Do dads ever get it? Struggling with the difference in being mum vs dad.

[MyOpenEagle]

Sorry for the rant but here we are…First time mum here and I’m really struggling with just how different my experience of parenting is to my husbands. My whole life has changed - I literally do nothing I did before. I don’t work, I don’t exercise, I don’t see friends (unless I’m with the baby). The baby is my centre - everything is planned with her in mind. He has the same routine (gym etc) as he did before, and then spending time with baby is an add on. He does go out less on weekends but he will at times knowing baby will be looked after by me and does not need to worry about whether she’ll be okay. I do all the baby admin (buying nappies, appointments, packing etc) and feel like I’m always the one having to say right bath time, or time for a nap. We also EBF (baby won’t take bottle) so I feel it’s just another thing that falls to me. I have asked him over and over to try bottles with her in his time to take a load off of me but of course he has not! I just feel like he is pretty happy with how this is.

Currently we feed to sleep and then I do night shifts with baby who does not sleep well on my own (the logic here is he works though being a mum is a job too!). He has rocked her to sleep before but again he just chooses not to be active in doing it more or offering. I get that I’m on maternity leave but I feel like he is clueless to how hard this is and is not proactively trying to make this easier for me or be more hands on. I thought on weekends he might think you know what I’ll take baby for a few hours, you do your thing, take a break, have a sleep, go get your nails done - no. I never get that thought at all. If I want any of these things I often have to plan to go with our LO.

I went through a phase of actively booking time in to go out between her feeding windows but I’m just so tired at the moment I don’t have the energy but I don’t always want to have to officially go and do something - sometimes I just want to sleep or be at home but then it becomes a “she’s hungry”.

I’m just so frustrated at him for doing nothing to support unless I force it. He never offers to bathe her or do her evening routine so I can get a break unless I force him to. I’ve tried to explain but he just does not get it and is not proactive at all - he just thinks because he has a job it’s okay. But he doesn’t work 24/7! I feel like I’m just expected to take care of our baby and he gets to live his life and parent part time.

i guess im just looking for solidarity and also people's experiences of similar partners? I know this is not all dads but honestly i am struggling as i am really beginning to resent him. This then makes me angry which i dont want baby picking up on. Do dads ever truly get it?

Sorry you're struggling and it sounds like you're feeling a bit alone but to improve things I think you have to start as you mean to go on. So first thing is you both need to take time off work too lookl after the baby. Shared parental leave, unpaid, whatever, but you both need the time with baby to muddle through.
Then once you each have that tough time where nothing works and you muddle through, you can understand each other better when you are exhausted.
I would say try to go back to work at least part time and your partner put in a part time request too and you can each have a day with the baby. Then take it from there.
Good luck!

You need to nip this in the bud now before it becomes an accepted way of life.

Suggest you allocate him jobs which are always his. Non BF related. So for example: nappy changes are always his job when he is home
bathtime is always his job
first hour of the morning, after you have fed, is his job so you can sleep or shower and dress
and some admin type stuff: he can be in charge of buying nappies and other baby supplies. He can do initial baby packing (you can check it)

And weekends there could be certain hours which are “yours” (this will get easier when feed times get more predictable). Right now you could say I need an hour to myself on Sat and on Sun and I will hand her over straight after a feed.

I felt how you did initially too, but it was more my doing to start with. I felt that because DH was working, I would power through day and night. DS didn’t take to BF so I would do night wakings, pump, and then by the time I was ready to go back to bed, DS would wake up again. I really started to resent DH for not doing anything, even though I hadn’t asked and he was clueless to my struggles.

