2 year old DS rejecting dad, I'm 31 weeks pregnant

[WhyTheHeckMe]

Any experience / is this normal? He's only just 2 and doesn't seem to really understand the situation but he's aware there's a baby in my tummy.
The last few days he's gone from being very equal with both of us to all of a sudden totally refusing his dad doing anything! He won't take food or drink from him, won't let him get him dressed or do his nappy, run his bath, do his sticker books or play with him, won't let him get him in or out of the car etc. Literally nothing. He screams and sobs and gets so unbelievably upset. All I can hear is "noo daddy. Want mummy please daddy. Want mummy.".
He takes so long to calm him down.
Dh isn't so much upset by it as he is annoyed. He has very little patience when our usually chilled out boy gets like this. He ends up walking away and telling me to just go and sort it.
I'm 8 weeks off giving birth and am huge and tired, holding down a full time job and due to dh long hours I do all the cooking and most of the cleaning too.
Now that ds is being like this i literally feel like I'm at breaking point!
Please help. Anyone else been through it and if so will it pass soon!? :(

My daughter went through a stage of only letting daddy do things.
Daddy went out lots over a few days, so she had no choice to refuse to let me do things for her. It did the trick and it’s not happened again since.

Well your dh’s Attitude certainly isn’t helping.

Firstly I would stop talking about the new baby - he’s 2 and has no concept of time. He won’t be excited like a parent! We hardly brought it up with our 2 year old and he adjusted pretty well to his sister.

Second of all, your DH needs to work on how he handles your toddler. He’s only 2 and requires infinite levels of patience. You get out what you put in with children. Hasn’t a particular incident triggered this?

Thank you for replying.

Suchamuppet that does sound like a good idea! I went out with friends last night and made a point of saying night to ds before i left and he was put to bed by dh with no issues.

Believeitornot I totally agree with you. We barely speak about baby at all. He sees my tummy growing and points and says baby. I think nursery are telling him about it as they often will talk about it when I'm around too and ask him if he's excited. We've said from the start we would only really speak about baby in the very last few days.

With regards to dh, him and ds are usually thick as thieves. They have an absolutely fantastic relationship and dh never has reason to get stressed with him as he very rarely will have tantrums or act up.
The last few days it's been constant and I've listened to dh trying, but ds is so adamant he doesn't want him he gets frustrated and just walks away and asks me to sort it.
I sat in the bath earlier and could hear dh trying to get ds into his jamas for almost 15 mins and he was crying so much asking for me. Dh was trying to reason with him and the I heard "fine have it your way" and then ds appeared at the bath naked with his jamas and a tear stained face.

I've just had a heart to heart with dh about it and explained that him getting annoyed isn't going to help. But if i put myself in his shoes i do get it.

I read a book a few weeks back called How to talk so Little Kids will Listen and he's now agreed he'll read it too :)

My ds went through this phase and still does sometimes. What worked was me reinforcing that daddy was doing x/y/z today and gushing about how much daddy loves ds and loves to help with a/b/c. So you need to verbally back up your dh in a positive manner. To be fair if ds was getting hysterical we would give up and try next time. Took a while but worked in the end.

When I was pregnant with my baby my 2 year old got really clingy with me and wanted me to do everything as well. Think they somehow need to make sure they are getting loads of attention from you as they know something is changing.
She wouldn't sleep on her own all night and she started to cry when we took her to nursery which she had never done before.
My baby is now 6 weeks old now. My eldest seemed to accept daddy had to do more and put her to bed when the baby came. We did have a few extra tantrums in the first couple of weeks and she made sure she still got attention and cuddles off us as was quite clingy still. It was ok as husband was off and we made sure to include her and cuddle her so she didn't feel pushed out. She has settled down now and is ok just likes to sit near me when I feed the baby sometimes.
It will work out when baby arrives but can be hard. Get a present from the baby to your eldest.

My ds all went through this stage. Ds3 was the worse. It is really hard but they will get over it! When ds2 was born (and then ds3) we always talked about them being the other ds’s baby and how any little thing they do we make it so the older ones influenced it - oh look the baby has stopped crying they always do that when they see ds1 etc we never had jealousy (lots of opportunistic mischief though!)

It sounds like your dh is taking this too personally and getting into a power battle with his son. My dh can get like this and I have to remind him that it isn’t a power battle - parents always have more power even if it doesn’t feel that way. He needs to remain calm about it.

Good idea to read the book!

When your dh lets him come to you for things, tell your lo you can't atm and want him to let daddy to do it