DH struggling to cope with my pregnancy sickness

[LilacWine7]

I was diagnosed with severe form of pregnancy sickness 3 months ago and it hasn't improved much. I've tried medications and every alternative remedy out there but most days i still vomit several times and some days I vomit 10x or more. In between I feel nauseous though have started to have a few hours a day when the nausea lifts.

DH was very patient at first but now he is fed-up and frustrated. He complains we have no social life, no sex life and he feels neglected. I've explained I can't get in the mood for sex when I feel sick (we've only had sex 4x since I got pregnant) and I hate leaving the house unless essential as I hate being sick in public. Friends visit us at home but i find it tiring, and when we have overnight guests he ends up doing most of entertaining. Ive managed to go back to work part-time but often take days off sick when i'm vomiting a lot (its a very physical client-centred job). He thinks I should force myself to go in every day as its a new role and I need to make good impression.

Most of time he's very caring, does all the food shopping, helps with meal prep etc. Other days he gets angry and says I need to make more effort with our relationship, try harder to go to work and get out of house more. He thinks fresh air and eating something every hour will help, but sometimes nothing helps and he doesn't understand I can't eat regularly at work. He nags me to eat all the time as he's worried the baby might not get enough nutrients.

How can i improve our relationship and help him to be less impatient? I know its hard for him but I don't have much energy. I can't watch movies with him either (TV triggers sickness) and when I feel ill i just want to curl up by myself. How do i stop him feeling neglected and ignored? I know he's stressed and worried, but how do i reassure him? He says my mood-swings are horrendous.

Sorry you're feeling so awful OP. I think your DH sounds a very selfish man. You're so ill you can't do much but he's making it all about him.

I'm afraid he really needs to grow up. He sounds the kind of 'man' who'll also be whining about no sex and feeling 'neglected' when you're recovering from birth and nursing a newborn. You really don't want that, it'll kill your love for him.

Thurlow - do you actually think posters should be rallying round with practical suggestions for how op can help her DH 'cope' with this?

People are saying he's a dick because he is and OP needs to know that he is out of order.

I know he's stressed and worried, but how do i reassure him?

How about reassuring him that if he doesn't stop acting like a cunt you'll be bringing your marriage to a neat and tidy end?

You are seriously ill and he is bullying you and all upset about his own precious self.

It's as though you don't even figure as a person to him.

He's got a whole personality transplant to get working on it he's going to be any kind of father to this baby.

That should keep him too busy to be worrying about whether he gets to stick his cock in a sick woman.

You know that normal men (not even especially nice ones, either) would be doing whatever they could to make your life easier?

Do your parents know about how he treats you? Your friends?

^this^

Doh!

I meant I agree with the previous poster ^^

I'm sorry OP but his behaviour really isn't nice atm.
Has any of his musing over your health ever involved how you feel at all? Why is it 'you being ill is making ME feel sad' rather than 'you being sick all the time must be making you feel so miserable love, I'm so sorry you are going through this'?
If on the balance of things all he has to cope with is a lack of sex and less socialising he's not doing so bad is he? Your body is and will be going through so much right now, he needs to be supportive of that, not trying to make it all about him.

You're using your body to grow his baby and he's complaining because it's made you ill? Seriously? So, rather than being grateful that he doesn't have to be the one vomiting 10 times a day, he's whinging and moaning that he doesn't get sex.

IMO you need to have a very serious talk to him about this and if he doesn't buck up his ideas consider getting out and living elsewhere at least for the time being. The stress he is putting on you won't be helping the sickness - trying not to be sick and soldier on to please him will actually be making you worse. You need proper care with someone who will look after you and let you rest.

He is an unbelievably nasty arsehole. How could a man see his poor wife struggling in this way and think "waaah no one is looking after me!" Unless this is nipped in the bud now he's going to be ten times worse when there's a baby on the scene and sex/sleep/any sort of life is entirely off the cards.

Christ no, cosy. He is being prickish - or at least he is judging by the information in the OP (which I am not questioning in anyway, it's just that we're only being shown one part of their relationship).

I just meant that saying "that behaviour is prickish", plus leaping to say he's going to be a terrible dad, isn't helpful, is it?

No one should be advising the OP how to make him feel better. But what would be nice would be posts talking about how to try and have a conversation with him and how to tackle his completely mistaken beliefs. Maybe he is an absolute arsehole and things will get worse. Maybe he's not an absolute arsehole and this is an incredibly upsetting and painful way of his emotions coming out.

And if it is the first, there's still nothing especially helpful on this thread, is there?

I'm not surprised the OP hasn't been back.

Maybe she will find it helpful to realise that lots of people don't think it's her job to placate this wanker when she's so unwell?

That the way he's carrying on, which she appears to believe is her responsibility is not remotely OK, and is all on him.

Maybe she'll start to think of this appalling bullying as something she should stand up to, rather than something she should appease?

what would be nice would be posts talking about how to try and have a conversation with him and how to tackle his completely mistaken beliefs

Lot's of people have suggested how to have that conversation.

It's a conversation that needs to start with something along the lines of "buck up your ideas, sunshine".

This is not the time for "dear lovely husband, I don't want to upset you and I understand how completely devastating you are going to find this, but I need to explain that you are mistaken in your belief that the world revolves entirely around you and what you want."

It is absolutely worth letting her know that he is likely to be just as bad when the baby is here.

