I'm a FTM, with a 2 month old baby. My husband just ended his paternity and started work (he works from home) and I'm going crazy with the lack of help.
Some background, my in laws are more "play buddies" than care givers - my MIL had a village to take care of my husband when he was an infant, and thereafter he was fully taken care of by his grandma. She doesn't even know how to change a baby's nappy. My FIL didn't carry my husband until he was 6 months old. My parents are no longer in the picture. So my hubs and I are on our own. Financial wise, we don't want to hire a helper full time.
In the past 2 months, the first was great because we had a fantastic confinement nanny. Thereafter, in the 2nd month, MY nightmare started. My husband has this habit of claiming "we need a schedule". And he's always the first one to bail. Then coming back full circle blaming me that we don't have a routine. So long story short, we agreed on a shift schedule where he does nights and I do most part of the day. But somewhere along the way, because meal times (i.e. breakfast, lunch and dinner) falls under my shifts, he has to "cover" for me to eat. And not to mention pump times (this annoys me buckets too. He keeps telling me how pumping burns calories for free, but complains and throws tantrums when I need to pump 4-6 times a day. So I ended up stopping at the 2 month mark, and he still keeps telling me pumping burns free calories. 🙄like if I had a choice in the matter. Either I choose my marriage and sanity or I choose breastfeeding my baby. My baby doesn't like to latch because I have really short nipples and she gets frustrated.) Back to this, so he tends to get frustrated towards the later parts of the evenings. His parents comes over to "help" but end up giving me twice the work to clean up after them, and he sleeps when they come over. So when he gets too tired, halfway into the evening he'll bail and have me do nights when I haven't slept since the night before. Then he gets frustrated the next day cause I'll be sleeping when our baby is fussing. Now that he's back at work, he claims to still want to do night, so that's 2am to 8am, and I take the rest of the hours. Is it fair to expect him to at least help out for an hour or 2 for me to have dinner or rest after he ends work at 5pm? Cause somehow from 8pm to 2am sleep schedule, it suddenly became 6pm to 2am. Leaving me along with the little bub for 18 hours. And she's going through some growth spurt where she's really hard to put to sleep during the day, and she screams bloody murder cause she has colic, reflux and phlegm. I'm tired, and stressed and guilty because I just screamed at my innocent baby for crying because she's overtired and she jumped because she got scared. I feel like I'm failing as a mother, and I really really hate my husband now. I really do need help if anyone has any suggestions on how I can get through this please. #adviceappreciated #firsttimemom