DH facing redundancy...how can I help???

[SleeplessinSW17]

My DH is facing redundancy from a long-hours well-paid creative-media post and it has knocked his confidence big time (partly family issues-happened to his father several times when growing up...) Now I like to think I'm a nice person but have definitely not been dream wife since our DS was born 18 months ago. We both adore him but i work full-time equivalent in 5 days, baba is an early riser so am permanently knackered and still not feeling the most attractive due to baby-belly remnant. Dh working long hours has meant I take on most baby responsibilities and tend to take on most household ones too (although he does cook a lot of thetime) Therefore am often tired irritable grouchy when DH does his socks on floor man thing and not up for rumpy pumpy as much as he would like. We were planning to start trying for baby number 2 and buy a house so the timing is not great-but we have equity on previous property and I work full-time so we will survive just fine. How can I help him to believe in himself again??? And stop being a grumpy old cow when he does thing that wind me up??

bump...anyone been through this??????

Oh dear, sorry to hear this.
We bought our first house at the end of Jan, moved, which was enormously stressful and then 2 weeks after we moved in, dh got made redundant. It came very out of the blue. He initially seemed to deal with it really well, but since then (about 4 weeks ago), things have got more and more stressful, with him doing lots of nights out and generally not coping very well with being at home (he's been on gardening leave since that day). It's been v stressful, and many tears and cross words!

Am not dream wife at all, either! Like yours, my dh does do a bit of cooking, but doesn't do well on the dirty socks front (grr). I have tried to bite my tongue over things like that (hard!) and just get on with it. I have tried to keep things as smooth as possible at home, using meal planners for the first time, giving him plenty of time to himself - both while I take dd out, and sending him out with his mates. I also encouraged him subtly to look for jobs early on.

It has only worked to a certain extent though to be honest. He is about to turn 30 and seems to be having a bit of a crisis about it all. It really has been a hard time - compounded by the new, huge mortgage, no doubt, and after he encouraged me to give up well-paid job to make this move.

Male pride is hard to deal with in my humble opinion! I've never given him any sort of a hard time about it, but it's been bloody hard going. Is the redundancy definite for your dh?

i have been in a similar situation to your dh - waves of redundancies at work and feeling like my every move is being watched for signs of failure. it's extremely stressful. one way that he can see that there is life beyond his work is to start looking at the job market and working out a strategy for if it actually does happen.

plus, all the usual advice that goes with having small children and not getting enough time for yourself: get someone to babysit once in a while to give you a break and help you stay calm.

but i think sitting down and facing the worst case scenario and realising that it really isn't that bad, that your family will survive, will help a lot.

No experience with partner being made redundant, but if any help:
I was made redundant recently and while felt v angry/badly treated etc for first 6 weeks, then felt I needed to make most of my gardening leave (not likley to get another stretch of paid time off work again etc til i retire) I needed to not think about old job. So i enjoyed a few weeks of taking children to and from school, no afterschool club etc, then went on a couple of computer training courses to help me get a bit of confidence, then signed on with job agency and have got med term temp job which is giving me a bit of different experience and confidence.

You dont choose to be made redundant, but you just need to make the best of it (I remember reading something by Victor Frankl(?) not what happens, but how you view it that counts i think)

Thank you all for your kind words -knew I could rely on mumsnet...he has a meeting with his boss and HR tomorrow when I think it will be made definite. Lily bubble you are definitely being more of a saint than I am thus far...I think giving him a bit of time to come to terms with it feel sad angry etc is probably wise...

Dh was made redundant when ds1 was 15 months. I don't work, though, so that was added stress.
They made his whole team redundant and told them all in a huge meeting. By the time the meeting was over he'd made a long list of companies he'd worked for in the past and places he's interviewed at. Also places where friends of his worked or had previously worked. He then spent the rest of the day phoning all these places.
That night he updated his cv (which was actually quite current already iirc) and sent it out to those he'd talked to. The next day he got in touch with the agents and sent them a copy of his cv and started phoning round his friends to see if they knew of anywhere that was hiring that he hadn't covered.
This was all at the end of November so everything was really slow and he didn't get many responses/interviews at all in December. Over Christmas he trawled the net for any positions he hadn't yet considered.
Dh and I agreed that for the right job we'd move anywhere. I got the house valued and found out how much and what was entailed in surrendering our fixed-rate mortgage (we knew the house would sell quickly). Dh checked his saving/assets and how quickly he could get the money if needed. He also reviewed what big bills needed paying when so we didn't get caught out. At Christmas dh's family gave us some money to cover our gym membership etc which was up for renewal in Jan. They felt it was quite important that this wasn't sacrificed (much appreciated and helped maintain my sense that life would go on).
We also talked about dh getting "any" job necessary - though it never came to that thankfully. I also told dh I was quite prepared to go back and work if that was what was required. Dh was quite reluctant for me to do this so I agreed to wait.
As it was dh got a job the day after I'd been offered one (freelance) so I turned it down. It was 11 weeks since he'd had that meeting. The job wasn't as good as his previous one, but it was in the right industry, for one of the "best" firms in his industry with the potential to be made into something more up his street. (It didn't work out, but that's irrelevant now - the important thing was he wasn't going to have a massive hole in his cv.)
I think one of the main things that stressed dh out was going back to these companies after he'd contacted them all Nov/Dec in Jan to see if anything had changed since he didn't hear back from a lot of them.
Now he says he wishes he'd done more with his free time and spent more time with ds!
Have to say I really tried not to pressurise dh at all - he was doing enough of that to himself. I tried to help by reducing our food bills and by spending as little money as possible, but that was about all I could pratically do. Otherwise I just tried to be there to talk to when he needed someone.