AIBU to think your children should come first

[hellobeautiful123]

Our DD is nearly 9 months & was in a bad way after birth. She was starved of oxygen and blood and very nearly died. She spent a week in intensive care but is now striving and meeting all her milestones, even though they didn’t know if she would. That is the background.

The hospital said the best thing I could do for her is to breastfeed, which I have done exclusively. It’s been hard work.

My OH is struggling with the whole looking after a baby situation. I think he feels like a spare part even though I have tried on numerous occasions to make him feel needed and wanted.

In order for us to get sleep he sleeps in the spare room, which I know isn’t ideal and the baby sleeps with me. I also find this easier for breastfeeding and I do actually get enough sleep.

Every 3-4 days i kid you not, he mentions the sleeping situation and tells me what I should be doing to get the baby sleeping in her own room. He says she needs to learn to cry more.

I have recently started introducing formula milk in order for baby to be fed by OH or grandparents, so I can leave her with other people now & again.

This morning my OH said, ‘you’ve done the best you can for her by breastfeeding for so long, if you have to stop, it’s not the end of the world. She needs to take a backseat now and we need to take priority. She doesn’t want us splitting up’

I am absolutely livid!

I know the situation isn’t ideal but why can’t he realise it’s not going to be forever? I can’t even consider another baby with him! EVER.

He’s made everything so hard ☹️

Why cant OH sleep in with you both? I coslept and bf with DH beside me for years considering we have 3 DC.

@SoyDora 9 months sleeping apart is not temporary IMO

He’s being a bit insensitive but I think your scary start to motherhood may be making you over sensitive too.
I ebf and my ds refused all bottles and I did cosleep for bfing when my ds was waking to feed every hour or two but after weaning started at 6mo he was down to one feed in the night and in his own cot then room then sleeping through at 10 months.

At 9mo I would thibkvyour dd could sleep in a cot or your dh could rejoin you and all share. She’s not the tiny vulnerable newborn she once was.

Anything that isn’t permanent is temporary

I can see his side to be honest. There is no reason for her to be in your room anymore really, my LO had dropped to just one night feed by 6 months as we had started weaning. However there is no reason for you to stop breastfeeding. I also think babies don't need to learn to cry more but they don't need you responding straight away to any little whimper or noise. It depends on why you're like really. I have friends who have had babies and then that has been their focus 100% and more often than not those marriages haven't worked out long term. Having a baby in your life is a tricky adjustment.

Why is your dh in a desperate room tho?

I co-sleep with dd she’s 18 months DP also is in bed with us, she prefers cuddling DP to be honest only comes to me for a feed as she’s about to drop off.

If you want to continue to co-sleep and feel it’s beneficial for your baby your dh should be supporting you. Not trying to teach your baby to cry more (what on earth does that even mean?).

Does he not spend item with her just cuddling and playing with her? He can also do skin to skin with her that would promote bonding, should have been doing it from when she was born I suppose.

Unless you’re in a very small double bed I don’t see why your dh has to sleep separately unless that’s what he’s chosen for his own comfort. DP gets up with baby if she wakes in the night for reasons other than wanting to feed. Your dh can doves that too.

He may be in the spare room as he disturbs the baby not the baby disturbing him. When my son is ill and sleeps with me, dp goes in the spare room so he doesn't disturb ds. Maybe he now doesn't see a way he can come back to the marital bed?

It sounds like he’s really missing sleeping in the same bed. 9 months is a long time.

I don’t think they way he’s said it is particularly sensitive, but it would be good for both of you to sit down and talk about whether you’re happy or not.

@SoyDora "Anything that isn’t permanent is temporary"

After 9 months how does he know it's not permanent? He keeps bringing it up and OP isn't changing anything so he probably is starting to doubt it will ever change.

As a pp said, all family members should be equal, why is she getting to make all the parenting decisions?

I'm kind of amazed so many people can cosleep with baby and partner - DS is in a cosleeper cot so not even our bed, and I still find we all sleep so badly if DH is in bed too, as everyone feels so squashed up together. We've periodically tried DH coming back into our room and it always ends up with no one sleeping. It is rough on the relationship, though, and I have some sympathy with your DP (though not with how he phrased it) - I have to say in some ways I'm looking forward to DS going in his own room (he's five months and I'm trying to hold out to six but not sure whether we'll quite get there before cracking!)

@soydora but OP hasn't said whether there's any intimacy in their relationship.

He's definitely worded things badly but it sounds like he's worried about their marriage and while DCs are important their marriage/relationship is as well. It doesn't sound like it's been made a priority.

9 months is a long time.

This is all very temporary. It's all well and good for him to sit there and feel overwhelmed and like a spare part but is he actually trying to help? There's more to raising a baby than just feeding so what is he proactively doing. The 'learn to cry more' comment is ridiculous. Some short controlled grizzling I could live with but you know your baby best and when she needs you.

Is it his choice to be in the spare room? DH sleeps in the spare room as he has difficulty sleeping so DD does disturb him but it's his choice so he's not really in a position to complain.

I would not take well to a comment about splitting up as a thinly veiled threat. If he wants to work on your marriage why can't he suggest something nice you do together?

While I agree that children should come first when needed. Your relationship also needs to take priority sometimes. If your dh is telling you that sleeping together each night is important to him you need to take that on board. I have 3 dc and had an awful start with my first because she was diagnosed with a life limiting condition so I understand your fear and the need to do what ever you can to keep your dd well and have the best start in life but I now know how poorly I prioritised my relationship but I just couldn't see what I was doing at the time. It almost broke us. My dh needed to know he wasn't pushed out and that our relationship was still important to me. For my dh sleeping in separate rooms would be a deal breaker and he couldn't cope with it for that long. That doesn't make him a stroppy toddler as one poster said. We all have things that are important to us and for some that is the intimacy that comes with going to bed with each other each night. So while I can understand where your coming from I agree with your dh and you need to hear what he's saying and put some effort into your relationship and take on board his needs.

