Hi Predaddit! Some PreMommits Need Your Insight on Anxious Husbands

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daughteroftheonetruegod

New member
Edit: thanks to your shares and insights, I took action that helped : asking him how he is feeling, staying calm and listening, watching dad resources online (or reading about the subject) together. He revealed his ‘truth (feeling huge pressure put on himself due to our financial situation and his expectations around family life). Fear driven build up, anxiety stuff like many of you related . No release valve.

We are like tea pots, and need to remind each other to take it easy, let go of expectations, and transition into a survival mode to anticipate and adapt to current and approaching situation.

Going forward, we’ll make it through these growing pains and rough patches. I appreciate this community and the work y’all men are doing for each other and society🙏🏻 stay healthy !

Original Post :

Hi,

I’ll be a first time mom soon and my partner a first time dad. We are excited ! However, we are also struggling. I come here to gain a little insight because some other moms on r/babybump have posted similar concerns recently.

Is it…Anxiety, fear, depression, burn-out, or something else causing our spouses to become callous with us during our pregnancy?

Like becoming upset because we can’t do things we used to or are emotional or vulnerable. It’s hard being a caretaker…is it just stress?

Have you found yourself not believing what your wife says? Or feeling resentful of her? My SO indicates that he believes I am faking it to get out of things and seems jealous of the attention I get. Like he refused to believe i couldn’t open jars due to weakness from anemia. He also remarked how lucky I am to get handicap seating on buses while he gets none.

It’s perplexing. Have y’all felt this kind of stuff? Where does it come from and how does a dad to be pull through it ?

I haven’t been pushy about readings or education. I suggested this group to him and a dad app.

I got diagnosed with a medical complications after a smooth 6 months. Suddenly, my partner fell ill, stopped work, started playing video games 6+ hours a day, neglected his to do list and criticised me for not cooking him breakfast and dinner each day (I would 3-4 times a week). He blamed me for not keeping house while I worked, managed my medical issue and did chores. And prepped for baby and so much on plate. I explained my capabilities were diminishing and we needed to have grace for each other. I explained I am struggling and need a partner.

He seemed to struggle with that. After a recent blow out I am giving him space. We are going to couples birth consultations with the midwife soon and I am hoping this will help.

Before he started sliding into saltiness, we had a heart to heart about mental health. It helped, but then entitlement slid in. I can’t help but become resentful too…it’s a big time of change and also a sweet time that I wish could be restored between us.

This will pass too….just looking for stories or experiences here.
Is the end in sight? Will my hunny pull through and calm down his nerves and agression?
 
@daughteroftheonetruegod There are a variety of things he could be expected to feel as an expecting partner. None of these things give him an excuse to treat you poorly or dismiss your feelings.

Something that can help him is having someone else, not you, who he can talk to so he can feel seen. He's going through his own process right now, and he may feel overshadowed by how central you are in the pregnancy. But talking to you about it may not be helpful right now. I'd recommend he find other dads, maybe a therapist, someone who can just listen to how he's feeling.
 
@perfect786 Thank you. Would I be able to successfully suggest he seek that ? He did see a doctor recently at my suggestion, but not the mental health kind.

Perhaps I can ask the midwife (discreetly) today to suggest some resources to him
 
@daughteroftheonetruegod While I can't say whether you'd be successful, I can say that direct communication will be an important part of parenting together, so I encourage it. Don't go through the midwife, talk to your husband.

However, maybe the way to start this conversation with him is to ask him how he's been feeling and go from there. Try to designate a safe space where he can talk about how he's feeling without pulling the focus onto how you're feeling. Then if he's mentioning these things you've mentioned, you could appropriately suggest that he seek out someone to talk to, since he may be finding it hard to talk to you about it and he definitely needs someone. We all do.

Something else he may need is a better understanding of what you're really going through. The midwife can be helpful here with some resources for that: one book I highly recommend is Good Moms Have Scary Thoughts. It focuses on perinatal mood disorder and the general challenges and hard feelings that come in the time around birth. I found it helpful to read together with my wife, so we could go through and just point out things that resonated with us. Not all of it did, but little things really made us feel more seen.
 
@daughteroftheonetruegod That's no reason for him to act this way towards you BUT, as someone whose wife recently is pregnant I can slowly start to see why some men "act out" in an immature way and it's really not talked about much since you're supposed to "man up"
  1. All the attention goes to the wife and incoming kid
  2. You start to mourn the "old life". even my wife was near tears the other day when I said I was thinking about how things are about to change forever, and these non kid moments over the next few months, we aren't going to have that again. Mind you, we PLANNED to have this kid and I was still like damn, this is depressing as hell.
  3. Since you don't much attention anymore (for example all my extra energy I give to my wife to make her as happy and comfy as possible), anything that's wrong with me gets out on back burner. I'm sick? Well toughen up, your wife is growing a human being. You're horny and sexually frustrated? Too bad buddy, no sex for you for a while, how dare you expect it right now? You have to handle all her hormonal changes and mood swings that's 9/10 times directed at you.
  4. Financial is a big one. I handle the money, so I'm dealing with prepping for all the huge expenses coming up, very stressful to shoulder all that burden. She wants to take 6 months of work. How are we gonna afford this? I wanna take months off also (I love my child too and wanna bond) but we'd be homeless. It's more socially acceptable for a woman to be off work, so stop being a bum. Your need to bond with your child isn't a priority as much as your wife's..
It's a tougher time for women, but everyone's usually aware and validation of the tough moment are important to helping women go through it, men on the other hand get zero acknowledgement haha. I also recently learned men go through postpartum depression too (crazy, I know).

Any who, still doesn't give him a pass to act the way he's acting. Unfortunately he needs to communicate all this with you or a therapist if he can't handle it in a healthy way...

