Brand new baby and relationship problems - very long!

[WornThrough]

Help! I have a five month old DD1 and am struggling with how I feel about my relationship with her father. It began when I was pregnant - I had always loved that he was so family oriented, but I found him surprisingly disappointing, staying out late drinking with friends that I didn't know and disengaged from decisions about what we needed to do and arrange before the arrival. It really shook me and I felt quite miserable at times but brushed it under the carpet as pregnancy insecurity.

He is much better now, and has been since she arrived, but I feel like I am having major doubts about our relationship. We come from very different backgrounds - he is Lebanese and I am from New Zealand. In our five years of marriage (after a very quick courtship), this has not been a problem, mainly I now think because we were so busy working we just didn't have to deal with these issues. Now I am starting to feel it is a huge and insurmountable issue.

But now I feel torn about what our future is. I feel that I have spent five years being someone that suits him (the loyal wife, the breadwinner, etc) and have completely forgotten myself - and I feel furious about this, mostly with myself but often with him. I no longer feel sure that we have a long term relationship as a couple because I feel I can't go on feeling like this forever. Five years of resentments have bubbled up from somewhere. I feel horribly claustrophobic.

I feel awful about the fact I should have seen these issues developing well before we tried for a baby. At the time it felt like the right time and I don't understand how I could have been so wrong. I can't believe it but I genuinely feel that I regret having my lovely little DD because doing this has shackled me to him forever. I spend a lot of time thinking about how I can extricate myself.

I feel so confused. I know having a new baby is a difficult time and I am trying to hold off on drawing any conclusions. I berate myself for feeling so extreme about all this when it's not like we have any real, big make-or-break issues (like violence). I feel I must be terribly selfish. I am not a great talker about my feelings at the best of times and now I am getting worse and worse because I am struggling with these feelings, which make me feel so bad, and I veer between being awful to my husband and completely shutting myself off.

I guess what I am wondering is - is there any way back from these feelings with your partner? And how? Is this normal or are we slowly and surely heading towards the end?

Sorry, I really don't have any answers for you but was just wondering if you have spoken to your DH about this at all?

A different situation but I do remember feeling extremely dissapointed in my DH during my pregnancy. Whenever we talked about it before he always seemed to be so excited about how it wouldbe and then when I was pregnant, he just wasn't as IN to it as I thought he would be and this left me with simmering resentment for a long time (still do to some extreme).

I did speak to my DH about this and he just said that he was quite busy with work at the time and that pregnancy was different for him as it just didn't feel real to him until the very latter stages.

I have mainly moved on from this now, though every now and again I feel somewhat let down about it when I think about it but to be honest try not to anymore.

Sorry - no answers for you, but just wanted to respond. I would definitely suggest talking to him about how you feel though?

Your DD is only 5 months old which means you are still pretty hormonal and undoubtedly sleep-deprived. I'm sure loads of other people will be able to reassure you that they felt just the same and got over it (I am not/was not in a couple-relationship with DS father so can't comment from personal experience).
It is true that pregnancy is simply not as all-consuming for men as it can be for women: nothing is happening in the man's body,after all. If he is now being supportive, pulling his weight round the house and taking an interest in his DD then things will get better once you get more used to being parents. 5 monhts really isn't long.

It sounds like you were perfectly happy (or never questioned|) your marital set up until the baby came. So in his defence things have been coasting along happily for 5 years and how is he to suddenly know that the ground rules have changed? Have you told him? Probably not because you didn't realise it was happening.

On the other hand I can understand that you suddenly find yourself in a new reality. You can be forgiven for not fully foreseeing how much things would change. Everyone knows its a huge responsibility to have baby and that there will be sleepless nights and the baby must come first but you can never fully understand the seismic shift that occurs until it happens.

I have a six month old with a man that I have been with for about six years in a very happy and carefree relationship. I don't regret it at all and am still happy but my life has changed as has my perspective on our life together. Yes, you are tied to this person in a way that marriage doesn't even come close to. It's for life. You cannot erase it. Its no wonder you are re-evaluating the whole relationship. And you are finding that the set up that suited before no longer does now that you have a baby. You said you are the breadwinner - are you expected to be the main hands on parent as well? is it 50/50 or is he being a carefree daddy while letting you take the lion's share?

