Advice for a new dad (arguing after newborn)...

kissenger

kissenger

kissenger

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My son was born three weeks ago and the situation is causing a lot of stress between my partner and I, and I wanted to ask people on here for some advice because I can't tell if I'm in the wrong or not. Here's the situation...

So yesterday we were fine, but we had a very minor falling out just before bedtime which was my fault and which I apologised for (she asked me to hold baby for 10 minutes while she got ready to breastfeed, but it ended up being more like 30-40 minutes, for a lot of which he was crying because he wanted food, and I got a little bit tetchy with her when she finally did come to get him). Then I woke up this morning and she's in a really bad mood and when I went to help try and settle the baby she said, "if I need your help I'll ask you" :confused: And she's just took the baby out to go and buy herself a 'push present' because I didn't get her one (although I did buy her flowers the day we came home from the hospital), so there's that too.

It's been a tough three weeks because she's breastfeeding and some days baby will want to feed virtually every hour, usually for about 45 minutes or so, right through the night. The worst thing for her has been the lack of sleep (for the first 8 or 9 days she slept probably 1-2 hours in 24, and every now and then baby will go back to 'cluster feeding' at night), but it also means that she sometimes can't do stuff during the day like go out or get jobs done, which understandably bothers her.

While I was still on paternity leave I did get up whenever baby cried to check his nappy and try and comfort him (except for one night when I was knackered and just slept through — again, for which I apologised), but I'm not doing that now that I'm back at work. And besides, the other half is now sleeping in the spare room because it's easier/safer to bed-share without me also being in the bed (I know not everyone approves of bed-sharing, especially with newborns, but we're taking all the necessary precautions — no drinking or smoking, being careful with bedsheets/pillows, etc — and given the lack of sleep we are at that point where we will try anything).

Besides that I think I'm helping out quite a bit: I'm cooking and cleaning and ironing, and making sure that she's looked after while she's breastfeeding during the day with drinks and snacks. And I usually do all the nappies during the day (unless I'm at work). I've also spent a lot of money making sure she has everything she needs and that might help make it easier on her (for example, I gave up my home office and turned it into a fully furnished nursery, I bought her a rocking chair because breastfeeding in bed was hurting her back, and I've bought countless baby bouncers, swings, toys, etc that we thought might make him settle more easily). If she's had a bad night, I try and settle the baby for a few hours after a feed so that she can go upstairs and nap, and on a few occasions when she's been at the end of her tether with sleep depravation at night I've taken baby out in the car (the one thing that always seems to settle him) so that she can crash.

So my question is, am I doing enough given the circumstances or should I be doing more (for example, getting up at night, even if I'm working the next day? Should I have bought her that 'push present'? Any advice in general would be appreciated.

TL;DR: I'm dad to a newborn, helping with housework and nappies during the day, but leaving it to mom at night. Mom is ****** with me. Am I out of order?
 
Long story short is it’s tough at the start, you’ve said your sorry, don’t let it eat at you, just be there for her to help out and do stuff as needed.

She’ll probably realise she’s overreacted and feel bad about it.
 
antijoke said:
Long story short is it’s tough at the start, you’ve said your sorry, don’t let it eat at you, just be there for her to help out and do stuff as needed.

She’ll probably realise she’s overreacted and feel bad about it.
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Pretty much this. The sleep deprivation is a killer and no wonder she is ratty with you. You don't have boobs so can't help with that part, everything else you can do: nappies, cooking, washing, ironing etc and it sounds like you are.

One thing that helped was getting out to meet other mums so she could see it wasn't just her feeling like ****. My girls are 10 and 14 now, but my wife still meets regularly with the maternity group mums she made friends with.
 
I am male and have raised 3 kids here is my advice....some may sound nasty but it is not ment to be.

