When do I get ‘me time’?

[anibakes]

Since LO was born I’ve been feeling progressively low in myself, partly due to major lack of sleep partly because due to covid I have hardly left the house and I’m due back at work full time in January when LO is 7m old.

LO naps 2-3 times/day for about 40-45 minutes at a time. I’ve found that baking just clears my mind, takes my focus away from thinking I’m struggling with motherhood and gives me a different purpose, so I use his nap times to do baking. We’re talking time consuming sourdough, etc. This does however mean that things like the washing and ironing for myself and d h are being neglected. We have plenty of clean clothes but I’m not on top of things as I ‘should’ be. I cook everything from scratch for us almost every day and LOs laundry I do separately I couple of times/week it’s just general housework I’m behind with.
D h works from home so I’m with LO all day every day so often he will have LO on a Friday and Saturday night so I can get some sleep as LO wakes 5-6 times/night. On a Saturday D H spends a few hours with his daughter who lives nearly an hour away and on his return he generally spends the afternoon napping on the sofa or watching tv because he’s tired. He has an immune disorder which the last few months has seemingly been making him more tired but wasn’t an issue the last few years. So other than the two nights/week I am with our LO day & night apart from the odd break D H takes during the day. I mentioned last week that I feel very neglected emotionally and that I don’t feel very loved bearing in mind we haven’t had any physical contact since feb, he dismissed it with the fact we have a 6 month old.
So this weekend he had a go at me and said I only do what I want to do instead of what I should be doing which is the housework and emptying a room ready for decorating and more importantly he never gets time to do what he wants to do because he has a list of things to fix and build around the house that he’s been putting off for a while. What he used to do in ‘his time’ was watch tv and do car related things with the boys which he can’t do because of covid.

Am I being unreasonable for mostly using my time doing baking, etc when LO naps? I hardly go out because of his immune disorder and risk of covid.
When am I supposed to switch off or do anything for myself?

No you're not unreasonable. If he's unhappy with the house he knows how to fix it. Household tasks aren't all your responsibility.

So he gets every Saturday off to visit his daughter and then sleep, but you never get a day off? Why can't he take her on Sundays? He should be doing more than the occasional night.

No you're not being unreasonable. I have a baby a similar age, OH working from home. We do also have a toddler. LO is breastfed so I do all the nights, but can wake OH if its a rough night to take over. However, OH gets toddler dressed and breakfasted every day, cooks us all a hot dinner at lunch time. After work he does some exercise (his 'me' time) while I sort the kids tea, then we do bath and bed time together. We both then do a few house chores, laundry, putting the bin out, washing up, etc before having our tea. Then we chill on the sofa together to watch TV. Nap times are given over to spending quality time with my toddler. At weekends, we make sure that we each get an hour or two to do what we like, both days.
It sounds like you do 90% of all parenting and 100% of house work. That's not a fair balance. Using a few nap times to bake is essential, I'd say, otherwise you'd have nothing that is just yours. Motherhood can often make you feel like you've lost who you are, in the repetition of feeding, nappies and sleep deprivation. Having some down time and a hobby you enjoy really helps.

I think instead of saying something unspecific like "me time" work out what you want to do - read, shop, gym, walk, coffee alone and plug that in. If he's watching tv all Saturday afternoon go out then.

Get a cleaner.

The way he sees it is that I’m here all day and all these things should be done by the mother, and when he finishes work he should be able to walk out of his office into a sparkling clean home with dinner ready so he can relax after his hard day at work

Then he has a very old fashioned view of parenthood and marriage. You sound like you are struggling, you've mentioned feeling low. He should be supporting you, not having unfair expectations. Parenting a baby is a 24 hour a day job. You should at least be sharing some of the house work. As I said above, my OH does all the big cooking, we share lots of the chores, and he works long hours.

@turtletum

No you're not being unreasonable. I have a baby a similar age, OH working from home. We do also have a toddler. LO is breastfed so I do all the nights, but can wake OH if its a rough night to take over. However, OH gets toddler dressed and breakfasted every day, cooks us all a hot dinner at lunch time. After work he does some exercise (his 'me' time) while I sort the kids tea, then we do bath and bed time together. We both then do a few house chores, laundry, putting the bin out, washing up, etc before having our tea. Then we chill on the sofa together to watch TV. Nap times are given over to spending quality time with my toddler. At weekends, we make sure that we each get an hour or two to do what we like, both days. It sounds like you do 90% of all parenting and 100% of house work. That's not a fair balance. Using a few nap times to bake is essential, I'd say, otherwise you'd have nothing that is just yours. Motherhood can often make you feel like you've lost who you are, in the repetition of feeding, nappies and sleep deprivation. Having some down time and a hobby you enjoy really helps.

