Anyone else’s husband jealous of baby?!

[Beebs11]

Has anyone else who has had a baby found their husband is jealous of their baby or doesn’t understand how the dynamic and your relationship in general has changed?

As a bit of background I didn’t want children before I met my husband however, he had always said he wanted children.

our DD is 3 months old now & we had a rough start. I definitely suffered with PTSD and found it hard to bond at first. Anyway i managed to find ways to overcome this and now me & DD couldn’t be closer. I love her more than anything.

In the early days hubby adored her when she just slept on him all the time and because I am breastfeeding he did his fair share of nappies because the breastfeeding was all on me.

Now due to DD not sleeping in her crib and me breastfeeding it was easier for him to sleep in spare room. He chose to do this as otherwise he wouldn’t get any sleep. She also suffered with silent reflux greatly during the night in the early days.

This sleeping arrangement has now continued and DH won’t stop going on about it. He keeps making me feel very guilty. He also says how he misses me and feels lonely. On another note he also now doesn’t spend as much time with DD as I don’t think he knows what to do to entertain her.

I understand where he is coming from wjth the sleeping arrangements, it’s not ideal, but it’s not forever and he has no interest in trying to help get her to sleep in her crib as it means lack of sleep. I also get that he works full time but he literally spends about half an hour a night with her while I make tea.

I have tried explaining that this is not forever and tried asking what he expected it to be like having a baby. From what he’s said seems like he thinks a relationship should be constantly like mills and boon and that he feels i spend more time with baby than him. Wtf? Anyone had this and how can I make him see that having a baby changes things? I know he loves DD but his attitude is making me sad & slightly down :(

Hopefully someone will be along with actual advice but ime this was the start of the end of our marriage. I remember him getting annoyed that I couldn't continue to talk to him in the phone whilst I was feeding the baby! He wasn't really a very nice man though, hopefully you can make yours see sense.
Maybe make the effort to make some time for just you two, babysitters, nice lunch while baby naps?or even a coffee

Sorry, another whose ex was like this. It's not like the jealousy was the reason I left, but the jealousy was a symptom of him in general expecting to be put first all the time, not seeing us as a team, not acting like we were a family but instead it was all about him. It was gutting TBH because I'd really thought we were on the same page and equal partners, to find that he really felt completely differently to me about what a family actually was. I thought that it meant us acting as co-parents and approaching this exciting adventure of parenthood together whereas to him a family was a kind of trophy and he became very stubborn and unhelpful when it did not run perfectly and smoothly like some kind of Walton show. It was impossible to live with and I couldn't stay in the relationship once I realised he didn't really relate to me as a person at all. I'm now married to somebody who does see family in the way I do and it's such a different experience I can't really believe it. With my ex there was a lot of talking at cross purposes until I finally understood that what he meant by "I want us to be a family" and "I love you" was nothing at all like what I meant or would have understood by those same sayings.

It sounds like he sees the baby as your responsibility as long as he does a few "token dad things" which is very unfair of him particularly considering he was the one who was keener for children. When he says you spend more time with the baby than him, I wonder if that means that you spend a lot of time doing baby care and he has a lot of free time during which he is feeling lonely/bored/resentful - because to me this would indicate that he is really not doing enough baby care himself! I'd also wonder what exactly it is he expects you to do with the baby in order to free up more of your time for him? Does he think that she is something you can simply put away when you are bored? I don't really understand how some people's thought processes run sometimes.

My DH struggled with the transition and said he felt that he barely existed and that I didn’t give him enough attention.

I pretty bluntly said that he was an adult and can meet his own needs. Yes I like to meet his needs too but he is capable of doing so himself. Whereas our dd was 100% reliant/dependent on me/us to have her needs met... therefore I would always prioritise her. I was nice about it and said things would balance out a bit as she got older - which they have - and that I was sorry he felt this way.

I think mostly all men Go through this, mine did, but we're on our second baby and he understands more. He didn't understand with our first. So yes he needs to pull up his big boy pants and understand that there's a helpless being whose life depends on mainly its Mum for food. It won't be like this forever, and a few months is literally a drop in the ocean compared to the whole life of a child

Also he now sleeps in the kiddy bedroom on the single bed and I share our bed with the two kids. It works at the minute, but we find ways to work around the sleeping arrangements when we want time to ourself. Your life will never be the same after a baby and it's probably just come as a shock for him

My ex was like this. We didn’t last, obviously. Now my new DP (I say new, we’ve been together 5 years) is going through the same thing and he’s great about it. In fact I kicked him out of bed when I was pregnant too because he annoyed me (i know, what a shit head!) he bought us a super kind sized bed so me and DC had more room and he’s welcome back in now because it’s huge.

Anyways, your DP needs to grow a pair. Most men get kicked out of the bed for awhile, some longer than others. Don’t feel bad! He’s just being an idiot and has to learn he will never come first anymore

Dh felt like this a bit. I reassured him a lot that I loved him and made sure that we got some time together as a couple. He wasn't jealous of ds really but just missed 'us'. And I realised that when I wasn't in a sleep deprived fog, I missed 'us' too... it was good to reprioritise us!

It was his choice to sleep in the other room, tell him to move back in, you're already doing the brunt of the work feeding in the night, he should be able to put up with the odd disturbance, that's what happens when you have a baby. I would be livid.