DH bonding with 5 week old DS

[Emy84]

Not sure if this is the right place to post this! I have a gorgeous DS 5 weeks old. He is generally quite a good baby doesnt cry that much and sleeps ok. After the birth we were in hospital for a week and DH was wonderful. Spending everyday with us looking after DS so I could sleep, accompaning DS for blood tests when I couldnt etc. Once we got home we did all night feeds together (mixture of BF and expressed bottles) for the first week.
DH is now back at work and is really struggling with bonding with DS. He says he worrys that he doesnt love him enough and is a rubbish father. I have tried to reassure him that not every parent feels immeadiate love for their child. He also says he is not sure if he was ready for a child feels I rushed him into it (I didnt we discussed it for ages a compromised on when to start trying). He also says he really misses his old life and feels generally irritated with DS for messing things up. DH is not good with lack of sleep and is not helping me at all with night feeds even when I have asked for help and am almost asleep on my feet!

I feel like I dont know how to reach out to DH to help him bond with DS, I also feel resentful that DH is not giving me much help. I am also worried about the general feeling of irritation DH has with DS. He would never do anything to hurt him but is sometimes a bit rough - eg 'come on drink the bloody bottle' whilst shoving it into his mouth which makes me feel anxious about him doing night feeds when DH is likely to be cranky anyway!

Any advice on father son bonding I am really missing sharing this special time with DH :(

I would definitely not bother with trying to share night feeds. You're at home, he's not. He has to go to work, you can sit on the sofa all day breastfeeding - sorry to sound harsh but your lack of sleep doesn't matter in the least and you will get used to being woken every couple of hours. Your DH can help out in other ways a bit further down the line (and tbh a lot of men don't really appreciate their children until they're a few months old anyway). I would let him sleep in the spare room a few nights a week, catch up on his sleep and let him and DS bond in their own time. It doesn't have to happen immediately.

You should also take advantage of DS being very small and not needing a routine yet to get out and about with your DH. We used to stick DD in the sling and go to the pub, go to the cinema, go out to dinner - you don't have to be confined to the house, especially when you're breastfeeding and everything you need is right there.

You might find that a bit of uninterrupted sleep and a few afternoons/evenings out with you both will reduce DH's mixed feelings about your DS.

I second the advice to get out - it is really easy to take a little baby out and in DS's first few weeks we went to the pub quite often and out for lots of lunches while he snoozed in his pushchair and got doted over by other people! We got in a routine of going out for an early dinner at the local pub every Friday night. DH loves this as it's something for him to look forward to at work all week and it gives us a chance to catch up with each other and chat. And because we go to the same place, the staff know DS now and know he's not likely to disturb anyone or make a mess.

I disagree that the fact your dp works and you're on ml means you should do all the night wakings, it probably makes sense for you to do more, but at the least your dp should help at weekends, or do evenings and early mornings. You need sleep too.

It might help your dp to bond if he has more opportunity to be alone with your dc. I can see from your post that this might be nerve-wracking, but it's hard to bond with your child with the more experienced parent hoovering over you (I struggled not to tell dp he was doing things wrong when dd was that age ). If your dp doesn't feel as bonded he needs to get more involved, not less.

My DH didn't want kids. He agreed to it before we were married and then needed a fair bit of persuading to agree to a date to ttc. Frankly he was an unsupportive git all the way through my pregnancy. Told me when I got home from hospital that he didn't feel anything for DS and didn't want him. DH did no childcare, no night wakings (hourly for nearly 6 months) and would barely look at him for first 6 weeks. I slept in my DS room for 6 months so DH could sleep. If I hadn't been so knackered I'd have packed my bags.

BUT slowly things changed. About 2-3 months he started smiling at DS, by 5-6 months he was really helping. At a year he dropped to 4 days a week at work so he could look after DS. His bond with DS is so strong now and I have no doubt at all of the huge love between them. Now DS is nearly 2.5 and he's told me DS is the most important thing in his life, at that he regrets how he behaved and, completely unprompted, that he'd like to try for DC2 and do it right this time. And our relationship has never been stronger.

Long post but my point is that for some men love isn't at first sight with their DC. Only you can decide when to stand up and say his behaviour has to change, I do understand how hard that is.

There is still hope you'll have a happy ending.

Good luck

I also disagree about you having to do all the night feeds. Being a mum is a full time job, to stay in hospital for a week you must have had a fairly difficult birth (?) And you need some rest - your dh is entitled to unbroken sleep when he's working but at the weekends he should certainly be sharing the burden or at the very least getting up with your baby so you can have a lie in. Sleepless nights are torture. For anyone.

I think - if you can - you need to get someone to babysit, have a meal out or go out even for a couple of hours and show him that having a child hasn't tipped your life so far upside down it can't be anything like before - it can and will be better! Plus do get out of the house asa family unit together even if you have to get a sling and get your dh to walk with the sling ... Maybe he's just a bit shell shocked by the sudden impact of having a baby (took me a while to cope too and I'm a mum and dd is 9 this year!)

Failing that if he's still being an arse a few weeks down the line tell him its not acceptable and he needs to grow up and be supportive. Plus being angry with the baby about feeding isn't on at all. If he finds himself being like that he needs to learn to put the baby down and walk away - maybe tell him that its ok to feel frustrated but its how you control it?