I don’t enjoy watching tv but we eat in front of the tv every night because hats what he enjoys so I try my hardest to go with it. Instead of tv I’d much rather experiment with a new recipe( I am hoping to write a recipe book) My LO was bf until 4 months old and he used to feed on the hour all night. OH will roll downstairs anywhere between 8.45-9.30 for his 9-5 job and he will empty the dishwasher or dry stuff but his mentality of ‘you are here all day and there’s nothing to show for it’ is killing me

You are getting 3x40 mins me time a day. How much is DH getting? I couldn’t work it out from your post. You should aim for it to be about equal.

If DH is working from home and your not going any where don’t bother ironing. Make twice as much food on Monday and freeze it for another day or eat the other half on Wednesday. You and by this I mean both you and DH need to work out what is really important. Do you need to be decorating at the moment?

He needs an attitude check. Will you be returning to work? What’s going to happen then are you expected to be doin everything then too?

I agree with PP that there needs to be more balance here.

My LO is 7 months and my partner also works from home, so we are very much on top of eachother in our little 2 bed flat. We have massively used his working from home to our advantage though, as he's around so much more than he would have been pre-pandemic.

I do the night wakings til 5am, then my DP is 'on duty'. He gets up with our little one and has her til 8am so I can get a bit more sleep.

The fact that he works from home also means he sees, first hand, how demanding a baby is. Sometimes I can't even put my little one down for 5 minutes, so putting washing on or cooking is impossible. Does your DH witness how difficult it is juggling all these things? He's also going to need to step up when your return to work - it needs to be 50/50 then.

Ultimately, you will only get more time to yourself in a partnership where both people are pulling their weight. He gets Saturdays off, so you should get Sundays. Weekends are when most of the cleaning should be done too, by both of you, rather than expecting you to cook, clean and care for the baby so he doesn't have to do any of it.

I would say your mental health is the absolute first priority during a pandemic, with a new baby, & living with someone who has to shield. If that means banking while your baby sleeps, do it. You need to be able to look after your baby and you can't do that if you lose the plot. Counting up equal 'me time' is no good whatsoever, this is emergency circumstances.

If he needs clean pants he knows where the washing machine is.

Other than the last couple of weeks because of decorating and new carpets he’s been relaxing on the sofa on Sundays and evenings because he says Saturdays aren’t free time because he is with his 11 year old, but normally in the evenings he just sits on his phone with the tv on in the background.
I am returning to work full time and I told him how torn I am between a career and being a hands on mum to our LO. I think the whole thing is made harder by the fact we haven’t really been anywhere since March due to his vulnerability.
Gosh- I never expected motherhood to be easy but it’s the emotional side I can’t deal with and I just feel so alone with it all

He's a pig. He's keeping you down. He knows he is. He's not bothered about you. Quite the opposite in fact. He knows you are in a bad place and is actively not helping you get out of it. I had one of them.

I'll be honest here and say I don't think either of you are doing this the right way.

Firstly- the night waking. 5/6 times a night when formula fed suggests to me that your LO needs rocking or holding to get back to sleep. This is detrimental to you all. They need to become better at falling asleep unaided. If they are comforted to sleep at 7, they will need that a very single time they wake. Once they can self soothe and get themselves back to sleep, you and dh will both sleep better. If he has an auto.immune deficiency and its exacerbated by tiredness then two nights in a row of broken sleep will have an effect.

Also, do you have "me time" (hate that phrase) at every single nap on every single day? I think that's pushing it. Also, is it not possible to put a wash on when the baby is awake?

I'm all for not losing yourself completely to the baby when they arrive, but there also needs to be a balance on both sides. Pick up some of the housework midweek as you have more time to do it, and he can pick up more of the time with the LO/housework at the weekend as that's when he has the time to do it.

Firstly- the night waking. 5/6 times a night when formula fed suggests to me that your LO needs rocking or holding to get back to sleep. This is detrimental to you all. They need to become better at falling asleep unaided. If they are comforted to sleep at 7, they will need that a very single time they wake. Once they can self soothe and get themselves back to sleep, you and dh will both sleep better.