Is it the set up or the man that you are unhappy with? Do you love him still? How would you feel if he told you he had met someone else and wanted to leave?
What has your nationalities got to do with it? Is there a cultural clash?

Is there any possibility that you have a touch of PND?

This might come over as a very trite answer, but I truly believe that many (most?) women fall out of love with their baby's father after the birth, for a while. It happened to me with both mine, until they were about a year old. It was much worse with the first.

The shock of adjustment to motherhood is MASSIVE and can't be undersestimated. I wpuld urge you not to do anything drastic until your LO is at least 2 years old. So many things settle back down at that point. Really, honestly, it gets a lot, lot, lot better than this.

I think you're in the worst bit. Also, this is what the marriage vows are meant for. Let them hold you together while this is going on, then you'll still be together when it gets good again.

i would also say leave it for now dont focus on negative and try and enjoy some time together snuggle on sofa when baby is asleep get baby sitter go for dinner

i went right off my dp after ds was born forget how many times i thought of legging it lol

but its the pressure of being a mum you have changed your life changes there's tend to stay the same in respects of going out

i soon got him to baby sit and went out with friends to relax but also stopped focusing on negative things and communicating if i was tired or if i wanted help with something or just if i was feeling down through sheer tiredness we became a lot closer

dont feel you have to do it all alone and then resent him for not being there as if you speak to him he will know whats going on

5 yrs of perfect marriage then a baby your just adjusting to your role changing he hasn't changed but we do our mindsets change we worry about more things and our bodies are run down

spend quality time and don't read too much into your thoughts and don't concentrate on them to much either its easy to convince yourself on something its best to resolve it and spend more time relaxing together and enjoying each other again

also do you feel depressed could it be worth speaking to hv or gp i had border line post natal depression and things improved after seeing gp talking is best therapy otherwise its eating you up inside i hope you feel better soon

my ds is 4 nearly and we still have tough times but we communicate better and we are still together strong

Echo what all have said. Your baby is tiny still and few of us are prepared for how much parenthood changes everything. Sleep deprivation and hormones were a bad combination for me and it took months before I felt like myself again.

I am also from NZ (Auckland!) and I felt that homesickness exacerbated my hormonal/sleep-deprived state. Do you have a support network here?

Please don't make any rash decisions - you really need to give it another 6 months at least. Concentrate on enjoying your baby girl and hopefully you will feel much more positive in a few months.

Someone else has mentioned PND - it may be worth talking to your GP if you feel this may be contributing to your feelings.

Sorry, even longer this time...

Beautiful, you say it's a trite answer but somehow it does help because that does feel like what has happened with me. I am hoping there is some way back and I suspect there is, but one involving lots of hard work, which I don't feel I have the energy for just now...

I have been wondering about PND, because I am finding it hard to muster up much energy for anything but I guess that I never imagined it might manifest itself in doubts about my marriage rather than feelings about my baby, if that make sense? Somehow, because it is about all this stuff, I can't bear the thought of talking it through with my rather stern GP or one of the random health visitors and (as you say, niceone1) family and friends are very thin on the ground for me in this part of the world.

The thing is, DH is very good - devoted to our DD and really good around the house when he is not working long hours. That he was like this always gave me such hope that we could have a long and happy marriage. I am not feeling very in love with him, but he is a man that it is very possible to love.

Basically I feel we have some big personality clashes, which are probably cultural based. He is very modern compared with most men from his background, but that still seems to equate to what in my background is extremely socially conservative. He is quite rigid and judgmental - and is even more so after all these years of living in another culture, which I find exhausting. I have stupidly let a lot of friendships go - because he was my priority and just didn't seem to be able to gel with the people I knew.

On top of that, I have spent five years being the breadwinner and trying to be loyal and supportive while he establishes himself in this country. I have poured energy into helping him learn how things work here, jobs wise, and have just focused on keeping my job secure and so there has been no time think about my own career. I am now about to go back to work full time, into a job I feel I have really reached the end of my tether with, but it's been so long, I can't think what else I could aim to be doing. I would have believed that by this stage there would be more hope of less of the financial burden being on me, but it hasn't worked out like that and I find myself a bit sick that other women I know have made better decisions that are now allowing them to stay home with their baby full time.

