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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Partner doesn't like baby

228 replies

ipukepoodles · 29/09/2010 13:09

Hi,
I've come here as a last resort as i really don't know what to do anymore!
I have a 5 week old boy who i love to bits and actually think is really well behaved for a baby, however, my partner thinks differently. Whenever he cries he calls him a 'whinging bastard' and won't pick him up, he says he feels like he isn't a dad and says he resents him as we argue quite a bit now. Thing is, when i was pregnant he was pretty good (okay so not the most enthuastic person about it but towards the end he was) He's not a bad person at all and been a really good boy friend but suddenly he's changed. If our baby is crying and there's something he wants to watch on tv he wants to put him in the other room and 'let him cry it out' iv'e tried explaining that he's too young to be left but he won't have any of it so i have to go and sit in the other room too.
Is any of this normal? What can i do to try and get him to form a relationship with his son? I'm really trying but not getting anywhere and then i end up cross and upset and say things like you dont do anything, your shit. But i know this is only going to make things worse but i'm desperate! :(

I had a long labour and know that he actually found the labour really hard and nearly fainted - could he resent him because he just remembers the labour? Also he spent 6 days in neonatal unit. This baby wasn't planned but it was him that convinced me to keep him (not that i regret it at all!) He expects me to do all the cleaning of the flat whilst he is at work too and argues with me if it's not tidy enough! He's actually a really great guy (although i've painted this picture of him, he is loving towards me and other than this we rarely argue!) but i'm at my wits end now!

OP posts:
scotsgirl23 · 29/09/2010 15:12

TBH I think some of the reactions here are a little OTT too. Like Queenofdreams, I can kind of sympathise. I have a 4 month old baby girl who I love with all my heart. BUT - I HATED the first few weeks, I really did. She screamed, all the time, and only my DH could soothe her.

Once DH went back to work and I was alone with her all day I really struggled. And yes, to my shame, I probably did swear when she would scream for hours (literally) on end - turned out to be silent reflux - and I remember crying to my DH that I didn't feel like a mum. When he was home he did most of the caring. And I even recognise the behaving different when out and about factor - I didn't want people to think I was a bad mum who didn't love her baby.

However, a few weeks at this age makes a huge difference. It really does. I hate being apart from my baby now - she's turned from the screaming little ball of need, to an interactive little person who smiles and giggles and recognises us. She plays with things, she even tries to stroke the cats! Every day she does something new or better.

I suppose what I'm saying is, he may not be a useless dad or a vile person - he may just be struggling to cope and not knowing how to express himself. And my very laid back DH also couldn't understand how I didn't get a chance to do anything else during the day - until he was home alone with her!

I suspect if a woman had posted saying she couldn't stand her baby crying, and just wanted some peace and quiet and a bit of her old life back, the response would probably be very different.

I would however knock the crying it out thing FIRMLY on the head - is this possibly something he's picked up from older generation? My MIL constantly makes comments about how babies were left to cry, so I had to explain to DH that it's not OK.

ipukepoodles · 29/09/2010 15:18

Thats what my partner says, he just doesn't have the patience, as i said, when we are out, he's compltetly different and appears to love him to bits. When did you start bonding with him? It's clear my partner does want to bond with him and has told me many times but just keeps backing away from it.
I know this sounds strange but we have cats, when we first got them, he hated them, got really cross with them and didn't want them here, now the baby has come, he loves the cats and happily tells me every day that he loves them and thinks they are great and always picks them up - i know it sounds weird but all of a sudden he changed and i know you can't compare a baby to a cat! But it was like over night he changed. Do you think he could possibly do the same with the baby?

OP posts:
alexsdad · 29/09/2010 15:19

I would agree that the actual responses the OPs DH is giving are somewhat on the extreme of normal, but from a Dad perspective (obviously just my own!), interacting with newborns can be difficult to start off with - and can depend on the way the child reacts to you.

DD (firstborn) - I had a fantastic time with when she was born. Because she was caesarian, and DW was laid up in hospital, something like 90% of the initial care fell to me. DD responded brilliantly and I immediately had a really close bond with her. Could happily hold her all day long and she was as contented as anything.