As awful and unhelpful as the statement is, he needs to "get his shxt together and toughen up". I'm accepting we're not a priority on the mental help list, so should he!
 
@danishajaz Yeah that’s a bit of a conundrum: he needs support and a village to help him, without it he feels unseen and low worth. He acknowledged that and stated that as a need. He said he can’t go to family for that kind of support. Where are the mends groups? Daddit.

He also said he can’t be my sole support either, that I need my village (or therapist etc). So ok.

It was almost like a power struggle of who wanted and deserved more special attention.

We both wanted to be babied and taken care of- like a regression. I stepped up and started to manage my own health and needs, stopping to look to him for them. I think that give him relief. The culture right now is that women deserve special treatment, but perhaps it’s a bit out of balance..?

So yes his journey to fathernood needs to be seen and acknowledged. By me yes, and by a bro-team. And continuously, because when the support breaks down it becomes resentment and selfishness.

Him centering himself is not the way, yet it’s happening. That a maturity issue perhaps?

I feel like this is a mens issue that men need to organise and address within their realm, to discuss and spread a cultural awareness of. I just looked up Dad YouTubers so I’ll try to watch some with him and see what he thinks.

I have wanted to say « step up » and « grow up » but know that would be toxic. We all need space…but yeah maturity will hopefully come if we /he navigates productively.
 
Maybe also his perceived role as a man is threatened. He’s from a traditional family culture and has now adopted a modern western life style of equal partnership. Maybe he has no role models and is struggling feeling emasculated or worried I will never cook again and feeling trapped like he’ll become a mom?

I’ll ask. Has anyone here held those thoughts and fears?
 
@daughteroftheonetruegod I’m getting the sense you two had a more traditional set up where you did a lot of the cooking and cleaning. No shade if that is something both partners have agreed to, but now that you’re pregnant he seems to really resent having to not just take care of you but also take care of himself. Seems like he needs to grow up a little.
 
@danishajaz This is a great comment, all of it is so true and it’s the best explanation of why some husbands feel unseen during this time. It’s really a no win situation 🥺 but OP sounds like she cares about her husband’s mental health so I’m guessing she’s doing what she can to help… still no good reason for the husband to behave this way.

Also just a random tangent but “mourning the old life” is a legitimate stressor that not enough people talk about. My husband and I were avid WoW and LoL players before our baby, and we also went out on date nights often to dinner and movies. We both had some legit depressed moments as my pregnancy progressed and we thought it was going to be all over.

The best news is that I would never go back to the old life, not for a million dollars, that version of us is gone and life now is better than it’s ever been. But even better is you can still make time for fun. The first 4 weeks is really tough, but after that it just progressively gets better and better ❤️
 
@daughteroftheonetruegod Callous during pregnancy? Never in my life. This woman is sacrificing her body to carry our child.

I will not regurgitate what everyone has said already, I will instead focus on a bit more is what this might look like after baby comes.

Anecdotally, I struggled a lot after my first was born. I struggled with how helpless I felt as a new father, and how useless I was to support my wife. Both kids were exclusively breastfed for the first few weeks, they just wouldn't take a bottle, so it wasn't an option. She would be the one who always had to get up, even if the kid slept, because she would need to get up and pump. At best, she would be able to turn the baby back over to me after she was fed, but that only worked sometimes.

Looking back, I am ashamed of some of my behavior during that time. I reacted from a place of deep hurt and sadness and felt like I had no right to complain because I wasn't the one actually enduring pregnancy or sacrificing my body to nourish our child.

Even if your spouse becomes the ultimate father and support person when your child comes, there will come a time where he will struggle greatly with being unable to calm the child, and feeling like a failure when he has to turn the baby over to you. I think you both need to ask yourselves how would he react in that situation?

I can't stress this advice enough for would be fathers. Even if you don't think that you have mental health issues, I encourage you to try and speak with a therapist about your feelings, about your own childhood, what do you want to do differently or the same that your parents did. It doesn't have to be a therapist, but you should have these conversations with someone you can talk to openly. Kids trigger all the trauma responses.
 
@daughteroftheonetruegod I feel nothing but intense fear for my wife’s safety, fear at being a parent, fear at this child’s health and excitement that we get to do it together, I don’t even think twice about whether her woes are manufactured or not. I would open her jars, help her get dressed, or burn down the tri-state area if it would make her more comfortable through this trial.

I would say that fear manifests in different ways, maybe fear makes him skeptical “could this pregnancy really be degrading her that much?”

Some people can only sympathize, so they’ll never understand if they haven’t experienced it.
 
@katrina2017 Yeah I learned today his expectations about family and the financial pressure he was putting on himself was causing the acting out. And several things other commentors mentioned. It was a good, call much needed breakthrough. Glad this subreddit is full of empathy and helpful advise.

We’ll get there!
 
@daughteroftheonetruegod First, even though things get very stressful, it is not OK for him to treat you with disrespect!

There's definitely a lot of issues that arise with transition to fatherhood. One is that men tend not to have the gradual physical/hormonal reminders of what is happening so can feel estranged from the experience/unprepared, which results in anxiety. There's also the isolation - we can feel like no-one else knows what it's like for us, especially not our partners. Of course, it's not quite true but there is a distancing. Because, perhaps it is biology, perhaps it's society, but we gravitate towards gender roles which can lead to "I work and earn money and you care for the pregnancy/child". Then, there can be fear/worry - will you be okay? will baby be okay? what is it actually like at the birth? what can I do? And feeling helpless. Also, the way we were parented gets triggered - are we gonna be like dad? how else is there to be? what role models do I have? And then, just like mums, there's perinatal anxiety and depression...

SO, lots! The short of it is as other suggested: he would need options to explore all these changes rather than shut down/shut off. Therapy, other fathers, a village...
 
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