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The original was posted on /r/AmItheAsshole by /u/threekidsaita on 2023-06-22 21:10:02+00:00.
My husband (36M) and I (33F) have been married for 8 years and have 3 kids (5, 3, and a 1-month-old infant). I am currently still recovering from my planned c-section and it is taking a lot longer than I had hoped. I am not on bedrest, but pretty darn close. Unless it's to go to the bathroom or changing or feeding my baby, I'm pretty much always sitting or laying down. I don't like it, but it's what my body needs to heal right now. Both my husband and I are still on maternity/paternity leave.
Obviously, that means that pretty much every other aspect of our lives falls on my husband right now. He' been doing a great job of taking care of the older kids and making sure everything in our lives is running as smoothly as it can given our circumstances. He's also great about taking care of the baby and giving me breaks as much as he can. But I can tell it's starting to wear on him mentally and physically. Neither of us is sleeping well and I swear he looks like he's lost more weight than I have since the baby came.
Due to me being pretty much immobile, I can't really go out of the house to do anything without assistance. So I wasn't able to plan anything really fun for Father's Day. I did help the older kids make him cards and ordered him some nice steaks to cook though. I felt bad because for Mother's Day he bought me a 6-hour pregnancy spa treatment and took the older kids out of the house all day so I could have peace.
But on the morning of Father's Day, I was feeling worse than usual as I had to strain myself the day before to pick up something off the floor and I aggravated my incision. So, I was laid up all day. Again, this meant my husband had to do literally everything that day. By the time he got the older kids to bed, I could tell he was irritated and upset. I told him to try and relax for a bit, but then the baby started fussing and he jumped up off the couch, grabbed a pillow, and screamed into it.
I tried to calm him down, but he just kept freaking out about how he's at his wits end and he needs a break and that I couldn't even find a way to give him a single hour of quiet on Father's Day. I started crying and he just looked at me and walked away to take care of the baby without saying anything.
After he took care of the baby he came back to me and apologized, but he said he needs a break and he's going to talk to family about taking the older kids for a week or so and that he's just disappointed that his Father's Day was spent running around doing everything for everyone else. He didn't even get to cook his steaks, he ate cold pizza for dinner.
I asked him what I was supposed to do because it's not like I can move or leave the house and he said I could have looked into a sitter for the kids or made them sit with me and watch a movie for an hour so he could have just a sliver of time for himself. He said he feels like his needs are at the bottom of the list and he just wanted to feel like he matters for one day.