Why do relationships change after a baby?

[BaggyBagsy]

NC for this as DH knows my username (I sometimes show him threads on MN).

I often see on here that having a baby can cause difficulties in a marriage / relationship, and that many relationships fail after a baby arrives. Now DH and I are no where near ending things, but I’m just trying to understand what’s going on.

We have a baby, who is 11 months old. I go back to work in a few weeks and for the past 11 months, I have done the vast majority of the childcare. DS is also a really poor sleeper, and wakes up on average 6 to 8 times a night (we have tried everything, including sleep training - the Ferber Method - but nothing has worked) so I have been functioning on broken sleep since he was born.

We’ve always been very happy. We fall out every now and then when we debate political matters (we both feel very strongly about things) but we always make up quickly. However, over the past few weeks, we’ve suddenly become short with each. There’s this tension in the air, and neither of us understand it (we have talked about it). It’s like we’ve suddenly stopped liking each other so we annoy each other.

One issue of mine is that I feel DH doesn’t do enough for DS. The extent of his care is one morning every weekend to give me a lie in, and on top of that no more than 1 or 2 nappies a week. I do absolutely everything else. We have talked about this and as I go back to work soon, this does need to change and he agrees.

So I do wonder if that has built up on my side and led to the current tension in the air.

But other than that, I don’t understand why we are where we are. Why the loving and kind side of our relationship has suddenly disappeared? Hence why I’m wondering what it is about having a baby that causes relationships to struggle.

Before anyone suggests it, there is 100% no chance of another woman. DH is also upset at the current tension between us and keeps asking me what’s wrong and what he can do to resolve it, but I don’t know what’s wrong.

It is resentment.

It think the only way I have combatted this in our relationship is to talk about it a lot before our first baby was born and then refuse to do more than my fair share. I will not change every nappy. I will not get out of bed in the night when it's not my turn. I was prepared tbh from reading Mumsnet and seeing what can happen when one person takes it all on. We've always had a good balance. There's no point just saying it, and then continuing to roll your eyes and carry on as you were before.

You've answered your own question.

One issue of mine is that I feel DH doesn’t do enough for DS. The extent of his care is one morning every weekend to give me a lie in, and on top of that no more than 1 or 2 nappies a week. I do absolutely everything else.

Most men seem to have no concept of what having a baby involved. Or they think because you have a year "off" the care is your job. Not to mention, broken sleep will make anyone irritable, with a baby or not.

You're starting to consider how life will look for you when you go back to work. You're having to accept that you will now be doing 2 roles, working woman and mother whilst DH continues his pre-baby life.
It was manageable while you were in a maternity bubble but you need him to share the parenting role 50/50.

How can he be upset by things being difficult, even wonder how to change them, without doing the one thing he knows would improve things? It’s his child too, he needs to step up and do some fucking parenting. Of course you’re resentful, annoyed by him, going off him - you’re exhausted and unsupported and he’s lazy and selfish and thinks he can pick and choose what parts of family life suit him.

This is a him problem not a you or a both of you problem. He’s letting you down. As long as that continues your understandable resentment will grow until you don’t like or love him. If he cares about you or the baby he’ll buck up his ideas or lose his family.

The reasons are in your own post.

Your life is very different to pre baby.
You feel you do gar too much and hom not enough
Soon you will be working and probably concerned he will carry on expecting you to do everything for the baby.
Your priorities have changed. Its not just the 2 of you. There's another human being that, for now, needs to the main focus.
You aren't sleeping well. Both are probably getting less sleep.
You both have more responsibility. Less time to spend just with eachother.

All of it builds up.

I also have an 11 month old baby and mine and my partners relationship has changed. It is definitely resentment, less quality time together, more tired, more pressure- so many things! We argue a lot more now but also agree that we have a lot more to fight for now as well so really do our best to let the little things go and do nice things for each other when we can x

I always post this book on these threads - www.amazon.co.uk/Hate-Your-Husband-After-Kids/dp/1784754773/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=IJBZJSSCZ2UC&keywords=how+not+to+hate+your+husband+after+kids&sprefix=how+not+to+hat%2Caps%2C107&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&qid=1647082611&sr=8-1

DH bought me it as a joke but actually we both read it and got a lot out of it. So much changes during the first year and there are so many new dynamics to navigate about how you organise your new lives. It’s so common to take time to find a balance, and most importantly to learn how to communicate about that.