I guess I feel like during those five years, we had plenty of challenges, but we were building a life together and all that effort would pay off in the future together. But now I am not so sure ... I feel more like I have been a pathetic pushover and have made naive decisions ...

So much of that effort involved me putting his needs first and I just don't feel that he appreciates what that meant for me. I think there is a slight element of him coming from a background where the women always put the men's needs first and he doesn't even recognise that there might be an issue with that. And somehow I find the thought of raising my resentments and doubts with him terrifying - it would be easy to say something to him that he would find unforgiveable. I also feel ashamed that I can be so dissatisfied with my lot when you don't need to look far to find people with real problems.

The bottom line is, though, that I have spent these past years getting into the habit of bottling my feelings up and now, when the stakes have been raised so much by our baby, I feel like I have reached the end of my tether with it all... I can't really blame anyone else for this mess but me...

dont blame yourself as its something you have no control over

i didnt expect that i would not like my dp i didnt have bad feelings towards my child or anything of the sort just anxiety about my relationship etc which was classed as border line PND and i was told completely normal

we do still have problems and we were slightly affected by what happened but we do love each other i fall in and out of love with him all the time depending on circumstances etc the same as nay other couple the honeymoon period has gone were in rl now

i do know if i was to wake up and he was gone id be so unhappy i still know i love him i dont feel in love but thats ok i know i love him more than anything i always doubt us even now my anxiety will ask if were doing the right thing but when cuddled up on the sofa and relaxed i know i wouldn't want it any other way

I honestly felt exactly like you do! did you talk about what your expectations were for life after babies? I didn't, and it got us into all sorts of trouble as it turned out that me and DH had polar opposite ideas on what we'd be like after DS1.

My DH is so sweet but not a "high achiever" and I was v resntful that I had to go back to work after the birth while DH was a SAHD. I looked around at friends whose husbands were earning £££ in the City, etc, and felt, "Why are these men ambitious while you[DH] are content to let me earn the money that you should be earning. have you no pride?"

I'm shite at talking about problems calmly and rationally, and was scared to raise anything in case he went off me so I let my feelings out like a leaky kettle - nothing for ages then sudden huge bursts of angry steam. Obviously these all made DH defensive so we had horrible rows.

I eventually went for counselling. it was awful - I cried a lot and a woman with jangly earrings nodded.

All that ever happened to solve these problems was that time passed. I don't know why, but after a year, I settled down, he settled down and life settled down. I realised that the women with high-earning DHs were also annoyed with their men, who weren't home to help with childcare ever.

I think I felt a lot of pressure on how I looked to the outside world. I felt judged. I felt constantly judge on my mothering ability, how I looked after having a baby, how our house looked, what our longterm plans were, everything. It was all go, and I took it out on DH who seemed to be oblivious to all these pressures.

...what a self-absorbed post I've just written! but IT WILL GET BETTER. It just will. I really believe that everyone goes through this.

Hopefully someone will come along and tell you how you can share your negative feelings with your DH is a non-threatening and constructive way. But in the meantime, every day that passes is one day back to normality.

Wornthrough - your name sums up those first few months. Honestly, for the first year of both my DS and DD's lives I had many occasions when I could not stand the sight, sound or even smell of my DH (am now feeling as am 32 wks pg, and about to start the whole process again!). Did wonder if we would make it through at times, but would say now that the work involved in doing so has been worth it. Looking back now, with some distance from the hormones and sleep deprivation, it would have been weird if our relationship was not changed by the arrival of DC's, each time they have changed me so it's inevitable that they changed DH and us as a couple.

Keep talking to your DH, and try to see the things that you admire/slightly like/can put up with , as well as the things that drive you up the wall!

I dont know how much you're managing to get out and about, but if you can raise the energy, I really think that doing so makes things seem better. When you're stuck within the same walls all day, with no adult conversation, things which wouldn't normally bother you about DH can become huge irritations.