DS (non-C-section) was a completely different story. He would NOT let me hold him without crying. Seemed much more difficult with me when changing him etc. - whereas he was as maleable as anything for DW. It got really frustrating. You want to get in there and help, and be part of it - but you feel excluded. Because (in this case) mother and son were forming a close bond, then you are excluded (to an extent) from the whole family thing. Ultimately, and with hindsight, it was only for a few months, until (miraculously) I made DS laugh for the first time - and after that everything changed. From then on he was brilliant. It now seems trivial and such a short span of time, but at the time it really got me down.

Now, i didn't respond in the way that the OPs DH did, by any means (for a start, I had DD to play with Smile). But I just wanted to point out it can be difficult.

Also worth bearing in mind that perhaps whilst your DH might not be great with baby's, he may be wonderful with teenagers - and that's going to be a minefield for a much longer period than having a baby!

systemsaddict · 29/09/2010 15:24

poodles I can't tell you he will definitely bond with the baby suddenly but I can tell you it is possible. My son was born end of August and my partner said he felt the bonding 'suddenly' happen at Christmas, when he was 4 months old and we all really turned a corner. Hang in there.

ipukepoodles · 29/09/2010 15:24

Yeah, i don't let him cry it out - baby's this age cry for something, not for nothing. I don't let him cry it out - i admit, i have walked out the room for 10 mins before when i just couldn't cope after him crying for 3 hours and i wouldn't have left him any longer i was just going to break down and needed a few mins to recouperate!
It's reasurring to know that other people have felt like this is ways.
As i said before, and everyone corrected me, my partner is not a bad person, he's not evil and horrible, yes he has said bad things and done bad things however, i really don't think this is done in a deliberate way (obviously the swearing is done deliberatly)

OP posts:
ipukepoodles · 29/09/2010 15:29

alexsdad - Our baby was in neonatal for 6 days, it was me that got up in the middle of the night to feed him because my partner didn't have a choice, i had to, he couldn't do any care whilst we were in there, however, he'd spend hours holding him, we got a family room in neonatal and he stayed, he got up in the night and soothed him back to sleep, then we got home, everything changed, he still got up but became more and more frustrated. I haven't helped because i haven't been supportive but at the time, i can only see the fact he's sat there doing nothing and i'm doing everything.
I deliberatly haven't bathed baby yet today, going to ask partner to do it tonight. He wants to bond with baby, he says that and you can see it when he's with him and when we are out, he does hug him, kiss him etc so i'm going to speak to him but i think i'll try and support him and hope things change in the next few weeks.

OP posts:
msboogie · 29/09/2010 15:35

OK, I'm back. I think it is very true that if the OP were on here talking about her own struggle to adjust and talking about wanting to throw the baby out the window we would all be making sympathetic noises and talking about PND.

I am no apologist for the male of the species but the fact of the matter is that he is struggling and this is making you unhappy so you do need to manage him a bit - not leave him or threaten to leave him, not on the basis of this and certainly not yet.

Everyone has expectations and most of us are not prepared for the pretty grim reality of looking after a newborn. For men it is even more of a shock becasue they have not been growing this baby inside them and making sacrifices for it, for nine months. A baby is usually not "real" to a man until it appears in front of him bawling its head off.

There is something that you need to explain to him. This is really really obvious but when a baby is crying and bawling for hours on end it is not doing it to annoy you or wind you up - although sometimes it can feel like it. Babies have a lovely time of it in the womb and then they come out and have their own very difficult and painful adjustment to make. I'm sure the transition to being in the real world with tummy aches and noises and fear and hunger and all of that must be just horrible for a baby. And babies have no other way of communicating but crying. And their crying has been designed by millions and millions of years of evolution to be as godawful f*cking annoying as it possibly can be so that mummy and daddy cannot just ignore it and leave baby starving behind a rock for any passing lion to eat.

It might help him to understand that junior is not in fact a whinging bastard but the peak of several million years worth of succesful breeding and childcare.

It might also help him to understand that most blokes probably feel the way he does from time to time with a newborn and that the first 3-6 months are actually quite sh*it but after that it gets easier - all the time. And it goes by really really fast. Very soon the the little fella will be calling him daddy and asking him to play with his trains and able to have conversation with him and he will (nearly) forget all this pointless boring whinging.

For your part OP, I think you need to make your DP feel involved, and needed and useful. Give him jobs (the fun ones if need be, like bathtime or reading stories) and ask his opinion on everything - every last vest you buy should require his input and opinion.