My DH was a bit more hands on than you are describing, but still what he did in my mind came nowhere close to the physical and emotional burden on me. He was never one of these ‘my wife is a hero and I will serve her every need postnatally’ kinda guys (one of my friends had one of these, I was so jealous). He didn’t see the toll on me, or did, and resented me for being grumpy and critical of him.

Anyway, things really improved after the first year when he started doing more childcare when I went back to work, it became more 50/50. I think then he realised what it was really like.

I will not change every nappy. I will not get out of bed in the night when it's not my turn

This is also my approach to parenting and I think it really helps with keeping me and DH on the same side. I BF but when DS was a tiny baby DH did every nappy because I did every feed and it was something he could do to help.

Now I am back and work and pump milk so I don’t have to do every wake up. DH does half the night wake ups, half the nursery pick ups, half the baby sick days, half the dinners and half the nappies. We aren’t pedantic about it but it feels very equal. The care and responsibility of DS it a very joint effort.

We still have moments where we’re short with each other, if we’re knackered or stressed etc but there is no resentment.

I think you need to sit down with DH and make it clear that he needs to pull his weight more, in advance of you going back to work in particular.

We were the same after having DS, now 15.

I think the core reason was because DH seemed to have no sense of fairness. He expected me to do all the childcare after no sleep. He didn't acknowledge that I'd had a huge operation (c-section) and talked about how he'd missed a nights sleep when DS was born ( yeah try doing that and a c-section and screaming baby who won't latch). Oh and wanting sex when I was trying to survive on about 2 hours sleep.

Now I think I would have challenged him on a lot of the behaviours, but at the time I was in shock. I genuinely didn't expect him to be like that. I'm sure his story would be different to mine. We got through it and are still together but our relationship never went back to what it was pre DS.

Sleep deprivation and not sharing the load.

How do you both propose to share the load, including household and child when you return work?

Get him to tell you his ideas

They don't if you have a good supportive, understanding & equal partner.

If not the cracks soon show as to how shite the DP is & that is where the tension naturally arises causing changes in feelings affecting the relationship

You’re resentful because your life has changed beyond all recognition and you’re about to sleep walk (literally) into two fulltime jobs. He doesn’t know what’s wrong because he, like many men, puts a lower value on parenting and mental load, which he sees as woman’s work.

You’re at a crossroads, your relationship can go:

1. straight on (the slow, sorry death-by-a-thousand-cuts path to divorce).

1. Take a different route: actually divide child/home/work responsibilities equally. He takes an equal role with his family.

His ineptness and inability to realize what’s causing the tension indicates that changing this is also abouy to to be added to your mental load. Therefore I believe if he isn’t 100% receptive and proactive when you raise the issue of ‘responsibilities going forward’

You may as well fast forward and see a lawyer.

Good luck. Most women seem to need it.

You've literally told us what the problem is. You're exhausted, surviving on broken sleep, pissed off and resentful. Totally understandably.

lack of sleep
lack of sex/affection
one side wanted the baby more/other side is resentful
jeaously from father as not getting same level of attention

Resentment, on one or both sides I think is 99% of it.

For us, our relationship has 100% changed, a lot. We're out of the other side of it now (my children are 6 and 3) but the baby/toddler years were tough and we came close to splitting (well, me asking him to leave) on more than one occasion.

I was hugely resentful of DH because my life changed beyond all recognition and his didn't. He was (is) a good dad, he did his share of the night feeds etc but he also kept up his hobbies as well as working 7-7 Monday to Friday. So Saturday would come, and I'd be utterly wiped out (I'm a SAHM and as it turns out both of my children are autistic so they really were much harder work than anyone believed!) and instead of getting a break because he wasn't working he'd be off to play football all day.

Then Sunday would come and he'd want to do a normal family activity or go and see friends with children or visit family etc etc but because of my children's needs it never worked, it was stressful to disrupt their routine, or too noisy, or too much 'people-ing' and they'd inevitably meltdown and the day would be ruined. Then he'd feel resentful of me because (at the time) he thought me being tentative about doing these things rubbed off on them and made them anxious.

Once we realised and had them diagnosed he attended a load of courses with me and thing improved massively. We went to therapy and actually that helped a lot too.

So yeah. If you're resentful of each other it's a recipe for disaster. If things hadn't have improved and he hadn't have changed his behaviour, he wouldn't still be here as much as I love him. You can end up resentful over anything I think too, it's really hard when you're sleep deprived too.

Resentment. It’s a relationship killer.