Sorry if this sounds really trite advice, it may turn out to be a bigger issue for you, but the first year or so is probably not the time to make a decision if you can avoid it

Hi WT. I felt (feel?) the same. MY DS is 7 months. I had what can only be described as a total crisis after he was born and a total panic about what I had done. And I hid it from just about everyone spoke to my parents but didn't reveal the true extent of my emotions. I felt like I hadn't thought it through, I felt such strange emotions regarding my DP's family I hated that my DS was related to them!! I also had issues and resentment over a marriage proposal that didn't happen which made things even worse. It HAS got better. And I think it will. But part of me thinks we are going to split -- not matter of if but when. This is further complicated by the fact that I think we may have been coming to the end of our relationship after 7 years but a combination of factors led us to pregnancy but we DIDN'T REALLY TALK IT THROUGH. And we are both professional 'communicators'. Anyway, I am praying that things get better. But it does help that there are others that feel the same.... And btw my DP is the breadwinner, amazing around the house & desperate for us to work out. But I can't magic up emotions. I know people reading this will say I am irresponsible but there is alot more to it than what I have revealed now... At the moment I am looking at what I do have and being thankful for it...

i found keeping a diary helped very teenage ish but if i had rotten thoughts and couldnt make sense of them id write them down and in a calmer moment read them through and could see i was slightly over the top in my way of thinking but it also felt like i was telling someone the whole truth and made me feel slightly better once written down id force myself to think of something different as thinking of it all the time will drive you mad

try and get baby down to sleep get oh or yourself to cook dinner no sex just talking no baby talk i found this hard its all i had to talk about so we got games instead even silly games we used to play guess who alot as it got us talking and laughing with no serious talking and laughter is the best medicine once we were laughing more we could talk more and the doors gradually opened

we used to play silly games made up games charades seems really stupid but it helped it made me laugh so hard i felt instantly better and could see him in a different light again still took time but laughter was the key

life was so serious every day it was good to just be silly

gradually we talked more laughed more the closeness came back i didnt think so much about not wanting to be together we went out on date every month and just enjoyed our time life throws this at us a good few times a yr and i have to take the same approach my first thought is to leave im not sure why but i dont because deep down i know i dont want to dont ever blame yourself it is so natural i know many people that have made the rash decision to break up and it was the wrong choice but was too late

just try to have fun force yourself to be silly when you start laughing its the best feeling and some weight falls off your shoulders and dont over analyze my poor dp is still affected but understands why i was like it

sending big hugs to you all xxxxx

It makes me feel so much better to know others have been/are going through this. When I read my posts, they just sound so self-absorbed and unbearable. It makes me want to crawl away somewhere, so it makes me feel less desperate to hear I am not the only one... Thank you all...

Beautiful, I so relate - especially about the angry kettle. That is just what I am like. Don't know why I am so petrified about being 100 per cent honest with him - I think it's about being that classic female people-pleaser - but I am and all it leads to is these weird, horrible scenes with my DH that are hard to get over. I know counselling would likely help, but I had a short spate of it twice before, years ago, and there is part of me that can't face another woman with jangly earrings, as you say, if it means I am going to go again and again throughout my life... I basically would bawl my eyes out with three minutes of starting each session and know I would do the same now, which felt pretty pathetic.

I always prided myself on having a good career and NOT being the kind of woman who wanted to marry for money or anything like that. I used to feel like DH's sterling qualities of kindness, loyalty and resilience would carry us through (which I thought I shared). But now I feel like a joke for thinking that - suddenly I realise that all those people who shocked me by saying they wanted a well-earning husband and the diamond engagement ring and no financial responsibility have got just that and it looks fantastic. At the moment I don't even have contentment in my relationship ...

(I am, like you ecolightbulb, haunted by this feeling that it is not if but when that we will break up - which makes me feel sick that, if I truly feel that, I don't have the guts to just end it now. Ha - strong, independent woman, my butt! I have this seesaw of wanting to believe it will work, and believing that it can't)

As you say, Bubbla, I just need to be calm and try to find some positives... Gawd, it's been ages since a proper non-baby conversation... I guess that doesn't help.

You are not failing to be a "strong independent woman" because you're vvv reluctant to divorce your DH/father of your child, you daft girl! It's very good that you are reluctant to leave him.