Eventually I would quite enjoy my pump times during the evenings as that was my 20 minutes to sit in peace with a book or my phone and have a bit of me time. But DH also works from home so we were able to do that. We also came up with a schedule. Between certain times, I was ‘on call’ and between other times it was DH time. It worked well for us as it meant I could rest when I needed to, and DH could catch up on whatever rubbish he wanted to watch on tv that I didn’t enjoy. There were times when DS would cry and I would wake up but DH didn’t hear, so I would wake him up if it was his turn.

we went through a bit of trial and error to find a routine that worked for us, and now DS is 4, we still have a schedule that works. I generally do weekday mornings and DH does weekends. But that’s because he works from home so doesn’t get out of bed until late. Maybe agree that you have a lie in on Saturdays and he gets Sunday, or something like that. Failing that, plan a nice day for yourself and leave your DP to do everything for the day. Even if you sit in a coffee shop all day with a book. He will soon realise that just because you are at home with baby, it doesn’t mean it’s not hard work. Or, will actually really enjoy the one on one time and want to do it more.

whatever you do, make sure you set some grounds rules now! Take some time for you. Even if it’s just having a nice long hot bath with some music on. And good luck!!

Maybe you can make a list of all the things that need doing regularly - bato and chores and spilt them. He needs to understand that looking after a newborn baby is a full time job.

For example my husband will do the first feed and then i play with baby when he goes to work (my baby wants food after he wakes up and then play). He will do bathtime and then i will do a massage. He does a nighttime bottle feed. At weekends he does more. We just spilt stuff depending on what we like and are good at. I do find my husband doesn't know what to do with our baby after food.

Give your husband jobs or activities to do with your baby. Plan a regular activity out of the house by yourself for an hour or two at the weekend (great time to try bottles). Just go for a walk or grab a coffee by yourself.

Its frustrating. A lot of men dont seem to think about certain things. They need telling. Tell your husband exactly what you need him to do. Share the baby jobs. Give him the baby in the evening with a book and say you need to prepare for breastfeeding can you read a story. Then go and relax for half an hour before you breastfeed.

I agree that you need to allocate him jobs or times that are always his, so there can be no debate or “I didn’t realise” rubbish. So give him the 11pm feed and make him do it until it’s easy, or the 6am wake so you can have a lie in, or always do bath or make dinner or whatever. You really shouldn’t have to, and I don’t buy this shit that men just don’t see it (it’s a choice not to bother to see it) but I suspect this is the best way to change things.

Plenty of men get it, and are loving and engaged fathers without being forced to. Yours just isn't.

DH always did bathtime as that was his bonding time as I EBF.

Nappies were also his job (obviously I did them if he wasn’t available)

Oh I feel this! Unfortunately you will have to be the driver of change, it’s unlikely he will just think to do anything in my experience. Are you in the newborn phase? This is so so hard when EBF, I found once feed gaps lengthened (and they will!) it got much easier, and just generally it has got easier to parent more equally as my baby has gotten older. I say this having just breast fed my 1 year old back to sleep whilst writing this post, and not feeling complete rage and resentment! This is what saved us:

We introduced a bottle at about 6 weeks, husband just gave one every few days to keep it ticking over. I had a hen do (where I was MOH) to attend at 10 weeks pp which was motivation to make sure LO could take a bottle as he was going to have to look after him for about 9 hours!

At about 3 months we (I) set up a routine of each of us doing bed time every other day so that it was just part of the day. He has to fit gym etc around it. A few of my friends got the dad to do every bed time feed.

If he’s not doing any night shifts you need to have both lie ins at the weekend. He should also take the baby from about 5/6am during the week before work so you can get some sleep then too.

Have set times at the weekend where you can both do what you want (including sitting in a different room just relaxing, not having to do anything), agree these times in the week before so its flexible but can’t just be put off.

The other thing I did was start tutoring twice a week at a time when my husband would have to do dinner and the majority of the rest of the bed time routine (this was 6 months in when weaning had started, and we needed some extra cash so win win!).

I hope that helps. I was very surprised with my husband that he didn’t volunteer to make changes or be proactive at the beginning. I asked him recently about it and he was honest and said he found the baby stage incredibly hard and didn’t feel a bond with our baby for a long time, so it was just easier to let me do it. He absolutely dotes on him now and I’m back at work part time (and still breastfeeding!), I would say it’s much much closer to a decent share between us.

