Frustrated father - advice please

[AnnaLies]

My wife is still breastfeeding and still has our baby in our bed every night. I've been pleading for months for her to be in her own cot, preferably in her own room for months now but to no avail. I think my wife's just very lazy. I can't even get a routine going and it's often past 10pm when they go to bed and often 10am when they get up. It's driving me mad!! Our baby is 17 months old!

So...... how on earth can we now get her in her own room? How can we get her to bed at a set hour each evening? How can we get her off her mums breast? I try often but she doesn't seem to be bothered. Fact is it's meaning we never get any time together..... we can't have a night out....... we can't even have a cuddle in bed. This really has to stop.

I've recently been trying to give her warmed cows milk with a little sugar but she's utterly uninterested. As she is also with hot chocolate or any other way i try and serve it. Can anyone give any suggestions please? I've tried giving in a beaker, a cup with a straw and even an adult mug. She just doesn't want to know.

So really asap i want her in her own cot, own room, off the breast, and in bed early evening. tips plz! :)

I do think it's bizarre how some women leap to men's defence, no matter how offensive and downright wrong they have been.

AnnaLies wrote a deeply unpleasant first post. He was challenged about it, and was equally offensive in his own defence. Othr posted sought to excuse him, talking about "unfortunate turns of phrase" and similar. He remained unrepentant, and further revealed that his nickname was a very unkind play on his wife's name. And stuff about her not tidying his car.

And still women come to fight his corner. I despair sometimes!

Boffinmum - You have it spot on. I was thinking exactly the same thing this afternoon.

Seeker - he asked her to clean her own car, not his and when they wanted to sell it and she still hadn't done it, he did it himself. I have to say that exact conversation has happened in this house. I don't do car stuff so DH can clean my car himself if it bothers him. I am not however being abused or put upon or bullied just because he asked. I just don't want to do it and he places greater importance on such things so he can do it which it does when it bothers him enough. I don't see the OP is any different from my DH!

Seriously, if some of you think he is that offensive you need to toughen up. He was jumped on from a great height from post one - is it any wonder he was defensive and came out fighting.

No, apparently he didn't ask her to clean her own car (he has denied it); he fumed about how she chose to not clean her own car (note: this is HER OWN CAR we're talking about) and knew she hadn't done it for four years, and thought women here on MN would nod in agreement and tell him Yes, his wife really is a lazy woman all right.

'I just don't want to do it and he places greater importance on such things so he can do it which it does when it bothers him enough. I don't see the OP is any different from my DH!'

I don't see the OP's wife any different from you wrt the baby in her own room and the weaning, Niecie. She doesn't want to do it and AnnaLies places greater importance on it so he just goes ahead and feeds the baby milk and hot chocolate, and decorates two nurseries. It's the same dynamic exactly. He cares about these things much more than she does.

I posted post one and I stand over it. If you can't see the mirror image of your own car situation in the weaning/cot-sleeping thing, it must be because you had no problem deciding for yourself that it was time to wean.

The OP's wife did not decide for herself that it was time to clean her car, and she did not in fact clean her own car, for four years. She has not decided that it is time to wean or end the co-sleeping, and despite the pleas and the nursery decoration and the attempts to introduce milk she has in fact been 'lazy' and AnnaLies has not got what he wants, same as in the car situation.

And Niecie, (I also thought he had posted about asking her to clean her own car but he claimed he had not said this, instead said he had just watched and judged her for four years) -- the salient point about it is still not OK; you have expressed the opinion that a man can ask someone else to clean out her OWN car and expect compliance.

No you misunderstand what I am saying. I did want to do it, I wanted to do it very much but I couldn't actually get my act together or couldn't be bothered or didn't have the energy to go through the upheaval - I can't remember exactly how I was feeling it was 5 yrs ago. I just remember the feeling of not wanting DS in the room (that sounds harsher than it felt) but thinking to myself, nah, I'll leave it until tomorrow and I took the easy way out for as long as possible. It wasn't the right thing to do, it was the easiest. In the end DH probably took over and made plan - he did with DS1 although DS2 had his own ideas on weaning and took matters out of both our hands.

