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

1 reply

seaborgium · 20/02/2022 17:24

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.

HebeMumsnet · 20/02/2022 20:49

Hi there, OP,

We're so sorry to hear you're having such a difficult time with all this. It sounds really hard to cope with.

We thought we'd just pop in with a link to our mental health webguide. There are a few numbers on there your husband could contact if he can be persuaded, and some you could even contact for a bit of support and some advice, too. Otherwise, your GP or health visitor should be able to give you advice about how to handle this and help you find a way forward.

All the best. MNHQ Flowers

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