30 weeks pregnant and feeling like I run the whole house alone — how do other couples actually split things before the baby arrives?

[TheRubyViewer]

Hi all, I’m hoping for some honest perspectives from people who’ve already been through this stage.
I’m currently 30 weeks pregnant with my first baby and feeling really overwhelmed with the household dynamic. My partner and I live together and most of the time it feels like I’m the only one keeping the house functioning.
The thing that confuses me is that I know he’s capable of being responsible. Our bedroom is probably the best example of the current problem. There are bags and things that have been sitting there for months that never get put away. I’ve asked about it and he’s even admitted he notices the mess he’s sitting in, but nothing changes. I eventually end up tidying because I can’t relax in the space otherwise. It’s our bedroom, so it affects me too.
One thing that adds to my confusion is that I’ve seen him be much more proactive about cleaning in the past. When we both lived at his mum’s house for a while, he actually kept things quite tidy and would clean up around the house fairly regularly. At that time I was honestly the one who struggled more with motivation and could be a bit of a “bed rotter” who didn’t do much. So I know he isn’t incapable of cleaning — I’ve seen him do it — but the dynamic seems to have completely flipped now that we live together.
The bigger problem is that I wouldn’t actually mind doing the cleaning if it was just my mess. But it isn’t. It’s usually two of us (sometimes three when family are around) making the mess and I’m the one who ends up picking up the slack.
He also tends to stay up very late gaming — sometimes until 3–4am — which makes it harder for us to get into any sort of routine together. Meanwhile I’m trying to get the house sorted before the baby arrives and it feels like I’m carrying most of that mental load on my own.
I’m starting to worry about what things will look like once the baby is here. I don’t expect perfection and I’m not expecting him to do everything. I just don’t want to end up doing the housework, the organising, and the majority of baby care while he carries on the same way.
I’m not posting to bash my partner — I’m genuinely trying to understand how other couples make this stage work. How do you split responsibilities before a baby arrives? Did you assign specific chores, have routines, or did things naturally change once the baby came?
Any honest perspectives would be really appreciated because right now I’m struggling to picture what a fair and realistic household dynamic should actually look like.

We weren't the tidiest couple before kids, but we do now naturally share the tasks that we get round to according to what we are good at and don't hate, and have got more organised over the years. It took a few arguments though, I think my husband secretly wanted me to do all the domestic stuff, but that was never going to happen.

Have you talked to your partner about this? What does he say? Does he realise that the days of gaming til 3 or 4 am are going to have to be over? Does he want to be a good dad or not? What do each of you think parenthood will look like for each of you?

We have a cleaner.

Sorry, the point I wanted to make is that things are not going to naturally change once your baby is here. You need to talk about it now - I would be brutally honest about what needs to change, but that might not work in your relationship! Please don't take any shit though!

Sorry posted too early - we have a cleaner weekly which does help but some of the stuff you mention like gaming until the early hours is a red flag.

Another day another thread where a woman gets pregnant then realises her so called partner is an incompetent lazy useless twat who lives like Kevin the teenager and experts get to act like his mum.

You only have to read the numerous threads on here to realise it doesn’t get better. He’s hit what he wants now - he no longer thinks he needs to make an effort

You need to have a serious discussion now about the splitting of responsibilities so it is clear. He is presumably going to give up the gaming until early hours when the baby arrives?

I regret not having that discussion before DP and I moved in together consequently I do pretty much everything.

You're not posting to bash your partner? Why not OP, he deserves it! He has a 30 week pregnant wife that he is meant to be looking after and ia meant to be spending these last weeks enjoying time with you and preparing for the baby. Instead he is lazing around gaming, letting you pick up the slack, and doing so little to the point where he is stressing you out. That's pretty disgusting behaviour. Yet you're all about trying to understand him and work on this together. Which shows that you're a much better person than he is, as he is happy with you doing everything, your share and his. Because he is selfish and lazy and reverting back to the woman in his life acting like a parent.

It's time to get tough. Tell him you will not live like that, you will lose all respect for him if he doesn't stop his selfish behaviour, you will lose all desire for him if he doesn't stop treating you like his mum, and although every single time you do his share of chores, or organising, seem like tiny things individually - eventually, over years they will break your marriage. He has one chance and if you have to keep reminding him to act like an adult by picking his own shit off the floor, or put his own dishes in the dishwasher, or that bathrooms sometimes need cleaning, then you will move out.