Re. my earlier post - hovering over you, I meant. It would obviously be hard to bond while someone is hoovering over you too, but for very different reasons .

Thanks all for the replies. I don't expect DH to do night feeds when he has to work the next day but once occasionally at the weekend would be nice!

I think sleep deprivation always makes things seem worse . DH has day off 2m do we are going on a family day out. He has said he wants to get more involved but I think it is true he is shell shocked! DS is only five weeks old plenty of time for bonding

My dp never did any night feeds he'd just fall asleep! He didn't take any paternity leave though and works minimum of 60 hour weeks so I just did the nights he occasionally had him from about 7 til he went to bed if I wanted to go to sleep but he wouldn't change nappies etc as he was too scared (ds2 was tiny at birth and he was worried he'd be too rough).

Now ds2 can talk a bit and join in with games he's getting closer to dp but he's never said he doesn't feel close to him.

DH doesn't have to 'do' anything special in order to bond. He is the baby's Dad and, over time, they'll bond regardless. As long as they do things together, talk to each other and normal things like playing or bathtime they'll connect. My own Dad worked very odd shifts for the first few years of my life and I therefore hardly saw him. Of my two parents, he's the one I'm closest to.

"but your lack of sleep doesn't matter in the least"

Yeah, it's not like you're doing anything important all day - just looking after a baby. No problems if lack of sleep means you make a dangerous mistake while in charge of a newborn.

But - work, on the other hand, that is so unbelievably important and difficult that never in the history of the universe has anybody done it unless they had 8 hours of unbroken, sober sleep the night before.

There's a great deal talked about sleep deprivation, and most of it is purely perceptual. There's absolutely no human requirement for eight hours of solid sleep - we just think we need it and feel deprived when we don't get it. But getting four stretches of two hours each is just as good, and if you're at home all day with a five week old feeding, changing and sleeping underneath it then your sleep and rest needs are being met whether you feel like they are or not. Do you know anyone who's "made a dangerous mistake in relation to a newborn" because they were sleep deprived? Don't you think if that happened on even a rare basis then we'd hear about it?

" There's absolutely no human requirement for eight hours of solid sleep - we just think we need it and feel deprived when we don't get it."

The above applies as much to people going to work as to people who have to care for a baby all day.

Times is tough when babies are 5 weeks old - neither of them will be harmed by not getting as much sleep as they might like.

But going to work is possible even if you help your wife out occasionally in the middle of the night, just like it is after a big night out, or a late night playing computer games, or a night spent on MN with pregnancy insomnia.

What the OP needs is not sleep - it's SUPPORT, and refusing that to a new mother who asks for it because you are all discommoded because the new baby means your life has changed is just shit.

I'd second what was said about Dads struggling to bond at first. DH and I were both surprised at his early frustration with DS and speaking to a few people confirmed that a lot of new Dads find it hard at first because you don't get much back from babies when they're very young.

As DS got older the bond improved between them and I think building time into the routine helped. DH has always been in charge of bathtime and it's now strictly boys time (and time for me to chill out do the 30 day shred DVD). DS was born in spring so DH would also take him out for a walk in the evenings when the weather was nice.

"a lot of new Dads find it hard at first because you don't get much back from babies when they're very young. "

That is so depressing, if true.

Surely it is not a significant number of men that are so childish?

Maybe if they were less concerned about getting a full night's sleep while their wife did all the hard work, and actually took some responsibility for the new life they helped create they would grow up a bit?

The way I looked at it was not that he was being childish. He was trying his best (he was just as sleep deprived as I was) but he wasn't equipped with the same ways of bonding that I was - having carried him for 9 months, breastfeeding and all the hormones.

The other Dads I know who have struggled with it (including my own Dad) are all brilliant Dads.

We don't accuse mums who find it hard to bond with their children lazy/selfish/childish do we? We appreciate that people deal with things in different ways and that having a new baby is hard.

By the way OP you do have my sympathy. It was really hard for me to see DH get angry with DS and between us I think we both had feelings of 'what have we done, life was just fine before' etc. It's just really hard at first and in my experience no-one tells you how awful it can be so you feel like you're the only one.

Dh found it hard when our first was tiny. He is an absolutely wonderful father but he did find it difficult when ds was a little baby. He said that it was hard when there wasn't really anything coming back from ds which I do understand. Don't get me wrong, he wasn't expecting applause but when I bf ds I would get the little sighs and the blissed out look of contentment. Dh got to deal with the burps, the vomit and the nappy afterwards. Not quite the same thing. When ds started smiling around 6/7 weeks then it all got a lot easier for him.

I think it is ok to find it hard. It is ok to not really like the tiny baby stage. It is ok to miss his old life and struggle with the change. We spend 9 months gradually slowing down, gradually changing. For the men it all comes at once. The important thing is that he is talking to you about it.

Men can struggle with depression etc after having a baby too.

I am worried about the roughness that you describe with the bottle. I have seen someone do this with a tiny baby and found it quite upsetting. Could you talk to him about managing his frustration?

For bonding I really recommend dad & baby bathing together, and family days out can be good too.

You do need to trust him & allow him to make his own mistakes with the baby but don't stand for excuses - if you can make the effort, then he can.