I’ve had enough of my husband’s precious first born syndrome

[seaborgium]

Sorry this post is so long.

DS is still on purees because DH is terrified of choking. At the moment DH works mornings and I work afternoons. I give DS finger foods while DH is at work but I have to be very careful not to get caught. I got caught giving DS batons of courgette once and DH absolutely exploded and went on a two hour yelling rant about how DS is going to choke to death one day.

He still weighs our chubby cheeked 91st centile 10 month old DS about once a week. His constant paranoia about whether he was gaining enough weight was perhaps understandable in the newborn days when he was struggling to latch but seriously? DH once went into a panic because DS gained less weight than expected and went from slightly above the 91st centile to slightly below the 91st centile - he insisted on formula top-ups but luckily the baby refused the bottle.

DH does’t want DS crawling on the floor because ‘the floor is dirty’. So DS only gets to crawl on the floor when DH is at work, the rest of the time he is only allowed to crawl in his playpen. DS spends most of his time in the baby walker because he gets fed up with the playpen very quickly. He is in the grey zone for gross motor on the 10 month ASQ. We actually have quite a clean floor IMO.

When DS is asleep DH often asks “are you sure he’s asleep and not dead?”. He often ends up waking DS in his attempts to verify that he is still alive. When DS first began rolling back to front DH was constantly waking him up by rolling him onto his back. Some nights DS refuses to sleep in his cot and we end up on a mattress on the floor and when that happens DH is up half the night worrying about whether DS is going to suffocate or get rolled on top of.

DH wouldn’t let me buy a sling until DS was three months old. He said that putting a newborn in a sling is dangerous because newborns don’t have enough head control. DS could already hold his head up when he was born.

For the first 6 months or so DH was jittery every time I picked up DS. He was constantly going on about how worried he is that I might drop DS. He set up a bedroom downstairs so that I wouldn’t have to carry him up and down stairs.

For the first few months DH would not let me take DS for a walk without him because he was scared that we would get run over. Then he relaxed the rules a bit and allowed me to take him to the local park so long as I followed a prescribed route.

This is really sad, and although it’s not fair for you to live like this.
(Only IMO) he is not doing this out of choice, most of these issues most certainly worried me with our first. But I had severe PND & health anxiety.

When women show these signs everyone supports/ tells them they should go to the doctors. I’m disturbed how many people are telling you to leave him.

I am going on antidepressants soon now my second is born because I can feel my PND coming back.

Please view his actions, not through the eyes of a normal thinking man, but someone who sees danger at every turn because of their mental health. It is exhausting being like that and I can’t imagine anyone choosing to behave /think this way.

This being said please make sure he sees a GP, this will be hurting him, you and your child.
I’m hoping antidepressants will help me and I’m hoping they can help your husband ❤️

@Mumoblue and @Pumperthepumper

I have had my own problems with anxiety, especially post-natally after a highly traumatic birth, and I am not unaware that it can spill over into controlling/abusive patterns of behaviour. However, some posters are suggesting that he is choosing to act this way and is deliberately controlling his wife. None of us can know the truth of the matter, but I do think that someone who clearly does have MH issues ought to be given a chance to rectify them before being written off. Not least as he hasn't actually done anything yet (thank God), so there would be no reason for him not to have their son in his sole care for part of the time, were they to separate - and this would not be a good thing at the moment, whatever the reasons for his behaviour. He sounds very unwell to me, and I hope the OP can prevail upon him to seek help. If he won't do it (because it's easy to feel that your thoughts are normal when you are mentally unwell), OP needs to do it for him and tell her GP/HV exactly what she has told us.

Did he show any signs of this behaviour before your baby was born? Has he lost a child or sibling previously? Men can get postnatal depression too. Get him to see his GP.

OP, if you dont mind me asking, was the pregnancy/birth difficult?

@Whydidimarryhim

He needs help - if he refuses I’d contact social services for advice and leave him. It’s not healthy and he will be impacting the child’s development.

Leave him? That sounds a bit extreme.

