disappointed/angry at husband after baby

[miserylovescompany]

i need a vent and hope this is the place.
Have been happily married for years, blessed with a baby 3 months ago. Mutually planned-no problems conceiving. Husband is a nice person.

Am enjoying motherhood but the one thing im finding upsetting is how my husband has been. Frankly im really disappointed, i think he's shown himself to be really quite selfish and i feel like the resonsibility for baby is all on me.

Labour was quite long but i felt that husband wasnt massively supportive. He was scared, i know that, but during he kept mentioning how worn out he was from missed nights sleep. afterwards he was more keen to get home to bed rather than coming with us to get settled on the ward.

In the following days he was again not as supportive as i hoped, he did cook etc but his attitude really anoyed me- sighing and saying the babys noisy feeding was annoying him during night breastfeeds for example. handing baby to me whenever she cried as i was feeding, but not doing anything to try and settle her etc or interacting with her much at all. plus moaning about being tired when actually he didnt ever have to get out of bed at night, just put up with lamp on dim etc. I also dont remember him asing me if i was okay, or how our day had been etc . (He only had 2 days paternity leave.)

Now he is getting better with baby, more caring towards her and interested/interacting which is good but still acts as if its my baby- stuff like refusing to do nappies sometimes if its really big one..eeeerrr as a parent we cant both just refuse!

He also is self employed and pays more time and interest to his projects than us, has had hardly any days off for few weeks then does work stuff on those days too.

i know its early days and emotions run high, but I just feel like im the only parent here, and im also struggling to let go of the anger i have about how selfish he was in the early days :( Tell me it gets better.

It gets better but only if you start as you mean to go on.
If he's always able to absolve all responsibility for baby (congratulations btw!!) onto you then he will do.
Start with the choices 'would you rather bath baby or do nappies this eve?' for example.
This happened with my DD1 - I was breastfeeding but never got a moments peace in between. He would hand her to me if she even just whimpered. Eventually, after she'd been fed I handed her over and said 'I'm nipping to mums for coffee - back in an hour!' and then I legged it!!!
Best thing I ever did. He learned to cope by being hands on, just like I did.
I think, looking back, it wasn't that he saw it as 'woman's work' but he saw I was capable and he felt he wasn't.

I agree that a lot of his attitide - if he's otherwise a good bloke - could actually be fear of his own incompetence than disinterest. Have you talked to him about how you're feeling? Having a newborn is a hell of a strain on any couple - all those things you'd otherwise sort out become huge pits of simmering resentment; you mustn't stop communicating.

rather than disinterest, I meant

i do think some of it is that he feels incompetant. ive tried to explain that i only know how to soothe her through practice and that he needs to spend time to learn it too.
i have spoken to him about it but he takes it as criticism and gets defensive.

posted too soon. i think youve both hit the nail on the head and i need to take mushrooms ad vice and divvy out jobs nd encourage his involvement.
im finding it had not to lose it with him, which makes it worse. i just feel jealous of those whose husbands naturally support them and seem to want to be more hands on. gutted that it seems i hae to force him to say hello to baby when gets in from work etc.

It's very common amongst people I know, takes a while for you all to adjust.

reassuring :) thanks.

If we forget the fact it's a baby for a minute I'd be exactly the same - its a pain to learn something new when your other half can already do it - it's far easier just to hand the problem back to them than start trying to figure it out yourself.

Who wouldn't take that way out if the other person was willing (or didn't say much about their resentment).

Definitely do as others suggest - hand the baby over, go in the bath, go out to the shop etc

My DH was a bit like this with both of our DCs when they were newborns. He felt pretty useless as I was exclusively bf'ing DC1. Once the bottle was introduced he got more involved.

DC2 is now 11mo and DH is now starting to get into his stride with him, as he did with DC1. TBH I understand because I'm not much of a baby person either, I much prefer them once they are more interactive and can start to walk and talk.

Might be better if you give him the practical stuff to do - cooking, cleaning etc. babies generally settle better for mum anyway!

I've found this approach works much better then getting DH to deal with baby. Although he was very hands on with our first especially when I needed a break. You could get yours to take baby out for a walk etc? With our second, I've done most of it in the early months and only recently (7 months) does he take DD for longer stretches - simply because she's BF and feeds so often.

You should talk about what happened during labour but by when you're tired. I also found it easier to sleep in a seperate room from DH until the babies settled down at night - less worry about waking him at night or getting annoyed at him being asleep!

Its now been a few years, did it get better? Did yall split? Please let me know because I’m experiencing something similar