At Home With New Baby

OK, so you have been home with your precious new baby for about a week (I give this one week time frame because a week is, in my opinion, about as long as the human body can handle with NO SLEEP!) now and so far things are going great. You may be breastfeeding or bottle feeding, but of course if you are breastfeeding sleep becomes even less likely as babies wake-up more often with breast milk (breast-milk is easier to digest than formula) than babies who drink formula. You are now beginning to notice that your Dear Husband (”DH”) is not as helpful as he was at the hospital (now I myself had a C-Section with both my pregnancies, so I really needed any extra help I could get with the new baby, you may be going through this as well). What do you do? Well I’ll tell ya. Get pissed off! You begin to start having those crazy dreams you had while you were pregnant (come on now, you know those dreams, the ones where you see your DH getting clobbered and you relish at the fact that it may be you doing the clobbering) and you start to numerate all the things you are doing while he is out working doing God knows what and you are at home for two weeks now with no sleep, barely eat, and showering feels like winning the Lotto. Woooo…that felt good, didn’t it? Let us get back to reality. Before you decide to clobber your DH, here are some of the things that may be crossing his mind:

1. he may feel inadequate (remember to most of us Moms this feels natural to us and our poor DHs sometimes feel as if they were to break the baby just by holding the baby [kindly show your DH how to change the new baby’s diaper,change baby’s clothes, ask him to help with taking new baby a bath, etc, this will help feel more confident in caring for baby and in-turn he will be more helpful)
2. he may feel left-out, out of the everything that is happening (he may feel like there is nothing for him to do [if you are breastfeeding try and pump so that your DH can get a couple of feedings in and if you are bottle feeding ask him to help you])
3. he may feel like you do not care about him (I know this may sound crazy, but I have the personal experience of my DH feeling as if I did not love him anymore because I was not being intimate with him [actually between my newborn and my two year old I didn’t even make him dinner or clean his clothes, I mean he was left to fend for himself] so I went ahead and made time that was just for him, I made him his favorite meal or sat and talked about his day, I tried my best to make him feel loved [remember that before the new baby it was, in essence, all about him]) and
4. he may feel overwhelmed and may be trying to ignore what is obviously happening (try and talk to your DH so that this new MAJOR RESPONSIBILITY is not as scary and it may not hurt to let your DH know you are just as scared)

In essence, if your DH is not performing his “fatherly acts” with the new baby or helping you out as DHs are supposed to, there may be an underlying reason why.

I hope you find my Hubpage helpful. If you have any questions or would like more advice on any other relationship matters, please contact me. I will be more than happy to help!

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