'knowing baby will be looked after by me'

There you have it. Nail on head. And men wonder why their sex lives tank. Being treated as the default carer is enraging.

So: pick a moment when the baby is asleep, perhaps when he says 'just off to the gym' and say, 'oh, are you? who's looking after the baby?' And if he gives you one of the range of annoying looks, get angry; voice it. Point out that he hasn't just decided what he will do, he's also decided what you are going to do, without any consultation. You (singular) are going to be looking after your (plural) child, because he wants to go out.

He'll probably ask at some point 'what you expect him to do' and I would say 'I don't know. You seem to know what you expect ME to do though'. Just start to point out that his decisions now affect YOUR life in a way they didn't before.

[There's also the subsequent point that eg him deciding to go to the gym and 'looking after the baby as well' by leaving the baby with either his mum or 'his mate Bo who is a great guy/smokes weed 24/7 isn't OK either. Ie that he has to actually engage with some child development and some standards

I wouldn't make lists of jobs or any of that detail. It doesn't really matter. What he needs is a mindset change.

Your husband needs to pull his socks up and start acting like a proper dad. He has a baby now, if his life is still the same he is doing something wrong. Tell him it's time to grow up.

Speak up every time he acts like a useless turd and leaves you to everything. I didn't realise isn't an excuse.

Set up stuff that’s his - bathing baby several nights a week, weekend morning wake up, and don’t forget cooking dinner for the family on set days. Then he does it all the time.
also, get in the practice of asking if it works if either of you leave the house for something that’s not work. He’s asking you to do more solo parenting. If he says that’s silly leave the house on the weekend and call out before going I’m out for a few hours see you later. And you need to protect your at home time to yourself when you’re too tired to go out otherwise you never recover energy. Book a long bath he won’t disturb you on, a solo walk in the evening, a couple of hours solo watching your current tv show, tell him you’re too tired to go out and this is your equivalent and you need him to parent, just like you do when he’s out.

My DH, who is a very switched on and equal partner, was surprisingly clueless when our first came along. I definitely felt the sense that my life had imploded whilst his was largely the same and it was a challenge. We worked it out and it got a lot better - by the time we had a second, DH took shared parental leave and did it all for a couple of months! They can learn. My DH understands he needs to take the mental load too.

I’d sit him down when baby is asleep and just set out a few simple facts:

1. you’re finding it hard doing everything for the baby
2. during non-work time (outside the 9-5 he is at work) you need to split the childcare more equally
3. make some suggestions: take it in turns to do bath time, that he covers either the evening 9-midnight or morning 4-7 so that you can get some sleep. If baby does need to feed, you do that and hand her back.
4. one weekend morning lie in each

Out of interest, do you do all the housework too? And has it always been that way? My general perception is that if there is even a hint of in equality or traditional gender roles then a baby is going to massively widen the gap.

i often think my life would be ace if I had a wife! Someone who enabled my career and nice life, looked after the kids so I never had to worry, did all the crap jobs so I was free to train and play sports and socialize and enjoy fun times with my kids. Most people wouldn’t turn that arrangement down so you have to be clear about expectations from the outset.

I EBF, never once pumped, and never felt like this. Your husband needs a wake up call.

My husband works from home and would take our baby on his lunch break for a wander around town in the sling. He would also take baby in the morning before he started work so that I could sleep in after doing all the night feeds. In the evening we shared bath time. If he had taken an extended lunch break to give me more of a break in the day then I would do bathtime etc as he'd have to catch up on work. Otherwise, he would bath baby etc.

There will be plenty of ways for your husband to play his part and he needs to step up.

@johnd2 i do think he needs to experience baby more to appreciate how difficult it is. He took two weeks and was then back at work.

