done. I used to shut the door on my screaming baby, put a timer on for 10 minutes and scrub the loo or the kitchen floor with tears streaming down my face. I tried out lots of new recipes.

Looking back, I probably had undiagnosed PND but my house has never been tidier or shinier.

I started hallucinating about accidentally dropping my baby out of the window (we lived in a 4th floor flat at the time) and so refused to let anyone open any windows despite it being a very hot summer. I used to wake up in the middle of the night inconsolable, panicking that the baby had suffocated in the bed and I couldn't find them, only to find them peacefully sleeping in the cot next to me. Eventually, I refused to sleep without the light on.

Be careful what you wish for. A bit of mess is not the end of the world.

It depends on your baby. Mine screamed every second she wasn’t touching me. She would not sleep unless she was on me. I was a wreck 24/7. Our child was later diagnosed with ASD, but at that time all we knew was that our baby wasn’t like other babies.

My husband did all the housework, cooked the meals, and sometimes cut up my food so I could eat one handed. He understood working all day and taking care of the chores was the much easier job.