As to how we managed, we never talked about it but it just works out that we share certain tasks and own certain tasks and pick up the slack if the other can't. It works out that we have the same leisure time, same time off etc.

I wouldn't be sitting down divvying up jobs at this stage as what's going to happen when you're trapped on the sofa under a baby all day and can't do 'your' jobs in 10 weeks? He needs to get into the habit of working out what needs doing and get on with it without being asked, before the baby

He was probably much tidier at his mum's because he knows there's no way she'd put up with this shit.

His natural nature is obviously on the lazy fucker scale so I wouldn’t imagine things will just ‘naturally sort themselves out’ as he’s very happy to take the absolute piss.

I think you need to pick a calm time perhaps go for a walk or something and bring it up. Calmly lay out your thoughts that the division of chores is already grossly unfair and it has to change now.

AND explain that whilst the baby needs you, you are on maternity leave not housework leave and so he will need to do way way more than his half. Maybe if baby is happy and well and napping you can get ahead with things but that’s in no way guaranteed and the house and laundry and cooking is all HIS responsibility for a few weeks at least whilst you recover

Unfortunately if he hasn’t already stepped up this is going to be a hard fight and you need to draw your boundaries NOW and be very very strict otherwise you will end up stuck in a story as old as time where the Mum takes on 90% of house and baby as well as working full time and we’re all worse off than we were in the 1950s

When I was pregnant I read H the riot act basically

We talked things through what we expected from each other

And 18 years later that has pretty much been how it transpired

I am also 30w pregnant, have had a rough pregnancy with sickness (still on nausea meds and threw up at the weekend although it's very unusual now) and real issues with pelvic pain from quite early on. Plus fatigue but that's more usual!

He's basically stepped up and does everything needed. I try to do 2 dog walks a week (we used to do one a day each) and we've got a lot of paid dog walks now (used to have none) but he still does more than the 7 he used to. He cooks. He does bins, hoovering, anything that has a time deadline he's basically completely taken over (was reasonably split before). I do what I can, when I can, and he's always grateful, but I have to be really careful to stay within my very low limits or I end up asleep and vomiting again.

It's also our first so I can't say how he'll be after for certain, but I'm really bloody hoping I am more myself - albeit exhausted! - and can do more again as I hate this currently. I suspect as long as I'm doing all I can, he'll pick up the rest. We discuss it a lot - there were certain things he resented and I've been able to shift my routine to include those as they're important, but it meant dropping other things that I thought were more important but he didn't feel they were. Everything still gets done (apart from bathroom cleaning. We don't talk about that ha - I'm actually surprised how well they've held up!) but it's now split in such a way that I feel the stuff I do makes a big difference to him, and he doesn't get fed up despite doing about 85% of stuff - and that's not currently an overestimate.

If you can't talk about it with him, I'd be really worried. We both game so I don't buy default judge gamers like some on here, but gaming comes after other things have got done - we would never game then say oh I didn't have time. That's a teenager excuse!

You need to sort this out and set expectations now because you can bet your life that when the baby comes and you're home in the day on maternity leave, he will expect you to do EVERYTHING unless you put your foot down now.

I wouldn't put up with the late night gaming - I'm amazed at how many grown men on here seem to be able to check out of family life to play computer games. He's not a teenager. Make sure that he knows you expect him to do 50% of all the work that comes with having a baby and 50% of all the housework too.

Agreed.

You need to sort this out ASAP, OP, otherwise your life will be drudgery.

It's likely he'll act like this will change when you have the baby and he's just enjoying his late nights while he can, but I wouldn't believe it.

Have a knockdown drag-out row if he won't talk sensibly about this. Establish a fair share of chores and give him absolute shit if he doesn't live up to his side of it. Don't end up picking up after him. He's a grown man and about to be a father, he needs to be the male role model you want for your dc.

You will also need for him to step up and do more while the baby is tiny and you're recovering, and if you're breastfeeding.