And yes of course he can ask her to do things just as I am sure she asks him to do things - it doesn't mean anybody is being forced. If he was then she would have cleaned her own car. They are a couple. DH did on occasion ask me if I was going to be cleaning my car any time soon. I didn't, like the DW, because I didn't want to. I told him that if he wanted it done he could do it it himself. Clean cars matter to my DH more than they matter to me - he sees a depreciating asset that should be taken care of. I see a means to getting me from A to B and a bit of dust. Whilst it is my car it is the joint family income that has to replace it when the time comes so he is allowed an opinion on it particularly if we are trying to sell it! And do you want to know what, not cleaning your car for 4 yrs is lazy, I know it is lazy. I'm not kidding myself on that but he didn't force her to clean her car, he cleaned it himself! Did he expect compliance or hope for compliance - don't we all want to have hope that when we ask for something to be done it will be done? We don't know what he said to her - I bet it wasn't how he reported it here.

I don't understand why you think a man can't express an opinion on child rearing? I think you are projecting and assuming that the wife feels the same way as you. I am saying she might feel like you but equally she might feel like me or even, she might feel completely different to either of us. Maybe she is depressed and he can see this is all a drain on her and she wants help. Maybe he won't admit to us she is depressed because he thinks we will blame him (the way things have gone, he thinks right). There are an awful lot of different scenarios - you cannot presume to know for sure what the DW is feeling.

Like most threads on MN we only have one side of the story but as Boffin said, if it were a woman coming on here saying my DH is too lazy to clear up the nursery and won't help me to get DC in his or her own room because he didn't want the hassle even though she wasn't getting any sleep and she felt her marriage was suffering, everybody would be sympathetic and would probably telling her what an awful man she had married. And yet a man isn't allowed to say the same thing without being dumped on. I call it double standards. He asked for help to deal with his DD and his partner and instead of doing what we would do with a woman, and make practical suggestions, loads of people instead told him what a bad person he was!

A very good post niecie

"And yet a man isn't allowed to say the same thing without being dumped on. I call it double standards"

I call it a recognition that a father's relationship with his baby, is very different from a mother's. I hate this politically correct nonsense that fathers and mothers are the same.

We don't know whether the OP is utterly unreasonable or not, but I think it's reasonable to take into account the huge difference in the impact parenthood has on women vs men. And from the first post the OP presented himself as the person who was the driving force behind wanting these changes. He didn't say they both wanted the changes, jsut him. And we know how bullied and wretched women feel by the jealousy some fathers feel for their babies, Mumsnet is full of such threads, so of course the OP got dumped on, rightly or wrongly. He then adjusted his story to make it both of them wanting the changes. We don't know if that's because not including his DW in the first post was an oversight, or whether it's because he's bullying her. He may be a loving DH and father who is desperately trying to motivate his DW to put into place changes they both want, or he may be a selfish whinger with an over-developed sense of entitlement. We don't know.

"I hate this politically correct nonsense that fathers and mothers are the same"

Ok, how does this work then? My husband is a SAHD (he works two night shifts but effectively only is absent from my daughter for 3 hours on those two days) and I'm a part time worker (3 days)

I'm still breastfeeding and still recently co-slept (she's 23 months) and we both follow

He has a different relationship to my daughter, and of course, did not carry her and breastfeed her, but he is an absolute equal in some ways even more so since he's around more during her waking hours than me and I cannot trump him with this ludicrous and outdated nonsense.

sorry, meant to say we both follow an AP style.

Although I'll concede that in the first 20 months I bore the burden of the sleeplessness and feeding HE bears the burden of the childcare.

It drives me mad that people just assume its SAHM and working dad.

No we don't know, that is precisely my point. So why are we expecting to know his wife's point of view when we wouldn't expect the reverse if his wife came on here.

I am very aware that parenting is very different for men and women but I don't see that always makes the man the baddies and the woman the goodie. I don't see that means that a father can't have opinion or ask for help though. DH had opinion on me bfing my two and if it affect him and our marriage he had every right to voice those opinions. That doesn't make him a bad person. He wasn't and isn't jealous of our children and if he ever suggested I should give up bfing it was because of the impact it was having on me not him. That is a useful thing to know imo - becoming a parent can be all consuming sometimes and another perspective is important when you are up to your eyebrows in sleepless night and breast milk.