Don't kick yourself too much about not marrying a rich man, either! Kindness, resilience and loyalty sound lovely qualities for a DH to have. Remember, people's finances can change at any point nin their life; better to have a devoted DH who might start earning more money in the future than a rich man who might lose his job!

"When a wife marries for money, she earns every penny."

If you don't fancy more counselling (and I don't blame you if you don't), how about trying St John's Wort or/and 5-HTP (from health shops)? Both are proven to be very effective on depression. You also need pampering - how do you feel you look? Are you happy with your appearance? Very shallow I know, but getting back to feeling I looked like "me" again was SO HELPFUL in beating my post-baby blues. Half my problem was feeling so hideous that it just seemed like a matter of time before DH had an affair.

If you're still unhappy when your baby is older, by all means leave. But until then, stick it out. IT GETS SO MUCH BETTER THAN THIS, HONESTLY HONESTLY HONESTLY.

You sound a little overwhelmed by your life at the moment and as if you think it would be easier if you had that high earning rich man to look after you. Are you sure this is all about your DH or it is it you? Maybe you are still adjusting to being a mum? it can be a massive massive shock to the system - you were independent before and the breadwinner -are you now suddenly cast in the role of vulnerable mother with child?

You say you were a strong independent woman and I'm sure you were - you sound it, maybe that's what is bothering you - having this baby has made you feel dependant on a man and if that man was a different type of man maybe it wouldn't be so scary?

The qualities you ascribe to your partner are very important and, to me, are much more important than riches - they were to you too until your baby was born. Give it time and they will be again.

dh & i went through a very rock y patch after dd was born. i took to muttering insults under my breath all the time. i think having a baby makes people so exhausted/overwhelmed, that they feel like they need a really strong support. they expect their partner to help them out, but their partner is prob feeling just as needy, so you both feel even more let down, exhausted.
of course, it is all caused by the baby, but very few people actually blame the baby, they turn to the next nearest target, that poor old partner.
we did just grow out of it. we had a couple fo painful, open conversations about it, and then decided just to get on with things & try to be nicer to each other.

dd is 5 now & he honestly is my best friend again.

MrsBoogie, I think you are right that I am feeling v. overwhelmed.

I think, if I think about it, the things that terrified me beforehand - labour, responsibility for a small baby - I have taken in stride much better than I thought. But those things I took for granted would be ok - my relationship - have proved more challenging than I thought. Overwhelmingly so.

I guess one thing I wasn't prepared for, was those very strong feelings you get about how you want things to be. During pregnancy and very much since I had DD I have wanted to be in MY country, with MY people around me. I want things to be MY way. And I sense that DH is just the same. After years of muddling along and having a comfortable, workable sort of balance between our cultures, now I feel like they are pulling us apart somewhat. At the very least, he seems to loath my family right now (and me his). I would never have seen that coming...

But a lot of it is not about our cultures - now I berate myself for not saving more, for not moving into a field with more family-friendly hours, for not being more prepared for all these DC-related issues. Our comfortable life now seems to be rife with poor decisions that I regret... But in reality, who is ever really prepared?

Some fine points made here but I just wanted to add to Beautiful's comment about falling out of love with baby's father for the first year or so - I think in evolutionary terms this is actually quite natural, unpleasant though it seem. A mother's attention needs to be completely on her new baby in order to maximise its potential for survival. If the father wanders off because he isn't being satisfied, either emotionally or sexually, then no biggie, the genes have already been passed on. I'm not saying this is okay socially or that these feelings should be allowed free rein, by the way - just that realising this helped me deal with some similar issues recently.

My husband keeps things from me so I don’t kick off. The latest problem is that we bought a van to take my sons motorbike to racing events in. We run a small Scaffolding business and keep the van on the premises, and so when the employees noticed the van and realised we would only really be using it to transport the motorbike at weekends, they thought about borrowing it. I didn’t agree with this and let my husband know and he told me he had told the employees that the van was just to be used by us. A few months later and I have just found out off my son that one of the employees has just been for a weeks holiday in our van and my husband chose to keep it from me! Any thoughts

9 year old ZOMBIE THREAD.