Husband changed his mind about having kids but baby is already born...

[GB2206]

My husband has been desperate for kids for years. I kept putting him off cause I wasn't ready yet but i finally decided it was time and we cracked on and now have a beautiful baby boy that's 12 weeks old.

My husband has been really struggling with having a newborn. He hasn't bonded with the baby much at all and actually told me things were so bad for him that he regretted having him when he was only about 2 weeks old. I chalked it up to newborns being a shock to the system and he'll get over it in time.

He's making much more of an effort now to engage with the baby more and is taking in more responsibility with him so I thought things were getting better. Then he tells me last week that he'd actually changed his mind about having a baby when he turned 30 (which was almost 2 years ago) cause he thinks he's too old to have kids now. He did not tell me this and was more than happy to be trying for a baby... he also makes comments about how spending time with the baby is a 'chore' and can't seem to get his head around the fact that anyone would actually enjoy spending time with him. I asked him if he loved his son and he said 'well, I wouldn't want any harm to come to him'.

I mean, what the actual heck?! What am I supposed to do with that?! I feel so betrayed that he's lied to me about wanting kids and now I've brought this beautiful, amazing little human into the world with a dad that doesn't love him and didn't want him. How can I look my son in the eye knowing that his dad feels that way about him? He was so desperate for kids and now that we have one he's hating every second of it. I really don't know what to do, I feel so broken hearted.

Could this be some form of post natal depression? He doesn't seem to think so but I really don't think this is normal and that he needs to try and get some help.

Has anything like this ever happened to anyone else?

@Princess1Xx

Fix*

No you certainly can't fix stupid Princess, only people who have given birth can be given a diagnosis of PND so unless there's something OP isn't telling up about he DH then no he doesn't have PND. Not to say he's not depressed though.

@toomuchlaundry

Funny how most women who have PND have to get on with it still with the baby, even if it just going through the motions. Men with PND or men who don’t bond with the baby straight away are allowed to get away with doing nothing with the baby until they get more interesting

This!!!

The husband is being a selfish mard arse. Can you imagine a new mother not bothering with her new baby because it was a chore, she'd be strung up if she didn't acknowledge her struggles and sort herself out.

He needs to pull himself together, get some help with how he is feeling and be a decent father to the baby he claims that he misled his wife into having. If he doesn't want to he needs to be honest about what a selfish twat he is and fuck off so the OP can find her feet as a single parent without him making more stress and work for her.

Yes it's a shock to the system having a new baby but come on, the amount of posts justifying his behaviour is incredible.

I have no patience for men like this. Women have no choice but to crack on and navigate their way through having a newborn while their hormones are raging, they are bleeding heavily, recovering from surgery or vaginal delivery, in pain through establishing breastfeeding... not to mention the sleepless nights, the loneliness of maternity leave during the day and their lives being turned upside down in every way as they no longer have the normality of work like the partner often does.

@Moodycow78

Only women who have given birth get PND but that doesn't mean father's MH can't take a knock when a new baby comes along. He's likely feeling a bit left out of it all and unsure. There's a good chance these feelings will go away as baby gets older and develops their personality. He'll become more involved in time xx

So what does the OP do during this time?

I definitely think it's harder when you have been together a long time. We were together 19 years before our much-wanted daughter was born and it was like a handgrenade going off in our marriage. It took a long time to adjust and I could tell my husband was struggling for a long time. He admitted he felt more for the dog.

Things changed when I went back to work when our daughter was 9 months and he had afternoons with her alone. Got even better around 3. She's now 7 and they are so close. He adores her. Lives for her. What your husband says now will likely not be how he feels forever. But he needs to step up. Go through the motions. Act that he cares until he is no longer acting.

I think you need to tell him it's too late for those kind of thoughts now - his child is here and he needs parenting. Having s newborn is a shock but get him involved with helping, even if he doesn't feel close to the baby. I struggled with my eldest and would say DH bonded with her quicker. With my youngest, DH focused on looking after DC1 who was a toddler, that he barely spent time with DC2 and they didn't bond until she was much older. With hindsight I would have got him much more involved with the baby. We are quite a few years down the line now and both parents have an equal bond with both children.