Maybe he didn't think he should mention his wife in his first post not because he is bullying her or because it was an oversight but because he didn't think he could speak on her behalf because she is a person in her own right. I don't type 'we' in all my posts just to show that my DH and I want the same things. Frankly that would be a bit creepy. The agreement of the DH/P is assumed. Why not here?

Yes there are plenty of men jealous of their babies on here. But I bet equally there are plenty of adoring and devoted fathers who are edged out and sidelined by women who forget that parenting is ideally a partnership, that their babies have a mother and a father. After all if parents don't nuture their own relationship, it will bring misery not just to them but their children too. We don't get to hear that side of things though as very few women would admit to it.

Anyway, I don't know why I fighting this man's corner. He has long since buggered off and he may well have been a total arse. We will never know but I just wish we had been more prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt as we would a woman.

Well, that's fine for you, Otchayaniye, but AnnaLies is not a SAHD here or he would have mentioned it. The situation the OP described is completely different. There are far fewer SAHDs than SAHMs out there. (The OP just does all the cleaning, housework, meal making, etc., apparently....)

All we have to go on here is what AnnaLies said, and the words he used to say what he said. What we know from what he has said is that he apparently has absolutely no ear for how he is coming across and no sense of anticipation of finding an unsympathetic audience, based on his reactions to the response he got. Are we really to believe that he is completely different at home from the way he has come across here? He wants things done 'ASAP', 'This really has to stop'. He thinks it's ok to call his wife lazy and try to prove it with the car cleaning example.

How is it that a man who posts something in a way that immediately suggests he is thinking in terms of what he and he alone wants ("It's driving me mad") gets the benefit of the doubt and a bunch of posters pitching in with their own experiences of ending co-sleeping and/or weaning, as if it had never occurred to the wife here to just take a deep breath and do it, like everyone else does at some point? Do we really believe none of what we all bumbled through has occurred to the wife and that she has never given any of the practical ideas shared here a thought -- if she wanted to wean, and if she wanted the baby in her own cot in a separate room, that is?

The important part about everyone's weaning-and-sleeping-independently experience here is that each of us decided ourselves to do it, for our own reasons, and it was done, with or without the help of partners. It really cannot be accomplished without the acquiescence of the nursing mother at the very least, and it goes much more smoothly with her active participation. It does not happen at all unless she wants it to happen on some level. So far, it has not happened at all.

Maybe he didn't mention his wife much in his first post because he doesn't see her as someone whose wishes need to be taken into account here, not because of your hypothesis?

How can you separate out the main gist from the actual words chosen? It is surely all bound up together; the tone is set with the words, one by one, as one brilliant poster further back showed with a rewriting of the issues.

Every post reveals character and motivation. The posts of women here who have challenged this man have been dissected and the posters have been accused of projecting, of having an anti-father and anti man-agenda, being 'rampant co-sleepers' and extended breastfeeders, after all. Why can't the posts of a man be subject to the same analysis?

Are you really saying that when a man posts here it is the duty of everyone else to read between the lines and find the most positive aspect, focus entirely on that and ignore the very obvious negatives? Why? Because you and your DH get on well and the weaning experience was a collaborative one for you and you chose to see eye to eye with him on the timing of the weaning and the independent sleeping? Because many women have an ideal of collaborative parenting with men taking a large role (laudable) and don't want to address the question of what to do when conflict over weaning and independent sleeping arises? You have solved the question of who should be the one to compromise in your home. Apparently AnnaLies and his wife have not. Why should she be the one to give up what she has been doing?

AnnaLies' wife seems like someone who does not compromise, who does not come out directly and tell him to sod off but who just doesn't do things that she doesn't want to. There may well be advantages to weaning and ending the co-sleeping, but until she decides the advantages outweigh whatever it is that she is getting from the current circumstances, she will not get on board with AnnaLies' plans.

