Dear Mumsnet,
There is so much housework and on top of that cooking takes up time every day and my DH very kindly won’t let me do any housework (except cooking) because I’m 26 weeks pregnant with our first DC.
What this means though, is that the house is a tip, there is dirt on the floor 24/7 (because he read that I mustn’t do any vacuuming) and the flatpack furniture I’ve bought for baby has just been sat in filthy cardboard boxes for weeks in our dining room (as that’s the only place we have a bit of space) because he can’t get round to assembling it since he’s busy doing the housework I "mustn’t do".
We’ve now got a fungus gnat infestation in our plant pots and these buggers live in the soil so probably carry toxoplasmosis and a slug problem in our kitchen so there is salt sitting on the perimeter of our entire kitchen and dining room to keep them away. I can’t use pesticides due to the pregnancy and I also can’t really let him do it as they are indoor infestations and the chemicals will be in our home. Do I throw them all away?
The way I see it, this is all going to cost us a lot of money as I can see myself losing patience and calling a handyman, a painter, a cleaner and gardener as my DH just cannot keep up and prepare the house for baby. I sometimes think it’s because he’s too meticulous which makes him slow, and that in turn is causing friction because I ask him to not be so thorough so we can speed things up but he accuses me of leaving things half-cleaned for the sake of speed.
It’s worth noting that I work 10 hours a day on weekdays (from home) and he’s out working about 9-10 hours each day because his school is an hour’s drive away - often longer due to traffic. He was going to move to a local school but that fell through and now he’s applying to vacancies again (if there are any). He also has to bring work home with him, so the weekends are only really one day long and so the chores are just piling up like the dirt in our house.
I honestly don’t know how we’ll cope when DC arrives and I eventually go back to work because he works long hours like me but his pay is half of mine (he’s a teacher) so even though we both work a lot we don’t have the finances to back it and have a cleaner once a week or sign up to hello fresh or gousto. Plus we have a mortgage with an insane interest rate so there’s no option for me to work part-time when I return from mat leave.
I feel disgusting and I’m sick of people telling me to take it easy because I’m pregnant. Taking it easy is a luxury I can’t afford (and realise that lots of women have it much worse especially when they have other DCs to look after).
Any advice from the more seasoned DWs and DMs would be welcome as I’ve just been crying for the past hour.