Relationships have a sort of balance.. they often reach that balance naturally over time. It's not always a fair balance. Women may take on more emotional load with child care and organising appointments and bills etc. men some times take on more physical load with house maintenance, car maintenance and garden work etc etc.

If there is a balance, chances are the relationship is going ok.
If there isnt a balance, the relationship will deteriorate into anger and resentment and the like.
When a baby comes along, it hugely affects the balance of any relationship and causes huge turmoil. After many months it may reach a balance again, but often it doesn't. Women notice their emotional load has gone up but the man's load hasn't changed, perhaps he's doing a little more work hours than before and that leads to more resent ment as it's felt that balance isn't fair.
Then the woman goes back to work so now she's got the emotional load and the physical load and the mans load hasn't changed still.

Eventually the unbalance leads to a sense of unfairness, leads to resentment, leads to dislike, love fades, relationship falls.

The absolute best thing you can do is talk to partners redress the balance, sharing the loads with a more even split.

(This is all based on my experience of course and is likely a load of bollocks..)

If he's that upset about the current tension then why isn't he stepping up with the baby? You made it clear that that was an issue for you. He could easily start doing more nappies from right this very second if he was that bothered about putting things right. Actions speak louder than words as they say.

So is it possible to feel those things without actively feeling them, if that makes sense? I haven’t spent the past few weeks being actively resentful, but we just seem to annoy each other now.

DH does often say he needs to do more, but as a PP understood, it’s me who needs to write down and set out exactly what he does. And that just makes it transactional, so I find that approach unhelpful.

When DS was born, DH did get the male version of post partum depression, and struggled with the difficult side of DS (anything that wasn’t cuddles), so I let him take a step back whilst I did everything. It carried on that way for a couple of months until I finally said something and he said he’s taken a step back because I don’t like his suggestions on doing things - he had read part of the Baby Whisperer when DS was born, and kept saying we should implement the suggestions made. I didn’t agree that one book’s method was the best way and rather than researching other books and methods, he completely stepped back. He still brings it up from time to time when I complain about the sleep rather than looking at other methods.

Gosh, maybe it is resentment. As I’m writing this post I can feel the anger rising in me. And the realisation that when I go back to work, things are unlikely to change too much. For months, whenever we talk about my return, he keeps telling me I’m going to have to get better at logging off in the evenings, and to say no to things, and I have to keep saying “we both are”, which he agrees with but says me more than him. I keep stressing things will be different when I return, but I’m starting to worry they won’t be.

I’m going to guess they won’t be.
You’ll have it all to do, and work.

Having a baby puts pressure on and really exposes things like inequitable effort or different priorities in a way that nothing else does.

It also diverts attention away from each other. Inevitably. But many people don’t cope well with no longer being the priority in their partner’s life. Babies require attention when they require it, and that has to come first.

Then there’s sleep deprivation which does not improve anything in life.

Relationships change because a new DC requires 24/7 parenting and create a lot of additional domestic work.

Your H has not done anywhere his fair share thus far. So he’s let you (and your DC) down.

You have put up with this, but are presumably deeply pissed off and upset, and concerned about how you will cope when you return to work if your H continues being crap.

Mothers with depression very rarely get to opt out of parenting and domestic work.

‘ DH does often say he needs to do more, but as a PP understood, it’s me who needs to write down and set out exactly what he does’. You don’t ‘need to’. He has the ability to do things and learn things: if he wanted to do more, he could have and still could.

He treats parenting like an optional weekend hobby. That's not acceptable. Of course you feel resentful even if you've tried to push those feelings down.

Don't wait until you go back to work, things need to change as of today so you are both ready.

He needs to stop saying he'll do things whilst doing nothing, and instead get his arse in gear and act differently.

Talk is cheap. There is no good reason for him not to be changing his lazy and disrespectful behaviour now.

Stop letting him treat you this way.

I keep stressing things will be different when I return, but I’m starting to worry they won’t be.

Seriously, he either changes now or he won't. No more talking about changing in the vague future - actually changing right now in the present.

If he refuses, then you need to consider whether you're prepared to put up with being disrespected and exploited. And what example it gives your son about how to treat women if you do.

The extent of his care is one morning every weekend to give me a lie in, and on top of that no more than 1 or 2 nappies a week.

He's failing you and he's failing his son by treating him like a weekend hobby that he does for a few hours and then ditches.

If someone fails to parent their child, they lose the right to be called a parent.

His behaviour is disgusting.