1. stop been selfish....the reason i say this is because you have to understand what you partner has gone through and be more understanding ..pain/wiped out/hormonal.....what did we do {lol}
2. you're partner is breast feeding and she will be wiped out, breast feeding is great but i would bottle feed IMO baby feeds better ..aka eats more
3. book some time off work to give your partner a break at night to let her have a break... get her to express milk for you for you're baby for the night shift
4. sleep when baby sleeps till you get used to the new arrival and NEVER and i mean NEVER pussy foot around the baby make noise so the baby gets used to noises
5. talk talk talk to each other

been first time parents is ONE of the hardest things in the world to do and you have to muddle through best you can
my second child i had to enlarge the hole in the bottle because he was not able to suck hard and that made life soooo much easier

kids are soul sucking... life stealing... eating... screaming... urinating... ****ing... machines but they are amazing
enjoy this time while you can because they grow up so fast
 
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Have you discussed expressing and feeding via bottle? We tended to breast during the day and bottle at night, that way I could do the getting up, warming the milk and feeding. Sure there were times that he would only want and take the nipple, but it did at least mean that some of the time my wife got 3-4 hours sleep rather than 30-45 minutes at a time.
 
ukxenon said:
I am male and have raised 3 kids here is my advice....some may sound nasty but it is not ment to be.

1. stop been selfish....the reason i say this is because you have to understand what you partner has gone through and be more understanding ..pain/wiped out/hormonal.....what did we do {lol}
2. you're partner is breast feeding and she will be wiped out, breast feeding is great but i would bottle feed IMO baby feeds better ..aka eats more
3. book some time off work to give your partner a break at night to let her have a break... get her to express milk for you for you're baby for the night shift
4. sleep when baby sleeps till you get used to the new arrival and NEVER and i mean NEVER pussy foot around the baby make noise so the baby gets used to noises
5. talk talk talk to each other

been first time parents is ONE of the hardest things in the world to do and you have to muddle through best you can
my second child i had to enlarge the hole in the bottle because he was not able to suck hard and that made life soooo much easier

kids are soul sucking... life stealing... eating... screaming... urinating... ... machines but they are amazing
enjoy this time while you can because they grow up so fast
Click to expand...

Spot on.

Only thing I would add to that is sleep, by god sleep. When you can, whenever she can, sleep. Don't use the time the baby is asleep to catch up with telly or hobbies, that stuff can wait. Just sleep. We thought we could do everything, and often came to loggerheads as a result of being sleep deprived and crabby with each other.
 
Maccapacca said:
You'll always be in the do do it'll just vary in depth. You are bottom of the heap get used to it.
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Yup, from now on it doesn't matter how much you do, I've renovated a house in 8 months, decorated every inch of it, taught myself all sorts of stuff I never thought I could. I'm literally taking a break from repairing floor boards as I type this

Does she care, nope

You'll get used to it and it gets easier
 
randal said:
Spot on.

Only thing I would add to that is sleep, by god sleep. When you can, whenever she can, sleep. Don't use the time the baby is asleep to catch up with telly or hobbies, that stuff can wait. Just sleep. We thought we could do everything, and often came to loggerheads as a result of being sleep deprived and crabby with each other.
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Oh i agree sleep when you can...
feed baby, change baby, wind baby, put baby down to sleep and soon as you do shut you're eyes
 
First of all, what the **** is a push present?! The problem here is it doesn't matter if you should have got her one or not, she expected one and didn't get one. All you can do is a apologise. Part of why @ukxenon's 5th point is so important - you need to keep talking through literally everything and don't let either of you bottle it up inside.

My only one bit of advice is, you asked: "should I be getting up at night, even if I'm working the next day?" - 100% yes in my opinion.

What do you think your partner is doing the next day? "Not working"?

Let me put it this way. It's possible you might have said something along the lines of "I'm working tomorrow so can you get the kid if she's crying in the night?"

I can guarantee that what she HEARD is "YOU'RE not working tomorrow, so you get her in the night because otherwise I'LL be tired tomorrow when I'm doing my work".

So yeah, that ain't going to fly. There's some things you'll need to share equally, and some things you'll need to do more of.

Read up on the "metal load" (https://blog.trello.com/mental-load-invisible-work-stress) that woman take on in a relationship. I didn't convert me into a hippy, but I'm definitely more conscious about not putting any more burden on my other half unnecessarily (like asking her to remind me to take bags to the shops)
 
ukxenon said:
I am male and have raised 3 kids here is my advice....some may sound nasty but it is not ment to be.