@minipie @CCW14 there was a time I was consistently having my own time to go out for 1-2 hours but with the sleep deprivation I just got too tired to do it and it’s ended up meaning I don’t get protected time. I’m at the stage of wanting to leave her with him for a full day so he can really understand it because it’s impacting our relationship with how things are but I wouldn’t leave her that long knowing she’d not be happy if hungry and not taking bottles or pacifier.

@CCW14 similar to you, I felt bad he had work so took on lots but it’s made things worse. With sleep deprivation now I voice how hard it is but he teuly does not seem to think it is! I don’t understand why being a mum isn’t seen as a job in the same way as any other job - if anything it’s harder because I don’t get any break unless he gives me one! I think that’s the part I’m finding hard - there’s no proactive consideration to give me a break.

@Boobymonster the rage is real at night!! And I was also surprised at how my husband does not ever offer to do something proactively. It’s been a real sad thing to experience for me because it’s as though being a mum is invisible labour! I’m also partly wondering whether going back to work will actually be helpful because then I physically cannot be there to pick up the slack.

Thanks everyone for the comments. I’ve now set out what I’d like him to do, including seeing everything outside of 9-5 as shared given that’s when we both finish our “jobs”. This includes helping with her morning routine and bed routine outside of feeding and taking bath time in turns so I get small breaks, and same on weekends. I’ll have to keep persisting as I know if I stop, it’ll go back to me doing everything. Need to speak up and assert more

Good luck OP. Just stick by what you have set out. Being a mum often isn’t seen as a ‘job’ because we don’t get paid, but the alternative is paying someone else to look after the child, which to many families isn’t ideal either. I now work part time and our duties are much better managed. Do what is right for you, and protect your own sanity. Even if it’s hiding in your own bed for an after baby has been fed

Yes it made me sad too, when I thought I’d married someone who would automatically take on his fair share. I felt so smug when pregnant when others were worrying about how their husbands would support them, and felt like I’d never have that issue, and then was wrong!
I will say that things are very different now, and if you stick to your guns hopefully you will see a change of attitude.
The other thing to say is that during the day when they settle into a more structured nap routine (particularly if you can get them to sleep in their cot for them!) then you should definitely take the time to rest and not feel guilty. I used to run around doing jobs when I really should have been either napping myself or relaxing. Your OH won’t be running themselves ragged every second of the day at work (or at least mine certainly wasn’t!) so neither should you.

This is fundamentally why being a mother is so different to being a father. I know it’s seen as almost taboo to say that fathers are, for want of a better word, a “lesser” parent (I suspect this is to spare men’s egos) but by and large this is how it is.

I feel like this all the time. My son is 2 and I've clearly fucked up the division of labour that I should've sorted out early on. I feel now my husband has no clue how to parent our son.

When DD was a baby DP did all bedtimes in the week. It was both a good bonding experience and learning, as he had to work it out on his own. Bedtime was everything up to when I fed her and she went down, so clean nappy, dressed, story etc. sounds obvious but you want to make you don't get some of this put back on you. I would always make sure I stayed downstairs until the end.

You also need some scope for a lie in on the weekend, even if you have to get up to breastfeed first.

I think this quite a common thing unfortunately. In the very early days it's a kind of love affair for mum and baby, wrapped up in each other in a little bubble. It can be easy to drift along being the default parent after this phase.

I do look back and think I might have been the same had I not had twins. Because there were two of them DH had to step up and help out.

Not in my experience. We talked about exactly how DS would be cared for, who could incorporate flexibility at work for pick-ups, how we would handle illness etc before we started ttc, and I was extremely clear that I would only be having a baby if it was very clear that my life wasn’t going to alter to an asymmetric extent.

Are you still on maternity leave, OP? Are you planning to return to work if so? That’s key in my experience to establishing cooperative, egalitarian co-parenting.

Yep despite doing nothing until he found a partner my ex is dad of the year.