Not true. Biologically normal for a 6 month old to wake often.

OP, if you can afford it, then I would seriously try and find an extra £25 a week, or even once every fortnight for a cleaner.
Mine saved my sanity when I had my little one.

The first year is really tough.
You're thrown into a whirlwind and both you and your DH will be trying to find your feet.

The best advice I can give is communicate communicate communicate. More so than you think.

OH sleeps in the spare room for 5 of the 7 nights so he’s not disturbed.
And I use 2 or 3 days/ week to do baking the rest are spent doing laundry and hoovering, etc.

Not true. Biologically normal for a 6 month old to wake often

5 or 6 times a night? Yes, maybe twice, three on a bad night. Six?

@BernadetteRostankowskiWolowitz

Yes, totally normal. DS is 2 and still wakes around 3 times a night.

The amount of times baby wakes up in the night is not the topic here. Some babies are more wakeful than others. Putting in a plan to combat this is bloody hard work if you are already emotionally spent.

The fact that he sleeps in a different room has me raging. He is putting his needs so far above yours.

How do you think he would react to you insisting that you get a few hours off every Sunday, as well as him doing some early mornings with the baby? He won't like it, but would he do it? It doesn't really matter if he's pissed off tbh. It might actually make him have more empathy for you and how amazing you are to juggle it all. Having a baby is incredibly tough and at the moment he's leaving you to shoulder all of the hard work.

He's a sexist pig. I would tell him very clearly if he doesn't get his act together the relationship is not going to survive. I wonder why his relationship with his dd's mum didn't last?

My dh comes home from work, takes the baby, gets stuck into bath, dinner, changing baby, tidying, washing bottles - he doesn't sit down until I do. He'll take the baby if I'm tired or having a tough night. On the weekends we parent together and try to give each other a few hours here or there to ourselves. I go out for dinner every couple of weeks with friends and he is home with baby.

He's never ever come home and complained that the house wasn't cleaned. He's looked after our baby by himself enough to know that it's hard and sometimes that stuff just doesn't happen.

What your husband is doing is selfish and not normal op. The baby isn't your 24 hour job while he works 8 hours a day.

He was never with his dd’s mum. It was a one night stand and as it turns out she was hoping to cash in and didn’t tell him about his dd until she was 1yo because she was trying to hold on to a different man at the time. Anyway.

I have only asked him once to spend a few hours with LO on his own while I went to the hairdresser and he’s already panicking that once the pandemic is over he will have both his dad well as our LO on a Saturday as I’ll be at work and it will be hard work so I mentioned it would be nice if he spent a few hours with LO on his own at weekends but it didn’t go down well.

He really isn’t pulling his weight, looking after a baby all day is exhausting, especially on broken sleep. I used to read or bake during my DD’s very short naps too - she’s pretty full on so I needed a rest, not to do more housework! Me and my OH then took turns catching up with housework in the evenings. He’s not been great with night wakings/early mornings though so I feel your pain, it’s hard when you feel like you’re doing more.
Agree with PP that a cleaner is a good idea if you can afford it, and cut down on things that aren’t as necessary, we basically never iron anything!

@anibakes

The way he sees it is that I’m here all day and all these things should be done by the mother, and when he finishes work he should be able to walk out of his office into a sparkling clean home with dinner ready so he can relax after his hard day at work

Fuck that! @anibakes what are you getting from this “relationship”? Is there somewhere you can go for a few days? Your parents or sibling? I really feel for you.

Yanbu, I never do housework when my dc are asleep, I always relax or sleep myself.

Could a compromise be that you do the housework while she is awake? This is what I do. It doesn't mean you are ignoring her, just have her come around the house with you as you do it. Sort washing while talking to her and she plays with a pile of socks, that sort of thing.

Anyway you do baking only 2 days per week and the rest housework? Surely that more than covers it? How much housework can there be with 2 people and one 5 month old baby?

My parents live in Austria, I don’t have any relatives here

Thank you all for your comments 🤗

Hi OP. I think negotiating a balance in life with a new baby and your partner is very tricky and for us it's an ongoing task. What I would say is whilst it's hard to make direct comparisons between the two of you, it can be helpful to talk about amount of 'leisure' time and agree how this is set aside for each of you. Working, cooking, cleaning, looking after kids is not leisure time. I also think it doesnt matter too much who gets exactly what time, if you are struggling, then you need more.