Am I being selfish?

[Jonnywishbone]

I feel like I am reaching breaking point. I love my partner and our child dearly but sometimes feel like I am being pushed too far.

I am new dad. My day starts at 5.30am, looking after our 6 month old when he wakes and making breakfast for myself and partner. At 7.30 she wakes up and I shower while she looks after our son and at 8 she showers whilst I look after our son. I get off to work circa 8.30 (about an hour later than I would like).

I get back from work at circa 6.30/7. At this point she takes a break and I look after our son unless we bath him (which we do together). I tend to feed him at this time and then he goes to sleep. Following this I do the washing up, steralise everything and cook the evening meal. Sitting down to relax and eat at around 8.30 (depending on how feeding has gone). I then feed our son at 10.30/11 and go to bed myself at 11.30ish. I generally wake every couple of hours when our son wakes up and very occasionally find myself rocking him to sleep.

I don't see friends anymore, I don't go to the gym or pub anymore. When I want to go out my partner tells me I can't go out - to which I offer to look after our son so she can go out, in fact I offer this a lot. So I don't go out anymore.

Due to poor diet, lack of exercise, terrible sleep and stress my blood pressure is through the roof and I have fainted twice in two months when my blood pressure dropped quickly - I have been to the doctors who advised better sleep, exercise (things which my partner prevents me from having) but am taking garlic pills.

Am I being unreasonable in expecting to be able to have say a couple of hours at the gym a week or a visit to the pub once a fortnight?

I agree with the others that instead of comparing your lot with your wife's try to improve things for both of you.
Get some sleep. It is utterly pointless you being awake at night if your wife is doing the night feeds. Ear plugs/sleeping pills - whatever it takes.
Re the mornings, this is often when "high needs" babies are at their most forgiving as they have had some sleep. I agree that this would be a good time to exercise.

I do think that you could carve out an evening a week to each do your own thing once the baby is in bed. But having been in your wife's position I can guess that the reason she doesn't want to go out herself is because she is broken by the lack of sleep. I just wonder if her being pissed off about you wanting to go to the gym is more about her being jealous that you have the energy to even consider it.
Be kind to each other, this will get easier.

One of my DC woke in the night for best part of 2 years. My Dh and I eventually after both being exhausted decided to do 1 night on one 1 night off where each of us would exclusively do night feeds. That way we got a reasonable nights sleep every other day. This involves separate beds BTW. I was at home, he was out 7am - 7pm.

I am not sure that men get the baby exhaustion thing. It is just so exhausting having that little someone on you or near you exclusively for 12 hours a day. The constant watching and feeding. The lack of privacy and head space. So hard. For days on end too. It's hard to explain unless you know it. A lot of SAHMs are clock watching for their DH to come home, I know I did.

With regards socialising, everyone is different, but I didn't want to either. I would have taken 10 minutes pure solitude over a night out with friends any day. I remember saying to my Dh, I have not showered in 2 days or even looked in a mirror, why would I want to go out. It is so much further down the line. You lose so much of yourself when you have a baby and you need to piece it all back before you can go out there.

I don't know. Why not offer to have the baby for a day on Saturday and see if that revives your DW for a bit ?