This sounds all consuming for all of you. He must be drowning in anxiety to have got to this point. He needs professional intervention and your support to do this - please don’t jump straight in with threats of leaving. He is very unwell and will need your support to get well. This level of MH illness will mean he can’t be rational in a “normal” way and he’ll need help to see that his behaviour is abnormal and will need time to come to terms with it and treat it. Sit him down and have a honest conversation - about the effects on you, how this will effect dc long term and what you need him to do to get well. First step is to go to the GP together and get a plan in place. Good luck x

Hi OP,

Is there anyone close to DP other than you who can talk to him. Maybe his own parents or a sibling. It sounds like he isn't well as others have said but I get that he might push back if you ask him to seek help. Could you show him this thread perhaps. Or could you get him to some baby groups maybe on the weekend so that he can see things like other babies crawling all over the place and eating finger food - might give him some perspective. Wishing you luck with this it sounds really tough xx

Bless you OP, this is a terrible situation. Your husband is harming your child’s normal development. He needs professional help. But also I’m concerned at the way he goes off at you for trying to counteract his ideas. Are you safe?

This sounds like post natal depression and anxiety - men can get it too. iesohealth.com has online CBT therapists, you can get referred by the doctor to receive free treatment, or you might be able to sign up independently I’m not sure. It can feel (for your husband) like he might be beyond help, and that just typing with a therapist once a week won’t be any use, but it can be surprisingly effective. Please ask your husband to consider getting help, it might take a while but it sounds like he is suffering from great anxiety, and support is available to help him get better.

This is classic anxiety, you need to sit him down and talk about some sort of counselling or therapy. It's catastrophising.

I used to be awful for this. Terrified of going to the zoo just in case there was a madman there who would pick up one of my DC and throw them into a lion enclosure, travelling was a nightmare as I would see train/plane/car crashes...basically the worst possible outcome from ANYTHING I would be a tight ball of nerves imagining it.

He should be able to self refer to counselling services but it's a bit of a waiting list so worth going private if you can afford it. Speak to the GP also as if he is open to it there are some good anti-anxiety drugs out there.

There's a few posts on here saying to leave him and run etc etc. these are incredible cruel posts. Your DH isn't thinking straight. He needs support and appropriate treatment not kicking out in his ear.

If a man had posted the same thread saying his wife was behaving like this after giving birth he would be absolutely roasted and educated about PND.

Men can suffer from PND too.

Sounds really unhealthy and this will inevitably impact on your DC.

If you were a man describing his wife's behaviour around your baby for the last 10 months people would be pointing the finger at post natal depression.

You need to speak to your health visitor about your DH's behaviour and ask her/him to speak to your DH's GP if possible.

When women show these signs everyone supports/ tells them they should go to the doctors. I’m disturbed how many people are telling you to leave him.

Domestic abuse in the main doesn't kill men. It kills women. Being shouted at for two hours and not being allowed out of the house with a baby for months? Only being allowed to walk a certain route? At what point does this controlling and abusive behaviour get bad enough that women are allowed to leave?

My god...your DS is going to end up seriously developmentally delayed.

When women show these signs everyone supports/ tells them they should go to the doctors. I’m disturbed how many people are telling you to leave him.

Because it's one thing to be consumed by anxiety and mentally in a mess due to that. It's another thing entirely to think your feelings mean you can dictate how someone else lives their life.

Anxiety is not an excuse for a 2hr rant when the other parent makes a different parenting choice to you and a perfectly normal choice at that .Anxiety isn't an excuse for telling the other parent where to sleep/what route to walk/whether they can go out alone with DC.

Neither is anxiety an excuse for harming your DC development and well-being, by not allowing ordinary activities and preventing proper sleep.

All those things are controlling behaviour and there is no reasonable excuse for that to be acceptable, ever.

He should be thinking his feelings are out of control and going to the doctor about that. Instead he's thinking about how he can control another person's behaviour in order to prevent himself having these feelings. It's just plain wrong.

He's showing his true colours. This is what he's like when things don't go his way or when life goes a bit wrong. That's why she's getting told to LTB.

There's space in this situation to accept he is unwell and needs help but also accept that OP is being controlled (not intentionally) and that her life and her child's are suffering badly for it. She certainly doesn't have to leave him, but she might need to leave the situation for a while until he gets the help he needs, because there are three lives being ruined here, and OP's ultimate responsibility is to her child.

That doesn't mean she can't support and be there for her partner while he tackles this horrible anxiety, but it's also not fair to expect her life and her son's to suffer so greatly for it either. It's not sustainable

@WildPoinsettia

When women show these signs everyone supports/ tells them they should go to the doctors. I’m disturbed how many people are telling you to leave him.

Because it's one thing to be consumed by anxiety and mentally in a mess due to that. It's another thing entirely to think your feelings mean you can dictate how someone else lives their life.

Anxiety is not an excuse for a 2hr rant when the other parent makes a different parenting choice to you and a perfectly normal choice at that .Anxiety isn't an excuse for telling the other parent where to sleep/what route to walk/whether they can go out alone with DC.