@lisasimpsonsbff we have a king-size. We had a co-sleeper cot too but it just ended up as a buffer so she didn't fall off the bed. She couldn't possibly sleep in it as it wasn't my armpit 😂 she's 4 now and still gets in our bed occasionally in the middle of the night. 😍

You'll get there. X

After 9 months how does he know it's not permanent?

Well... I personally don’t know any child who has co slept with their parent for their whole life. That would be permanent.
I just think that a healthy, solid, loving relationship wouldn’t be at risk of divorce because of sleeping in separate beds. Many couples don’t share beds for various reasons but manage to be affectionate and intimate with each other in all sorts of ways. Threatening to leave over it seems like massive overkill to me. But we’re all different! Mine and DH’s relationship isn’t limited to what happens between the hours of 11pm and 6am.

We’ve been married for 3.5 years and slept apart for more of that than together due to two pregnancies, a non/sleeping now toddler and a newborn. However, it works for both of us, if he wanted to be in with me and the newborn he’d be welcome, he’d rather get the sleep and before that sleeping separately meant only one of us was woken every night, getting better sleep made us much nicer people and was better for our relationship. We do miss each other and try to go to bed early and together reasonably often then creep off to the other room later - it feels amusingly Victorian! However, if it isn’t working for both of you then you need to talk and reassess the situation to find a better solution, not keep ignoring him.

Thanks ginmas - we have a standard double, so maybe everyone else has bigger beds?! The bedframe is 100+ years old (DH's one family heirloom - it's a solid cast iron job) and I suspect back then it had the whole big family in it at points, so they must have been made of sterner stuff!

DS doesn't seem to be a natural cosleeping baby, either - he sleeps spread eagled, we never sleep touching, and he wakes up a lot more the closer we are. He does seem to love my mattress though! I really suspect he'd sleep better in his own room, but I'm too nervous to do it quite yet, and too lazy to get up in the night (though I also suspect my 'stick a boob in it' approach to all night wakings isn't doing much for his sleep, either)!

all well and good for him to sit there and feel overwhelmed and like a spare part but is he actually trying to help?

I think he is trying to help by saying what he did.

A 9 month old would be perfectly fine in her own room. No op doesnt need to stop breastfeeding but he may have said this as he thinks it would take some pressure off op.

He obviously feels pushed out and i think the title of this thread says it all. Ops focus is 100% her child and fuck everyone else, which given the circumstances is understandable but it wont work long term.

Id probably feel v excluded from both op and the babies life if i was her dp.

What he said was badly worded but i really dont think it was nasty or unreasonable.

I can see both sides. Of course your children come first, but they don't mean everything else is irrelevant in life. He needs to grow up and realise the baby comes first, there is no back seat for her, but you also need to make sure your putting effort into your relationship, even if that means just listening to him properly about what he's trying to say here, he's clearly trying to tell you he's worried about your relationship, and from the title of your thread it sounds like your response is that your child comes first so nothing else matters, he's just in the wrong, but that's not how it works because there's 2 of you in the relationship. Maybe you can find compromise somewere about a timeline for stopping cosleeping (not breastfeeding), cosleeping isn't 'putting your child first' as its not better than sleeping alone, it's a parenting choice, so your baby won't loose anything by stopping it at some point. He might need to make more effort to do stuff with the baby, it's hard to tell on here, but I do think putting your child first involves both parents making an effort to listen to each other if the relationship is worth maintaining.

We did this.

If your baby still feeds in the night, why would you move her to her own room? It just means you have to get up to feed her. Formula does not make them sleep longer either.

Your DH needs to understand this.

Is DD going to bed on her own for the first part of the night and are you getting time with your DH in the evening without DD being there?

When ours were little we’d give them tea and not eat with them on a Saturday then have a takeaway or a nice meal when they’d gone to bed and just spend some time together without them being there.

If DD is taking bottles, couks someone have her for a couple of hours this weekend so that you and DH could go out and talk this through.

I agree with that he’s worded it incredibly poorly but it might not be an idle threat. I think you need to take notice and sort out how you both move forward.

If he is worried that cosleeping will affect his sex life, he's deeply unimaginative. You don't need to have sex just in bed.

"She needs to take a backseat now" is a really selfish attitude on his part. Yes your relationship with him is important, but your family is a not a power-struggle between an adult man and a 9-month-old baby with you as the prize. Relationships aren't about winners.

In your place I would be reluctant to move the baby to her own room, but that's because I know mine would have woken a lot more and sleep was very important to me. I would have looked into ways to get us all in the same room if that was important to him - co-sleeping cot, bigger bed, baby's cot in the room.

I would also talk to him about practical steps he could take to get/feel more involved with the baby, but that would really depend a lot on what's going on to make him struggle with looking after a baby.

Just seen your most recent post. If you are considering moving DS, Sleep with the cot sheets for a couple of nights to give them a familiar scent of you.

You may not have to get up as much as you think either. My DD went from waking constantly to be fed to once or twice and she was a fast feeder so I’d be back in bed in 10 minutes. It was actually easier than being woken multiple times in the night by her.

I’m not saying you have to do it but I think you seem to think you need to co-sleep and nothing else will work and that simply isn’t the case.

If he is worried that cosleeping will affect his sex life, he's deeply unimaginative. You don't need to have sex just in bed.

I think I must also be unimaginative and unadventurous, because every relationship I've had has gone through the 'ooh, let's do it on the kitchen floor/in the shower/bent over the bannister' phase and it's been very short-lived and only for the very first flush of passion - it's uncomfortable! There is a reason people associate beds with sex...