Gosh, there seems to be a lot of hostility in this thread! Well, I'll offer some advice, even if it's only useful for someone searching and finding this thread with word matched issues of their own.

My DD is only 3 months, so I'm not hugely qualified, but I guess I'd do the following:

For sleeping at a set time, start a bedtime routine. Bath, story, feed, sleep - or such. All in dimmed lights, lowered voices, nothing interesting happening at all.

Stick to the same time each day, your DD will hopefully get the idea! However if she settles late at the moment, try and nudge the time forward slowly.

For milk, if your DW is ok with it then maybe try offering some expressed milk or formula in a bottle? Then progress from there to a sippy cup, to a proper cup, etc.

For cows milk... I would assume mixing a bit of cows milk with expressed or formula would be ok, as long as both are fresh and it's drunk or disposed of within two hours. That might help your DD get used to the taste?

As for your DW, has she been checked for anaemia recently? I have major problems with lethargy and become really quite lazy when I'm anaemic. If that's a contributing factor, iron supplements might help.

Spirael - excellent point re the anemia. If this woman really is sleeping from 10pm to 10am it isn't normal.

mathanxiety - you assume to much both about me and about the OP. You've got me all wrong so maybe you have him all wrong too. You assume his wife hasn't collaborated with the OP because she doesn't want to. I and others have given reasons why that assumption might be wrong.

It would be far better to do as Spirael has done and make useful suggestions than to try and analyse his relationship with his wife. At least if people had made decent suggestions the OP and his wife might stand a decent chance of thrashing out a good compromise for them both.

"The posts of women here who have challenged this man have been dissected and the posters have been accused of projecting, of having an anti-father and anti man-agenda, being 'rampant co-sleepers' and extended breastfeeders, after all"

The challenging posts far outnumber the posts from those of us who think he deserves some advice and a bit of a break. If you can't take it a challenge yourself, don't dish it out! At the risk of sounding like a 7 yr old, even if it is true, you started it!

Anyway, I'm calling it a day on this thread. It is really beginning to annoy me now and for me it has gone too far beyond the usual MN bun fight. I don't really have time to be this irritated.

Niecie -- I have only what you've told us here to go on, just as I only have what AnnaLies has shared. If I have got you wrong and offended you, apologies; what I have been doing is wondering out loud where you were coming from as far as your perspective goes. There was no judgement implied of you and your DP and the choices you made together as to the weaning and sleeping arrangements of your baby.

It seems to me that if there is a preponderance of opinion here that he needs to look at the big picture and take his wife's feelings into account, maybe he should take that advice, and not the advice of those who tell him how to go against what his wife has been actually doing, which by his own account is completely different from what he says his wife wants.

math the voice of reason

cant be bothered to follow this thread anymore
troll OP hasnt bothered so...

And it still fascinates me how some women are always rushing to the defence of men and are prepared to explain away their behaviour and appease them - simply because they are men.

Seeker - I blame the patriarchy.

Sorry, forgot the bit there

Not rushing to defence of men but to the defence of a person. I couldn't care less if he is man, woman or hermaphrodite. Sheesh

I find it fascinating that some women will think the worst of a person just because they happen to be a man.

I simply don't like to see a person ganged up on.

I don't like to see people ganged up on either.

BUt I truly see nothing defensible in this poster's position - either initially or adjusted in response to comments on the thread.

I don't think the worst of him.

I'm just not prepared to take him at face value either. Am sitting on the fence re him.

I'm not thinking the worst of him. I'm just reading what he posted and responding to it. I'm not putting a positive gloss on it, or reading between the lines or extrapolating from my own experience to think he must be thinking or feeling this or that. I'm just going on his words.

No, it's not because he's a man; if he hadn't worded his OP and his subsequent posts in such a way that he came across as an overbearing tone-deaf man who thought he would be warmly received when he called his wife lazy and thought she should clean her own car since that was what he expected her to do, then he would have got nowt but practical advice on weaning or putting a baby sleeping in her own room.

I'm thinking exactly what his posts suggest about him.

You and me both mathanxiety!

Hmmm, haven't been on this thread for a while but.... nope, still think he sounds like an overblown puffball.