I have a 2 year old with a DP who is a wonderful dad and his own dad is and was very hands on, loving, involved. But DP struggled with the early days and got annoyed and impatient with the crying and, I could tell, felt it was all unnecessary and even to this day he is much more willing to let DS cry than I am. He never called him anything but he did once to my shock, chuck a bottle of milk on the floor at 3am in an exhausted fit of temper. This was so unlike him you wouldn't believe.

Anyway I have wittered on but you get the picture. He needs to understand that the annoying stuff happens for a reason and is very shortlived, and that soon he will feel very much like a dad - he just needs to be patient, with himself, with the baby and with you. And you need to let him see how important he is to you and the baby and that he will learn how to be a brilliant dad if he just chills out a bit.

scotsgirl23 · 29/09/2010 15:36

Hang in there IPP - bathing is definitely a nice bonding time. Something else I found helpful - my little girl was a major screamy baby, and I hated taking her out as she would just scream - I found that she LOVED her moby wrap - didn't matter if it was me or DH, either one would do, she loved it. We both used it around the house, strapped her to us and got on with things with her against our bare chests. It was one of the first things I could do to settle her, and figuring it out was actually quite a big turning point for me. May be worth a try for him?

QueenofDreams · 29/09/2010 15:44

Well I can't say a definitive moment when things changed for me. I think I just gradually learned to cope better. I have to stress that it's not that I didn't love DS. I just couldn't cope with the crying and the constant burden of responsibility.

I think what made it harder was that DP would just leave me to try and get on with things and then when I broke down unable to cope he would shout and call me names. This only made me feel like more of a shit mother than I already did. I think if he had supported me and helped me learn how to cope instead of having a go, I would have adjusted a lot more quickly than I did. As it was I felt that I was just expected to get on with it and when I failed he would run me down.

I know it's hard when you're tired from doing everything and the newborn days are such hard work, but maybe a calm discussion of ways for him to learn to interact with the baby would help?

msboogie · 29/09/2010 15:44

ohh yes, very good point! have you discovered the swaddling thing? DP actually figured this out as I had not heard of it and it became his thing at 3am for getting baby to stop screaming and settle for sleep.

The other thing that ocurred to me is that its not really fair to criticise him for being all lovely dovey in public. Everyone puts on a public face - baby included. We all sit festering in the house in 2 day old jammies with a newborn smelling of poo or sick or whatever and then when you go out and baby is all dressed up and cooing in his buggy and you are all smiles and saying how wonderful it all is when you meet people in the street.

Pootles2010 · 29/09/2010 15:46

You poor thing - its so hard at the start. Maybe your dp did have unrealistic expectations - he was thinking he'd have a little baby that could smile gurgle etc - at the start you just give and give and get nothing back, its hard to deal with i know.

Maybe it would worth talking to midwife/health visitor, you never know there might be support for dads in your area? Certainly our surestart centre has a dads session on sat morning, with playstations etc, idea being they can talk to other dads, and theres a health visitor too to ask questions. Might be worth asking?

Pootles2010 · 29/09/2010 15:49

Oh also meant to say - it might help to give him something to do which is 'his' thing - emphasise that you can't seem to get it to work, could he have a go... it makes them feel more involved i think, especially if your bfing (don't know if you are, but works even if not!). For us this was winding - my dp is actually much better than me, health visitor said this is quite common - something to do with them having broad shoulders or something? Very random, but seems true for us anyway! Rather nice because i feed ds, then dp winds him, then he tends to fall asleep on dp's chest which is so lovely!

Mindovermatter · 29/09/2010 15:55

Try a dummy at night time, at least in these early few months. A crying baby can be stressful when your both tired. Me and my DH have a 6 week old baby, trust me things do get better. I too had a bad labour, and our baby wasn't planned either. May I suggest involving your partner more, for example pushing baby in pram roun d the block or to the shops at weekends, would do you all good to get out. My DH is really good at bathing our baby, this is another way of involving your partner. It is very common for men to feel pushed out as all the focus is on mother and baby. I would also ask your family or friends to give you a break if possible even only for a few hours at night or weekends so the two of you can be alone for a bit. Hope this helps? X

DinahRod · 29/09/2010 16:11

Can I link I know it's a man on Richard and Judy telling women how to stop babies crying but it's very interesting. Show dp too.

