Hi everyone,
This is a rant thread but I'm also curious to hear any suggestions/advice or similar experiences.
I very recently gave birth to my second DC, my DH and I already have a toddler. The birth, whilst better than my first, was physically traumatic and I required a LOT of stitches and am all round very sore still. I am breastfeeding and this has also been a challenge as baby has been unwell and not strong enough to just breastfeed so I've been expressing too to top up with the bottle on the midwives advice.
Now, idk how other people's partners respond at this stage, but I'm so disappointed in my DH. He is still behaving as if all our parenting should be equal and that I should be doing half the bedtime routine with our toddler, getting up to settle her in the night and up with her in the morning to get ready for nursery. He struggles to wake up as it is so I've been getting on with it to and extent, but with a newborn latched to my breast. Last night he went to bed at 8pm saying he was "shattered". I'm like, shattered from WHAT?! For the last few nights I sent him to the guestroom to sleep because he simply won't get up in the morning because he's so tired. Despite him always getting more rest than me. So I thought, sod it, he can just bow out of the nights and at least be useful in the day. But it is now like he's even more exhausted. I asked him yesterday "I don't understand how you're so tired when you're sleeping normally?" To which he had no answer. It's almost as though he is acting like he's the one that has just given birth. I told him that I'm finding this all quite frustrating and he apologised, but it's the same today. He's miserable, moping around with no energy. He's going back to work next week after 1 full week of paternity leave which I think is to get away from the home situation. I suspect he's either got the baby blues or just hates the newborn stage. But tbh at this point I don't really care what the issue is because I'm just so tired and so fed up with what I see as absolute weakness. Writing this down sounds really harsh and I'm aware he's probably picking up on my disdain, but I'm just so sick of this trope that women must carry the emotional and domestic load of the whole family. Not sure what else I can do to help the situation though as I doubt I've the emotional strength to support him through his rough patch whilst I'm carrying the family.
On a final note, this isn't the first time this has happened. He did the same with our first born and when I went through a difficult time at work that was very stressful. He just seems to fall apart whenever I'm stressed and rather than helping me I end up having to help him. It's really becoming an issue because I can see there's a recurring pattern and I now know I can't rely on him to be resilient when I need him to be.