You have sn amazing “can’t do” attitude . I have read the whole thread really carefully and I think you are unaware, sadly, of how very oddly incompetent and indifferent your dh is (per your description) to being a husband and father. Whether he “means” it or not—and by that we usually means intends the results of his actions—he is an absolute shit husband and father.
He disappears when you need him and when you politely explain what time and why you need him he is so rude/indifferent/unreliable that you can’t bear to “win” the argument and you just drop it.
You don’t seem to grasp that he simply can’t misunderstand plain english, and be that incompetent, at work. So he reserves walkabout and “was I responsible for bathing child? Oh sorry she drowned it was too difficult for me to manage this task” for you. Either he thinks you are a fool or he is its a pretty binary choice.
You feel criticized here and are verbally lashing out. That is not uncommon. People get angry when a familiar role (wife/mother/martyr/chief cook and bottle washer) is at risk even though you came here to complain your goal was not to change anything . Your goal though was not to solve a relationship issue but simply to grumble, receive reassurance that you are a good mum for not abandoning your children to incompetent dad, and go back to misery + sneaking self admiration for keeping it all together.
Misery plus self regard is, of course, martyrdom.
Thats not a criticism—its just a diagnosis. Until you are clear on what you get out of tolerating Mr “can’t be arsed” you can’t change anything. Not wanting to chAnge anything and being this unhappy is, agsin, martyrdom.
People have identified his behavior as abusive. I don’t think that is useful as it triggers your need to defend him (he gets to be the victim in the drama triangle and you get to rescue him from us, his persecutors). Instead I think its more useful to say that his behavior givrs you pain and he seems not to be able to cope with simple, routine, patenting tasks. Is that because he is, somehow, really thick? Did his childhood not expose him to normal two parent households? What about yours? Did you not know that husbands can be expected to do menial, repetitive, even daily parenting tasks?
Look online at the drama triangle. Each person occupies a position for a while-/sometimes minutes—and then fluidly changes position to accomplish tasks, gain admiration, or because they cede power to others. In your family sometimes your dh is the persecutor and you “rescie” the children from bis neglect sometime’s he’s tbe persecutor and you turn to mumsnet for emotional rescue and recognition when mumsnet offers a solution you feel victimized by us or you feel he is—or even your sweet babies who you accuse us of telling you should be put in harms way by letting dad bathe them.
The only way put of being trapped in the drama triangle is to get out snd stop accepting these limiting roles.