1. stop been selfish....the reason i say this is because you have to understand what you partner has gone through and be more understanding ..pain/wiped out/hormonal.....what did we do {lol}
2. you're partner is breast feeding and she will be wiped out, breast feeding is great but i would bottle feed IMO baby feeds better ..aka eats more
3. book some time off work to give your partner a break at night to let her have a break... get her to express milk for you for you're baby for the night shift
4. sleep when baby sleeps till you get used to the new arrival and NEVER and i mean NEVER pussy foot around the baby make noise so the baby gets used to noises
5. talk talk talk to each other

been first time parents is ONE of the hardest things in the world to do and you have to muddle through best you can
my second child i had to enlarge the hole in the bottle because he was not able to suck hard and that made life soooo much easier

kids are soul sucking... life stealing... eating... screaming... urinating... sh^ting... machines but they are amazing
enjoy this time while you can because they grow up so fast
Click to expand...

Thanks. I'm not opposed to going to formula, because I am slightly sceptical of the supposed benefits of breastfeeding (not that I'm an expert, but I've read a little bit on it), especially when it's taking a toll on the mother's mental health (it's easy to start resenting a baby when it wants to feed every hour for 45 minutes!). However, I think my other half is quite determined to stick to it. What she might do is start expressing milk after four weeks so that I can feed the baby expressed milk from a bottle at night, to give her a break.

Sleeping when baby sleeps is good advice, but sometimes difficult. Our little one doesn't like being put in a cot and wants to be close to his mum to sleep, and a lot of the time he will nod off after breastfeeding, sleeping on his mum. Which means that she can't sleep then. This is why we're trying the bed-sharing, because at least that way if he sleeps after being fed, his mum is also in a position to be able to sleep safely.
 
paradigm said:
Have you discussed expressing and feeding via bottle? We tended to breast during the day and bottle at night, that way I could do the getting up, warming the milk and feeding. Sure there were times that he would only want and take the nipple, but it did at least mean that some of the time my wife got 3-4 hours sleep rather than 30-45 minutes at a time.
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Not much, but I think it's on the cards. I've read you shouldn't do it until after a month, so as to not ruin the breastfeeding, but we're nearly there now.
 
It's difficult and I'm not going to lie me and my wife have had arguments and in the end forgotten who was at fault.

1. Its not forever stick with it and hold back any frustrations. So many changes and hormones will cause silly arguments.
2. Book more time off to help your partner. I am just finishing an extra 2 weeks after my paternity leave and it's helped wonders.
3. Take the kid out for a bit let your partner have some alone time.
4. Put some time aside for both of you. Last night when the little one went to bed we ordered a take out and watched a film together.

I've just adopted a 1 year old so we have been dropped in it with no warm up.
 
Tell her to go back to work and you will quit your job and look after the baby. Just milk your wife on an evening for you daily supplies.

(Push Present. What the actual **** is the world coming to.)

Then once you tell her this and she leaves you she will appreciate everything you were doing.
 
RoyMi6 said:
First of all, what the **** is a push present?! The problem here is it doesn't matter if you should have got her one or not, she expected one and didn't get one. All you can do is a apologise. Part of why @ukxenon's 5th point is so important - you need to keep talking through literally everything and don't let either of you bottle it up inside.

My only one bit of advice is, you asked: "should I be getting up at night, even if I'm working the next day?" - 100% yes in my opinion.

What do you think your partner is doing the next day? "Not working"?

Let me put it this way. It's possible you might have said something along the lines of "I'm working tomorrow so can you get the kid if she's crying in the night?"

I can guarantee that what she HEARD is "YOU'RE not working tomorrow, so you get her in the night because otherwise I'LL be tired tomorrow when I'm doing my work".

So yeah, that ain't going to fly. There's some things you'll need to share equally, and some things you'll need to do more of.

Read up on the "metal load" (https://blog.trello.com/mental-load-invisible-work-stress) that woman take on in a relationship. I didn't convert me into a hippy, but I'm definitely more conscious about not putting any more burden on my other half unnecessarily (like asking her to remind me to take bags to the shops)
Click to expand...

I agree with you about the 'push present'. It's a stupid idea. In my head, it was more important to spend the money on things the baby or my other half would actually need, and my bank account has taken a hammering lately, so I didn't get her one.

On the issue of waking up in the night, I'm willing to accept I might be wrong, but my thinking is: if my other half is on maternity, at least she can catch-up on sleep during the day (i.e., when the baby naps), whereas I have to work all day. I have said to her that I'm happy to do it on weekends when I'm not at work, but I think she expects more.
 
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