Could this be some form of post natal depression?
No it fucking couldn't. Fucking hell. When did this idiotic narrative start?

Could it be some form of selfishness that he has realised his life has changed and actually he expected that only your life would change and his would remain unaffected?

OP, I actually think this is really normal. 12 weeks is still really early days and the shock of adjustment is massive. I felt the same as your husband (and so did my own husband), and felt like we’d made a terrible mistake in having our baby. Now she is 9 months old we are both besotted.

Totally resonate with pps who said it was worse having been together a long time pre baby. My marriage ended in divorce because he could not cope with not being number 1 anymore and spent less and less time at home to get away from responsibility, noise, boredom and (so I'm told) nagging. He now sees DC a couple of times a year, which he complains bitterly about, as he was a great performance dad even if he was a poor father. I had no idea it would happen, we were very happily married and got on brilliantly and thought he'd be great.

Speaking to the health visitor is a good idea, make sure he's involved with the conversation too.

Also make sure he's involved with the baby, bath time, feeding etc. don't let him step balc and leave it all up to you. It's hard enough as it is, so don't forget to look after yourself too.

I get it’s normal to have such feelings but how you deal with them matter. What’s he doing by saying he secretly didn’t want a child anyway but never said anything? Where’s the support for the OP? It’s all about him.

OP make sure your husband is doing a fair share of the care of his son. I say this not just for your sake although it is undoubtedly hard being the partner of a man who doesn't have much input into his baby. If he doesn't learn the everyday care now, it risks escalating to him feeling too incompetent to care for his child on his own at any point later.

Bonding, especially at such a young age, doesn't have to be born of some mystical essence. It is the baby's experience of the same reliable caregiver/s, over and over and over and over again. For example if you are BF your baby, it would be fair and proportional for your DP to do all the nappy changes when he is around. These moments of close up, eye contact, providing predictable comfort and relief are how your son can begin to know his dad and hopefully the exchange is felt as mutual and your DP will begin to know his son.

Also therapy could be useful. If that's too expensive, Philippa Perry's book "The book you wish your parents had read" is really helpful for reflecting on strong feelings around parenthood.

I think to be honest your dh is actually being very honest and lots of men (and sometimes women) feel this way.
Give it a few months. Once your baby starts smiling, laughing, recognising him, your dh’s attitude will totally change.
In the meantime try not to make this into a huge deal - he doesn’t want any harm to come to him which basically means he does on an instinctive level care for him. It’ll be ok, just keep going forward.

Tell him OK there is the door feel free to walk out of it

Choose uour child over him

He will either get help or go

It sounds very similar to how I felt about my first child when they were that age, tbh. (Minus the absolute rubbish about being too old.)

You learn to love a child by caring for it, so make sure he's doing plenty of the caring and odds are he will be fine in time. I don't think I even had PND, in retrospect - I was just shellshocked and lonely.

He was the centre of attention before, now the baby is and he can’t cope with being number 2, it’s not PND it’s jealousy. Maybe he will snap out of it maybe not, you need to be prepared for a break up, it’s so disappointing when you perfect family ambitions are upset in this way.

@Theunamedcat

Tell him OK there is the door feel free to walk out of it

Choose uour child over him

He will either get help or go

This isn't likely to help in the situation of a selfish, depressed man who has no current bond to his child. He'd probably say OK

I now have a four year old and honestly babies are crap. Both DH and I found a lot of it really hard work. That isnt to say that everyone finds babyhood difficult but lots of parents find it pretty full on and honestly a bit boring. But hang on in there. Having kids is actually nothing like having a baby (thank god in our case) and just because he find having a newborn boring doesnt mean he'll be the same with a two year old or four year old or even a teenager

I am shocked by the very unsympathetic comments, if a new mum was struggling, she would be offered support, and rightly so, why should it be any different with a dad?

