Husband Wants Nothing to do with Our 8 Day Old Baby

Person_one

Fire_Fox wrote: »

relatives (including the father) help with nappies and feeds

Sorry, but I hate this.

Fathers don't 'help' with their own children, as if they were solely the mother's responsibility and dad doing a nappy is a favour to her.

Fathers parent, they care for their children, they don't 'help'.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Fire_Fox wrote: »

Firstly we aren't only talking about a newborn, secondly meeting the relationship needs doesn't take massive amounts of time away from the baby. Mothers go back to work, parents get a sitter, relatives (including the father) help with nappies and feeds, babies sleep. Many modern mothers don't breastfeed anyway and most use contraception, let's not pick and choose which parts of evolution we lay claim to.

To see nurturing your relationship, meeting your 'other half'/ partner's emotional needs as propping up their ego is truly sad. Funny how people only seem to think this about a father's needs and not about a father being loving/ supportive/attentive/ considerate to a mother, that is expected of a modern man, cue hand wringing and loud tutting if he is not just as in this very thread. I stand by "healthy well adjusted children have been raised for centuries without the mother being totally obsessed with the baby".

Not at 8 days, they don't.

When you hold a baby to bottlefeed, you hold it in almost exactly the same position and distance as breastfeeding.

If mothers weren't 'completely obsessed' with their babies, they simply didn't survive. Infant mortality rates were much higher, as were perinatal deaths of both mother and child. Puerperal fever, post partum haemorrhage, infection, scarlet fever, tb, starvation, genetic defects, infanticide and abandonment were all more common.




Newborns commonly only sleep for an hour or so a time - two hours is a good sleeper at that age, and as for any more than that, well, that's very fortunate.

I'm not even going to do any more than touch upon Attachment Theory, where the absence of a reliable primary carer (whether male or female) can be found to have considerable emotional and psychological effects upon both humans and other animals, reaching into adulthood and to their own offspring. I'd return to the example of a 5 week kitten in a cage chucked food, rather than nutured in the litter - the animal centric description would often be that the creature is poorly socialised or simply 'separated from its mother too soon'.



*********

If a partner of yours were to be in a situation to have to care for a seriously ill (and therefore defenceless/helpless) relative for 48 hours following hospitalisation, would you really be throwing a wobbly because they hadn't paid attention to you? Would you really be throwing a get well present at them or wishing the ill person had never been born or put in a home somewhere rather than where your partner's attention could be taken away from your personal needs?

What if, when your much loved cat was seriously ill and you had a previously supportive partner, they threw a massive strop and told everyone that they could take your cat away/wanted you to get rid of him because you were more interested in Noah? I don't believe you would have shut Noah away because his miaowing annoyed a partner. Or taken anyone suggesting the man was more important, so you should give Noah up to devote your time to your man instead.




You quite rightly prioritise the needs of your pets. You were vegetarian/vegan to ensure you could afford to give Noah the best food you could. Was that for fun or because you prioritised the needs of a defenceless creature, totally dependent upon you, above that of yourself?


The desire you have to care for your pets is very similar to the urge as a parent to care for human young. And the demands of a grown adult insisting the defenceless mammal is cast aside, to the extent of threats of abandonment and violent, well, they come second to both.

Fire_Fox

Person_one wrote: »

Sorry, but I hate this.

Fathers don't 'help' with their own children, as if they were solely the mother's responsibility and dad doing a nappy is a favour to her.

Fathers parent, they care for their children, they don't 'help'.

They should IMO, but several people on here are saying the mother either does do or should do all the nurturing and caretaking, which seems to leaves father in the role of junior assistant/ breadwinner/ eunuch/ sperm donor. If father is permitted to/ consents to be an equal partner in the venture of child rearing mother and father would have time and energy to nurture their relationship. I hate the idea that he should be an equal when it comes to the (literally) sh1tty) tasks but a lesser being when it comes to the more pleasurable aspects of family life. By the same token I hate blokes who want all the fun and none of the responsibility.

Fire_Fox

I've addressed most of this, JojotheTightfisted, I am sure it is truly boring to keep repeating it. Nobody is suggesting anything akin to chucking food at a kitten, that is absolutely ridiculous and if that is what you think of this discussion I am wasting your time. Noah was PTS in February 2011.

mikey72

Person_one wrote: »

Sorry, but I hate this.

Fathers don't 'help' with their own children, as if they were solely the mother's responsibility and dad doing a nappy is a favour to her.

Fathers parent, they care for their children, they don't 'help'.

I wish I'd known that earlier.
I get asked to "help" with the kids now.

Help with the homewrok
Help cooking meals
Help tidying up after them
Help loading the washing machine
Help loading the dishwasher.

I'll be saying no now, and telling her I shouldn't be helping,
She'll have to wait until I "parent" at the right time.

She gets asked to do the same, but I guess I can't do that anymore either?

Errata

If mothers weren't 'completely obsessed' with their babies, they simply didn't survive.

And the reason mothers are obsessed with their newborn is that it takes 3 to 4 weeks for them to completely differentiate themselves from the baby. Something to do with post partum hormones IIRC.

lilibet1

I don't think any new mum should have to justify the amount of time she spends with a new baby. I find it so sad that the op is going through this.

Unfortunately, we don't know how she is at the moment. I truly hope she and baby are ok.x

lilibet1

It seems to me that most animals parent better than op's husband

Person_one

mikey72 wrote: »

I wish I'd known that earlier.
I get asked to "help" with the kids now.

Help with the homewrok
Help cooking meals
Help tidying up after them
Help loading the washing machine
Help loading the dishwasher.

I'll be saying no now, and telling her I shouldn't be helping,
She'll have to wait until I "parent" at the right time.

She gets asked to do the same, but I guess I can't do that anymore either?

Why don't you just:

Cook a meal
Tidy up
Load the washing machine
Load the dishwasher.

(Helping with homework is different, because the homework is the child's task. The rest of it is not solely your wife's task!)

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Fire_Fox wrote: »

I've addressed most of this, JojotheTightfisted, I am sure it is truly boring to keep repeating it. Nobody is suggesting anything akin to chucking food at a kitten, that is absolutely ridiculous and if that is what you think of this discussion I am wasting your time. Noah was PTS in February 2011.

I know he was.

My point is that you quite willingly devoted your time and emotional energy to your cat for his welfare - you would not have tolerated anybody saying he hated 'it' and wanted rid of 'it' - so why berate a woman who had only had her baby home for a couple of days for prioritising the infant over a man?