While celebrating a new life and transitioning into a new role, a mother found herself struggling to get a moment alone after she welcomed her daughter. A time that was meant to be exciting for her and her husband led to them having a big fight over their parenting roles.
In the whirlwind of joy and exhaustion in the early days of parenthood, a mother found herself longing for a mere moment of quietness and alone time. She took to Reddit to share her frustrations. She started off by explaining that she had only had her child for two weeks. Her daughter was strictly breastfeeding, but in addition to cluster feeding, she realized her daughter found comfort in being close to her.
This meant that her new role allowed her little to no time alone. “I’ve showered once by myself since having her, and it only lasted long enough for me to soap up before she was crying and my husband was bringing her into the bathroom with me. I think I literally had all of 2-3 minutes,” she wrote.
On the contrary, she noticed her husband’s life had not changed. He still got to have long and uninterrupted showers every day but never understood why his showers frustrated his wife.
Each time she was in the shower, and the baby would cry, her husband would bring their newborn to her to calm her down. It made her angry that he did not even try to calm the baby down on his own, but his excuse was that the child loved showers, and seeing her cry hurt him deeply.
As sweet as his fears sounded, the Redditor still needed to find a way to get a full self-care routine without a baby being handed over to her. So, she decided to call in help. She asked her mother to watch her daughter as she showered. Her husband was not there when she reached out to her child’s grandmother, but when he arrived, he asked what his mother-in-law was doing at their house.
Surprisingly, he was angry at his wife’s decision to call her mother just to take a shower. “I could have watched her. Why would you do that?” he asked, to which the Redditor responded, “Every time you watch her while I shower, she ends up in here with me within 2 minutes of me being in here because you don’t even try to calm her down.”
Therefore, after five days of trying to shave her legs, she could not wait to enjoy the warm water hitting her body and relaxing her muscles. “I need to self-care,” the Redditor emphasized.
The original poster’s honest account of her experience as a new mother erupted in a chorus of voices from commenters sharing their own experiences and offering support. One commenter challenged the husband’s logic and suggested, “If, according to hubby, showers calm her down, why isn’t he taking her on his 30-60 minute showers?”
Another suggestion was for the OP to lock the door as a temporary solution and to teach her husband a lesson on respecting someone’s privacy. Another Reddit user said the husband made himself look bad in front of his mother-in-law, but it was time he realized that he could also parent his daughter without always running to his wife.
The discussion took a deeper dive into the dynamics of communication and support within the relationship. Commenters pointed out the absurdity that the husband had been more concerned about his wife calling her mother rather than making sure that his wife’s well-being was attended to. “You found a way around it. And now, even knowing how hard it’s been for you, he’s still not actually concerned about you; he’s just worried about how it looks to your mum,” remarked a commenter.
One mother said her husband once interrupted her hair appointment but she had a serious conversation with him and made him look back at the number of haircuts he had had since their baby arrived. She told him never to interrupt her alone time unless it was an emergency, so the commenter advised the OP to have the same stern conversation with her husband.
Another commenter shared a personal story of how her husband had slacked at the beginning of their parenting journey and how she eventually found a way to work as a team. The mother said her baby was a bit fussy on the first night home and she would always take the lead and calm her down.
But after three days, she put on earplugs and requested her husband only wake her up when the baby needed a feed and let her partner take care of the baby during the night, which led to a more equitable parenting dynamic.
The commenter added that allocating responsibilities helped them both understand the difficulty and joy of caring for a newborn, but it also allowed them to foster empathy and understanding. “That night, my partner became an equal parent,” the commenter added.