Would agree with all the posters saying to start changing the behaviour now. My DH was the driver behind wanting children but even he was totally clueless at the start and looked to me for everything. I remember saying to him in the first two weeks (when he was on pat leave) that we had been parents for the same number of hours so why the hell was I meant to be the one with the answers?

Our eldest is now 5.5 and I'd say we have a very equal balance in terms of the child rearing and housework etc, but getting here was all driven by me. I was the one talking about the division of labour, bringing up how much my life was different, blah blah. Sometimes I felt like I was being a royal whinger but DH says now he wouldn't have had a clue if I hadn't told him (he didn't take it so well at the time mind, there was a lot of sulking), he wanted to help but he didn't know how and it felt like when he did help he did it wrong. I spent all day every day with the baby so I was naturally better at soothing him etc, but DH hadn't personally witnessed the hours of shit show parenting whilst I worked that what worked and what didn't. I had to bite my tongue quite a few times and let DH work out how he was going to parent in his own way, which was hard but ultimately worth it. We also sat down and worked out all the jobs required to run a household and split them fairly. Fair does mean in this case that I do slightly more of the housework as I am home more (I'm working PT until the children are all in school, largely driven by the cost of childcare but it's working for us), but only slightly more as parenting is still a big task and we'd both prefer I was giving my attention to the children rather than the laundry. Might seem petty, but it means we don't have that thing where my jobs are all daily tasks and his are sporadic (thinking washing up vs mowing the lawn).

From my own experience I think open communication is key, and also trusting that he'll work it out as much as you did so don't be afraid to leave him alone with the baby. I remember when DS was about 4 months old DH went on a stag do over a BHW. It got to the Sunday afternoon and it transpired all the parents had left the stag and only singles/DH had stayed. Once this was pointed out, DH came home. It was like he just hadn't realised that he was in the club of people who left the party early now. It took him so much longer to mentally get there than it did for me. I met him at the door with the baby and some fresh pumped milk and told him I'd checked into a hotel and would be back tomorrow. I'd just done 2 nights solo, so he could definitely manage 1 night. DH didn't mind at all, I got a break, everyone survived, DH was a better parent for having some time with DS without my attention/approval and I was much happier for the break!

These days we are much more in tune with what the other needs to remain as a functioning individual and we work to ensure we get that. DH goes running, plays sport and has a few trips a year where he goes to visit his family (some solo, some with the kids), I have some groups I attend, a weekly fitness class, go on walking weekends away and have a long weekend with my girlfriends annually. It feels very healthy and balanced. We're a team, it just took a bit of work to get here.

Definitely keep on about the proactive vs passive thing. The mental load is a huge thing and it disproportionately affects women.

With night feeds, I did them as was BF as much as possible, but the deal was after the last feed (say 5am) that DH got up with the baby and left the house. All the way OUT whatever the weather. Baby in the carrier, big coat on, umbrella, whatever and they went out for an least an hour so I could sleep. Set me up for the day. Even now everyone is sleeping well we know that I am a better person if I've had some time to myself in the morning, so DH will take the kids downstairs and handle breakfast/reading before school etc whilst I get myself dressed and do my hair/the things which make me feel like a human being. If I don't get that time I feel horrible about myself and that spills over into my mood which affects my behaviour. We had to talk about it as a need, but now it's a rule and he gets on with it.

It takes practice but hopefully he'll get there. This week our childminder has switched our days for personal reasons, so I switched my working days to match. Usually on my working days DH does the pick ups and drop offs, but because the days changed this week I'd automatically assumed that I'd do the commutes as it wasn't a standard day for DH to do them. He on the other hand had noticed there'd been communication, proactively changed his schedule without mentioning it to me and sorted everything out, then came and said 'I presumed you wanted to get a full working day in so I've done x, y and z'. I was flabbergasted, and elated. We're getting better all the time and it's communicating that does it. Would have been lovely if it was quicker, but reading some of the stories on here I feel very grateful for what I have!