On the bright side, if he can stay up to game until 4am, he's not going to have any trouble doing the night wakings, is he? 😂

so true.

he has less respect for you than he has for his mother.

make a list of chores and divvy them out. every week if necessary. until he appreciates all you do and how unfair that is on you.

i dont see this ending well tbh….. the others didnt. :-(

I think you need (not that you should have to) to sit him down and talk about what a typical daily/weekly routine is going to look like for both of you.
Think about housework, baby care, socialising, work, nighttime. Walk through it, hour by hour, and talk about what each persons going to be doing.
Talk about how you're both going to have less downtime, and how maternity leave is not downtime for you, and how if he takes the baby out to give you some downtime, you dont want to always be spending that time sorting the house out.
Use the word 'equal' a lot.
Say to him 'sometimes one or both us might feel overwhelmed and we might need to have a tough conversation about how equal the load is, lets agree to approach that as a team and not as a me vs you thing' So you can then refer back to this! And remember to talk about it in time spent AND tasks. No point him saying 'ive taken the bins out and changed all babies nappies today' if you've done every other scrap of childcare and housework.
Oh and really, really push how you know how much he wants to be a good dad and that he'll want to spend as much time with the baby as possible and NOT just doing the fun stuff. He has no shame letting you do everything now, so get ahead and make sure him not pulling the weight with baby is seen as him being a right shit not just 'normal dad stuff' and talk about him doing nappies, bathtime, keeping on top of babies washing, if there are enough clean clothes, nappies, wipes. Talk about all that as a joint thing and ask him if he'd prefer to 'own' certain things while you 'own' others (and dont give either of you all the mental load, or all the physical load, or one person easy quick tasks etc) but stress that its subject to review when needed.

Basically, get specific, and scare him. He needs a wake up call.

You sit him down and tell him its not on and he needs to do his fair share.

A relationship should be a team. And your team is about to grow. Its going to get much harder pretty quick.

He should be prioritising you, and the baby and helping get the house in order is one way of doing this.

My DP and I both game, one of our many hobbies we love, but we do it once the house, children and other responsibilities are taken care of, because thats what mature people do. Even my 12 year old knows to do her homework and tidy up before she has her leisure time.

We get involved in our games at night but at 10.30pm we turn them off and go to bed so we can function like human beings the next day. Anyone (any age) staying up to game into the early hours is not mature nor responsible.

Im sorry to say you are both going to have a hell of a shock when baby comes. Do you have fanily to support you when your prat of a boyfriend is prioritising his gaming over his family?

‘Dp, you used to tidy up at your mums quite a lot. She wasn’t pregnant and also having to get things ready for a baby. It feels really disrespectful to me that you just think it’s all my job, I’m not the housemaid. You get hours of gaming a day. I’d like to see what kind of pigsty we live in if I took hours a day, but if it’s like this when we have a baby I’m going to just have to go out and leave you to tidy up while looking after baby as you’re surely not expecting to have zero role in this family. It feels like that’s your goal though. You have some catching up to do. I’m going to a friends, and staying there. You can pretend I’m gaming and you’ll understand completely I can’t be tidying because me time and gaming has been more important for you than doing anything in our house every night for some time, and this house is getting me down. Can you let me know once you’ve put significant time into tidying the house we live in together and i’ll come back?

now is not the time to let him get away with this, he’ll only get worse.

I’m afraid it is likely to get worse once the baby arrives, because you will be off work and he will see you in “mum mode”.

Does he respond to being asked? If you said “Simon, can you go and clean the bathroom while I’m hoovering the living room” would he, or would he moan about it and accuse you of nagging? The first is annoying but liveable with, the second is why people get divorced.

More telling would be “Simon can you do the bathroom and hoover the living room whilst I rest / have a bath..”

What does being pregnant have to do with it?

If DH had been playing games on a computer until 3/4am and leaving piles of mess around the house, I wouldn't have been having a baby with him because the indicators were that he was a lazy bastard.

TBF DH did/does bugger all hoisework/cooking/shopping/childcare/DIY, etc. But he made this clear at the beginning and was/is happy to pay others to clean/iron/au-pair, etc. He is also a workaholic so there have always been other compensations and he is meticulously tidy and clean. He keeps a duster and furniture polish in his car!

I insisted we did couple's counselling when I was pregnant so that we didn't walk blindly into parenting and end up becoming his parents (his mum is a martyr and not someone I wanted to become).
It has stood us in good stead. I think it's incredibly important to be on the same page when a baby arrives. You won't have the time for counselling afterwards.

If he’s staying up all night gaming, you have far bigger issues than him tidying up. How are you going to safely leave your child with him, he doesn’t seem ready to be a dad? Does he have depression? Is he in work? I’d be concerned he wouldn’t be able to care properly/safely or he just will be completely disconnected from the baby.

I speak from experience here, and I’m somebody who likes gaming (I have a gaming PC myself), but yeah, cleaning is the least of your problems. Up until 4am is nuts, he’s going to seriously struggle.