Neither is anxiety an excuse for harming your DC development and well-being, by not allowing ordinary activities and preventing proper sleep.

All those things are controlling behaviour and there is no reasonable excuse for that to be acceptable, ever.

He should be thinking his feelings are out of control and going to the doctor about that. Instead he's thinking about how he can control another person's behaviour in order to prevent himself having these feelings. It's just plain wrong.

He's showing his true colours. This is what he's like when things don't go his way or when life goes a bit wrong. That's why she's getting told to LTB.

I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark that you have never struggled with anxiety.

Sounds like OCD to me.

I had anxiety about DS when he was born about similar things though not as extreme as your husband. I started counselling for my anxiety when he was 6 months old because I didn't want to go on like that. It wasn't healthy. It helped me loads and I'm much more chilled now.

Your husband sounds like he has severe anxiety and he needs to get help with it

I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark that you have never struggled with anxiety.

I've watched a family member be abused and controlled by her anxious partner. Being screamed at for placing a fork the 'wrong way'.

At what point are women allowed to prioritise their safety and wellbeing? Does it have to be physical abuse? Or is even that not enough?

Anxiety is not an excuse for behaviour that isn't nice towards the OP, but it is a reason. A person with severe anxiety is more overwhelmed by the thoughts their brain is giving them than the upset they might be causing the other person. If there is OCD going on then it's very possible that he is having certain thoughts that something bad will happen to baby if they x doesn't happen.
It doesn't mean we don't feel bad when we do it. I ended my marriage largely because my anxiety and depression was too bad to be around for my ex and I didn't want to expose him to any more of it. I don't think this is a sign to end things, but he 100% needs to seek help because if not then that's when things get tricky because essentially you are walking on eggshells in your own home.

Sorry that was really terribly written, hopefully my general point got across.

Some of these things seems semi reasonable to me. Others would make me absolutely rage. Others require some compromise.

My son started rolling very early and then started rolling onto his front in his sleep, which was very worrying for me at first. I still check in on him every hour or so until I go to bed. I make sure his face is turned to the side and 9 times out of 10 it is, but I turn his head a little if his airways aren't clear enough for my liking - he doesn't wake up, but even if he did I'd rather an awake baby than a dead one!

The carpet/flooring. Yes it can be gross if people don't take their shoes off in your house. People could have stepped in bits of dog shit, cat shit, phlegm, pinworm eggs, god knows what... and traces of that could be all over the floor. Compromise: Get him to hire a carpet cleaner and ban shoes in the house, or mop hard flooring every morning before you let DS go free range. It's sad that he's kept like a pet in a cage at home.

I am OUTRAGED he tried to force formula top ups against your wishes. He could have actually fucked things up, feeding wise. However, IMO, weighing your son once every couple of weeks just to check in with how he's doing isn't the most terrible thing in the world. Loads of baby equipment have weight/length limits, so from a safety aspect it's good to know when you're coming up to those. But if all the weighing is a way to dictate and control your feeding relationship with your son, it is absolutely NOT okay and I'd have thrown the scales in the bin by now if I felt this was the case.

My partner carried our 6 month old in his arms to the corner shop the other day for the first time. I was quite worried he might accidentally trip (these things happen) and would drop the baby on the concrete. I would much prefer he wore the carrier, just in case. But everything was fine and I'll probably remind him to be careful slightly less next time, but I understand the fear of dropping a baby. I think when people get cocksure is when mistakes are more likely to happen.

The park thing... I think I would have punched him for this.

This isn’t pfb syndrome op, it’s mental illness, he isn’t well.

Is there previous for this type of behaviour?

@Hugasauras

There's space in this situation to accept he is unwell and needs help but also accept that OP is being controlled (not intentionally) and that her life and her child's are suffering badly for it. She certainly doesn't have to leave him, but she might need to leave the situation for a while until he gets the help he needs, because there are three lives being ruined here, and OP's ultimate responsibility is to her child.

That doesn't mean she can't support and be there for her partner while he tackles this horrible anxiety, but it's also not fair to expect her life and her son's to suffer so greatly for it either. It's not sustainable

This. Life must be awful for him right now. That level of anxiety or OCD has to be agonising.

But OP and her child can't continue to bear the brunt of this.OP is treading on eggshells and being verbally abused for hours - and having to deceive her DH in order to try to be a 'normal' mother.

The baby. Well, he's the reason that something has to change NOW. And his welfare and development has to take priority. At the moment, his father's actions are depriving him of the opportunity to develop normally. And the effects of that are already showing.