Get all the family support you can. It can be very useful for dp to be around other Dads.

Is the baby on any meds for the colic?

ipukepoodles · 29/09/2010 16:12

Thank you for all your help, P said to me 'most blokes feel like this, they just don't say it' I said i think a lot of blokes do feel like that at some points but not all the time. He does get really cross when i get upset, just yesterday he called me a 'whinging, lazy bastard' because i hadn't tidied all the flat. I think he did think having a baby ment it was a little person to play with and make laugh but to begin with, it's not like that and i think it shocked him. I'm going to ask him to do the bath tonight, he seems to take every as a militry mission instead of a bit of fun, he realises this though and will say i need to stop doing that and he will, for a while.
Yeah he is good at winding so i might try that too, he does feed and wind him when i ask him to. He is very good at swaddling him and very good at settling him in the evening, but he doesn't tend to do it anymore. He's home soon so i'm going to speak to him about it!

OP posts:
spikeycow · 29/09/2010 16:14

Oh FFS

Mindovermatter · 29/09/2010 16:19

I have found that soothing music helps to calm baby at night, we have a mobile that plays music. We have a local NCT group near us that lets you hire stuff for free such as musical mobiles etc, find out where your nearest is, mine have been fab. There is a Childrens centre near us that provides loads of info and plus you can make friends with other Mums with babies and swap tips and support each other, Perhaps your HV can tell you? Put your babies name down for a free baby massage session, helps to calm baby, is good for colic too!

NotWoozy · 29/09/2010 16:20

If my partner called me a "whinging lazy bastard" 5 weeks postnatally, after enduring a long labour to bring his child into the world, I would ensure he could not procreate ever again in the most definite manner possible.
But you go right ahead and speak to him, he sounds very reasonable indeed. Hmm

spikeycow · 29/09/2010 16:23

Er, do you leave your baby alone with him? I think you need to read up on domestic abuse and open your eyes as to what could be going on. He is a wierdo and possibly a bomb waiting to go off. He loves the cats now does he? How was he treating them when he hated them? And you kept them, yes? So who is responsible for the safety of this child?

relieved · 29/09/2010 16:23

This post makes me sad for you.

Yes it is hard, and some people do find newborn babies tedious - lots of time and energy for very little 'return' at this stage, but this is a baby, this is the deal, your DP needs to strap on a pair, 'man up' so to speak and get on with something that is his responsibility too - other posters have made some useful suggestions to coax his nurturing side - it doesn't come naturally to everyone, and I understand that 'get a grip you moron!' might not be the most productive way.

I wish you luck, and congratulations on your DS! Yay!

msboogie · 29/09/2010 16:24

look, it's not nice but it's a symptom of the difficult time they are going through. The OP needs constructive advice not criticism of Mr Potty Mouth!

spikeycow · 29/09/2010 16:25

I said wake up. That is very constructive in this instance.

Mindovermatter · 29/09/2010 16:26

Just remember that this phase of babies life isn't going to go on forever, yes it is hard work and stressful but THINGS WILL GET BETTER, have faith. Good luck! X

spikeycow · 29/09/2010 16:29

This baby will become a toddler, who slaps, hair pulls, breaks PS3s etc. Then what? This man is not mature enough to cope with that by the sounds of it.

notalways · 29/09/2010 16:30

Ipukepoodles

It is normal for men to feel a bit out of place during the first few months. I think the image of the baby smiling back at the loving father and mother and the cooing etc sets up totally unrealistic expectation as of course the baby doesn't show any emotion for the first few weeks and this can be quite unsettling especially if you are insecure.

But this does not excuse or explain your partner's behaviour or make it "normal". Regardless of bonding, it should be fairly clear that calling a baby a whinging bastard is unacceptable and this should not have to be explained to a 24 year old man.

I also think it interesting that you have titled this thread - partner doesn't like baby and not - partner hasn't bonded with baby. While my own husband took some months to bond with our children I would never have thought of him as not liking our children.

Women coping with hormones after having children can be excused more than the fathers I am afraid.

I think it is good that you are tackling this so well. I would again urge you to talk to someone in your real life as we can only guess.