Oh PJ. Oh you poor, poor love. I warn I may waffle a bit now but I've watched and listened to you (bit stalkerish hey?) for months now and seen things happening that I think are symptomatic of a larger problem, not your problem btw, a general problem with becoming parents...
As everybody on here has already said, the first year after having a baby is a fright in every way possible. It is the changes to our personal relationships that are most representative of the rapid alterations. It is not possible to understand until it happens, the metamorphosis you go through as a first time mother. Your priorities shift dramatically, your perceptions, your figure, your anxiety levels, your emotional responses, your desires, your needs and wants, your role in the world, the way you relate to your partner, your own parents, siblings etc. It is the most perfect shift I think but by God it's shocking while it happens.
I firmly believe that as a society we are not geared up for these changes and little equipped with the tools to deal with it. There is only small allowance for what will happen. When pg you trawl through all the forms, leaflets and information available and rehearse and remember the rules surrounding SMP, OMP, maternity leave, paternity leave, weaning guidelines, return to work, childcare options etc etc. In harsh reality, these rules put in place mask the truth of what it is like to live the first important months and years of a baby's life. I think particularly for you and dh the work/money issue is a thorny one. I think the paternity rules as they stand are woefully inadequate. Returning to work after 2 weeks in the majority of cases has a lasting, probably at first intangible effect on your relationship as a trio. Whichever partner goes back to work in the first instance, usually dh/p is forced into doing so very early on. This early on it has the unfortunate benefit of being a bit easier to leave a baby I think. Quickly the man settles into a pattern, life seems almost the same as it was before but with a baby at home. Work provides normality and stability (something inextricably bound up with financial reward- we work to afford things, it's safe and familiar). Meanwhile, at home, you are learning and changing. For dh something simple like changing a nappy is just a chore at the end of a working day (usually he had a beer maybe or sat down and watched some tv), for you changing a nappy is a time to play, to pull faces, sing songs, bond. Every little act you carry out for your baby builds upon the bond you have with her. You start to thrive and that inevitable return to work can start to feel like a sentence. It becomes like a weight. Of course, dh/p protests that he manages to go to work every day (he's been forced to become used to being away from his dc, to separate the areas of his life), he thinks that the decisions were made before the birth when the forms were filled in (unfairly before you had any idea what to expect from parenthood) and he doesn't understand. The stability and protection of gainful employment still seems to be the logical choice for the parent who was forced back to it so soon but for the parent who is at home for precious months of their child's life, it becomes a bind, a harsh inevitability that they want to avoid. You go from having loved a job before motherhood to not imagining anything worse than walking out of that door every day. And worse, your partner doesn't understand why this has happened. How can you rationally sit and mull over the childminder versus nursery debate when all you can hear in each option is 'you must leave your child'. DH/P thinks 'you love your job, it's the same job, you're still you, make the decision and contribute'.
(At this point, do you think I could waffle much more?)
Anyway...
You find yourself in a horrid situation. The rules prohibit most families from having one working, one sah parent as it's financially debilitating. They seem to be fair and generous, allowing you so much time off to be at home with your child but ime it just makes the inevitable return to work harder. You're rocked by how strongly you want to be at home with your child and how loaded that sentence 'I want to be a SAHM' is. You're saying a thousand things about your own needs, the baby's needs, where you need to be, how torn apart you feel by the choice, how much your heart is breaking, how anxious you are. DH/P fixates on the financial side of things. You filled in the forms pre-baby didn't you, the decision was made? Somehow being a full time parent is still viewed by society as a luxury, an idle frivolity (apart from those doing it). Somehow by not taking gainful employment, you're not contributing. And you're contributing in massive, meaningful ways, it's just not what you're used to. It's not like pre-children when one of you liked to spend and one liked to save. By having one wage-earner and one full-time parent, you're working together to run a family. Unfortunately, it's too often perceived that one parent is at home having a jolly good time and the other is working hard to pay for this. He didn't marry a SAHM and she didn't marry a man who couldn't understand what motherhood means. You reach an impasse. Neither one understands how the other can be so rigid and fixed in their convictions. One doesn't understand how so little has changed for the other, that partner in turn can't see how the other remains so true to what it was like before.
Does any of the above sound familiar?
Do I have any of the answers? Unfortunately not. I only know that the way things are at the moment, the emotions and challenges of the first year are compounded by the practicalities. If you manage to have one partner at home full-time a lot of trust, honesty and understanding is necessary. If you have to go back to work, you want your partner to support you, to understand your initial unhappiness, to find ways of making it easier. Otherwise you run the risk of it looking like it's all gone back to normal but harbouring a lot of resentment. The rules have firmly changed. You don't do what is best for you anymore, but what is best for the family and it's a tough shift. This is where you are now. You see money as just money, something that if it can allow you to be the parents and people you want it to, then it should. He clings to the past and just sees the money going out as quickly as it came in and he's criticised all the time (because you're tired and drained and anxious) and he feels like a cash cow. Purposes, well and truly crossed.
Can he clarify what he means by sponging? Can he outline his fears? Does he worry about how much you've changed? How anxious you are? What will happen in the future? He needs to understand that this is a transitory state. You need to be different right now for Lexie, it doesn't mean that you aren't and won't in the future be a loving partner and a career woman, it means you are a mother too. You need to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. He needs to understand you, you need to understand him.
Then you need to get yourself over to Norfolk for a break so that I can look after you. That's an order.
I want to be a politician. I can waffle, waffle, waffle...
Feel free to ignore me btw.