As first time parents you are never fully prepared for the tiredness, work and responsibilities that precious little bundle brings.

You don’t just dump your partner when times get tough, you work through it together. And for those saying he’s selfish, do you think he wants to feel like that, he wanted the baby, he can’t help how he feels.

I hope you have someone in RL to support you with the baby, OP, to give you a hand through this difficult period. 12 weeks is no time at all for life to adjust with such a change in circumstances.

Good luck OP.

@HellToTheNope

Could this be some form of post natal depression?

Men don't get pregnant, so no, they don't suffer from post natal depression.

Adoptive parents can get PND, it isn't the exclusive domain of the child.bearing

Whether he has PND or not, he is still a father of a very small baby and the partner of a new mother.

Whatever his feelings he needs to make the best go of it possible.

And tbh the more time he spends with baby, the more quickly he'll bond.

At the moment he sounds like a big brat sulking about baby intruding on his cosy life.
Fuck that.

He needs to get help and make an effort. Else he is going to lose both of you.

I’m a mother and I recognise some of his feelings. So I don’t think the selfish partner, pull himself together shrieks are that helpful, even though I can totally see that all this is extra stress for you at the time you least need it.

For me, my advice would be this if he wants to stay. These issues are not something you can swerve to avoid, hoping it’ll come good, he can’t outsource all baby related care to you. He HAS to go through it, he has to do his share of bath time, feeds, night wakings and all the other drudgery typically assigned to mothers and he will come out the other side with a bond. In the interim whether he enjoys it or not is redundant, do you think all mothers enjoy all the nappies they change? They have to do it regardless because it’s their responsibility. Opinions are irrelevant.

I agree with the previous poster that him saying he had actually changed his mind is actually him rewriting history to put all the responsibilities on you and keep open a door to waking away.

Honestly I think he’ll get over it.

A lot of mothers, never mind fathers haven’t bonded by 12 weeks. Tiny babies are flipping dull. He’ll gradually get more interesting, so he’ll probably have a very different relationship with him in 6 months time.

Make sure they spend time together without you - increasing it especially as the baby gets bigger. And tell him this is normal, he might be quietly panicing about it.

I am shocked by the very unsympathetic comments, if a new mum was struggling, she would be offered support, and rightly so, why should it be any different with a dad?

Because struggling mums still scrape together every tiny scrap of willpower to ensure their babies are fed, rocked and taken care of. A profile of a "depressed" dad typically looks like this:

• Sitting on the sofa looking at his phone while the mum tries to feed an placate a screaming baby
• Does fuck all for night wakings. Gets to sleep through most nights but still spends daytime moping around.
• Escapes the house whenever possible meeting friends or staying longer at work
• Does a tiny bit of work like change a diaper or go for a walk and assumes that's their "fair contribution"
• When friends or families are around they will parade the baby and enjoy the attention but once everyone is gone they dump the baby onto the mum and go back to looking at their phones.

To be honest, a lot of these men are not depressed but trying to make their presence as useless and as much of nuisance as possible so the wife leaves and they have their freedom back. Look up "weaponised incompetence".

Get away with the 'of COURSE men can have PND!!!' it's not the same for men, at all. Boo hoo for him, OP, I bet he's not as hands on as you are?

Men can and do suffer PND and the worse thing is that people berate them or dismiss them as being 'arseholes' as someone else said above or deny it exists.

It takes a brave parent to admit to feeling they cant bond with their child, or dont love them, its heartbreaking, for them and those around them.

He might respond better to online support, you can get online dad guides, like the dadpad or online training or therapeutic input which might not be so 'therapyish' which wouldnt put him off.

I totally understand the issue about the doctors, but its not healthy, perhaps he could go private for his knees, or seek physio privately? This might then put him back in the mood to engage with health services

I think the health visitor is a good starting point along with whatever you can find online.