The kind of attitude that allows him to see his wife's sickness entirely in terms of how it affects him is on the spectrum of abusive attitudes, and we all know that pregnancy and early days post-baby are a time when men with abusive tendencies often first show themselves as such.

It is also helpful to ask her to tell people in her life about the shocking treatment she is getting from her spouse when she is so vulnerable.

get your support from someone else; rally round friends and family - you will need it when you have a baby....if he cannot manage you being sick what about a pooey vomitty baby?

tell your midwife and let let your midwife have a few choice words with your dh.

Thanks for everyone's responses and suggestions.

I think I portrayed DH in rather an unflattering light. Most of the time he is tolerant, kind and helpful. He is supportive most of time. He's very excited about being a dad and spends a lot of time reading parenting books, researching best travel-systems, researching HG stats etc. But HG does put a strain on our relationship. He thinks he is a lot more patient and tolerant than I think he is. He says I'm moody all the time and keep snapping at him (this is true, I lose patience with him quickly).

I think it's hard for him to understand how exhausting and depressing it is feeling sick all the time. I don't know how to make him understand that his 'helpful' remarks actually come across as critical. I don't want to be told to eat all the time, or have him moan about lack of sex, or hear his advice about how often I should go into work. I hate feeling micro-managed. I hate it that he thinks I should do all the housework when I'm off sick! Yet I feel guilty every time he complains about the effect my behaviour/moods have on him.

I want him to express his feelings and be able to open up to me, but at same time I'm sick of feeling under pressure to be cheerful and happy.

Lilac, most people are going to call your DH a twat because he is behaving like one. It doesn't matter if he is not a twat all the time. I guess its how much of a twat you are willing to put up with.

On a separate note have you been to the GP? I got prescribed some anti-sickness medication that I put under my lip (couldn't keep other types down long enough to work). This worked well for my bad morning sickness.

From what you type you seem to think his feelings are more important and more valid than yours. Why is that?

I was in this position several years ago, pregnancy was when my husband began being emotionally abusive. Men like that resent being needed, resent reminders that you are a human being with needs sometimes at odds with their own. So many women don't notice in the early stage of a relationship, we are taught to cope, to take on the responsibility, to pick up the slack, but pregnancy changes the dynamic. I might be totally off the mark, but this is almost word for word how my ex began to show his true colours, once I needed his support instead of it being the other way around. I was left utterly unsupported throughout pregnancy and it only got worse.

His comments feel like criticism because they are. Because underneath there is the insinuation that if you tried harder, or were stronger, or more committed, you wouldn't feel so ill. It feels nasty and upsetting because it is. He is wrong. .

If he's moaning about lack of sex and social life while you're feeling like death warmed up, I'm not surprised you 'lose patience with him quickly'!

He's reading up on HG stats? Well done to him.

Dear OP, you might want to tell him that the only real way to begin to understand HG is by reading a qualatative study or two on the subject. Numbers are great, but with something like HG, numbers won't help him understand how you feel.

Or better still: he has a first hand case study in the form of you. If that is not enough, then I doubt any qulatative study is going to help him.

You see, although you say he is nice most of the time, this is the time where he should worship and support you the most - and most men do - yet he doesn't. Which leads me (and clearly many others here) that he really isn't at nice as you try to now make him out to be.

Look, he can be researching travel systems all he likes (FYI mine is like this, given the choice between taking an actual action and spending five hours online finding out the best action to take, he'll do the latter, every time) but it doesn't make him supportive. And it's ok to remind him of this. Maybe he isn't a prick, maybe he's just overwhelmed and lost sight a bit of what the actual focus should be.

But there is nothing wrong with giving him a reminder, and it shouldn't have to be worded as though it's your fault.

And frankly, unless it's not so much a complaint as an incredibly lovingly expressed declaration of missing your joint sex life and being sad you're ill and he can't fix it, anyone who complains about lack of sex when someone has HG would be on very thin ice, with me.

The only way to understand pg sickness is to experience it

if someone had offered to shoot me dead I would have accepted

Hg statistics? Well hoo-jolly-rah! I bet it will cheer you up no end when you're hurling into the toilet bowl to know that 63% of women feel OK enough to bleach it afterwards and wash the floor too.

"I want him to express his feelings and be able to open up to me" Hmm, well, maybe these are feelings he'd do well to keep to himself for once.

He's excited about being a dad? Great, as long as he doesn't just treat you as an incubator for his child, and one that he feels isn't functioning as well as it ought.

I hate it that he thinks I should do all the housework when I'm off sick! My rule was that if I could get to the door without throwing up, I would go to work. If I couldn't, I would stay at home. Had someone suggested Hoovering while I vomited, I would not have been responsible for my actions.

Tell him to man the fuck up.

Maybe get him to read this thread.......

He may then realise what a prick he is being!

Re: the socialising.....come baby being born that will reduce or become non excistent so this is good practise for him.

By the way, this isn't the twat of a dh who was cooking smoked fish yesterday while his pg wife was vomiting upstairs, is it?

I hope you have a labour that he approves of, and a quiet and sleeping baby. I had c section and chronically colic baby and that meant no sex for longer, he didn't like that one bit and blamed me entirely for the lot. At your stage I would have said he was kind and decent too, the extent of his resentment at no longer being no 1 came out later. Course I m rather biased, but it does all seem rather familiar.

He's a dickhead. You may not realise it now, hence things like, 'I painted him in a bad light,' but he's a crusty arsehole. His actions say this. He's immature, too.

I'd read him the fucking Riot Act.