becoming a single parent? horrendous support from partner
i have a 5 week old and i love her so much. i spend every second of my day with her or doing something related to her (pumping, cleaning bottles etc.) and i will put any of my needs aside for her. my partner, however, will not.
he was horrendous during my pregnancy. he had me doing all the housework, his only jobs were the bathrooms, cooking dinner, and taking out the bins. i did the bathrooms and bins most of the time. he is filthy. he argues i have a high standard of cleanliness but the times he has been alone in our flat for a few days we have ended up with mice and ants.
he is a student. he says he had no time to support me bc he was building our future. yet he never went to class or rotations. meanwhile i was also a student, pregnant, and taking on all the housework.
he id financially blessed, living off his parents whilst i survive on student loans, hardship funds and widening participation funds. yet i pay him rent (he paid our rent upfront and i pay him back) and bought all of the stuff for our baby. ALL of it. he has used money to control me too many times, threatening my with small claims court if i don’t get his rent to him. he would take the food out of our child’s mouth if he could.
during labour, he made it about himself. he was tired. he was bored. he wanted to go run. he was uncomfortable and hungry. but he would switch out with my mum every few hours to go home and rest. my labour was 1 day and 10 hours, i spent 3 days in hospital. from 10-2am on the day i gave birth, my mum stayed with me… he only showed up at 4pm, 5 hours after they broke my waters.
during my contractions, he was a menace. he was micromanaging everything i did. shoving juice in my face after my mum and i both asked him to stop bc i was nauseous. he ordered pineapple fried rice and left it in my room, it smelt so strong and i wasn’t allowed to eat. he did everything i asked him not to do whilst i pushed. he never advocated for me. i saw him once during pushing - at the end of the bed, behind all the midwives, hands on hips and gawking at my vagina. i asked him specifically not to bed at the end of the bed.
after birth, he took my golden hour. i was so upset that i dissociated whilst they stitched me. he then stood there staring at them stitching me up whilst my mum stayed with the baby instead. he kept pressuring me to breastfeed after i repeatedly said i couldn’t hold my arms up and knew i couldn’t support her.
as my mum left at 2am, she had to wake him up and tell him to look after me and i should be the one sleeping. he ignored her. i tried to wake him up so many times because i was exhausted, sat in my own bodily fluids after 850ml blood loss, falling asleep whilst holding my baby. i begged him to wake up at one point bc i was delirious and he argued “there’s no point in us both being sleep deprived” but decided he was the one that deserved the sleep. eventually he took her, i went to the toilet, and as i returned i almost fainted and had a whole room of doctors rush in.
we went to the post natal ward at 5am. he went back to sleep until 9/10. i stayed awake. it was horrendous. around 12 he went out for lunch with a friend whilst i waited around, alone with my baby still. we were discharged at 8pm-ish. my mum came to bring the car seat. as we left, he rushed ahead leaving me behind, wanted a the dad walk vid but my mum instead took a pic of the both of us at the exit holding the car seat (he complained about this saying “the only thing i wanted from the birth was that video” wtf!!! how can you want anything from MY labour?!). the moment we stepped out onto the street, he swung around without looking and almost launched the car seat with our infant into a woman.
once home, he made himself dinner (not me) and took himself to bed at 10. the next night it was 9. the next it was 8:30. whilst i didn’t sleep at all. he didn’t care for her throughout the day. he was rude to my mum, cooked us inedible food (raw, chewy). disappeared multiple times to go run or cycle. was rude to me, didn’t help with housework. held the baby in such dangerous ways and was too headstrong to let us teach him.
one night, he was so rude to my mum that she had to leave. i had a mental breakdown. he had basically kicked out the only support i had in the city, my mum lives 5 hours away. paramedics came, emergency mental health team took me onto their caseload and then referred me to perinatal mental health services. 6 days after the mental breakdown. i decided to take a cross country train with my 2 week old to stay with my mum for 3 weeks.
3 weeks of peace and support. he had been around this baby for 2 weeks, barely seen her, didn’t bond with her. left it all to me. i come back at 5 weeks and nothing has changed. he just told me how to parent her when he doesn’t know her and she doesn’t know him. he repeatedly oversteps when i tell him how she likes to be held or soothed, or what each cry means. he argues with me on everything.
the room that i had a mental breakdown in was still a mess. a massive bag of soiled nappies from 3 weeks prior sat in the corner of the room. laundry everywhere. my bed was unmade, he had washed my sheets last minute and tried to make me sleep on wet bedding. the entire flat was filthy, ants swarming the countertops and walls.
i sobbed. he had three weeks to reset and make me feel welcome. he didn’t even have dinner for me when i finally got back to the flat at 9pm. he had been bragging for the last three weeks about how much exercise he was doing. long runs, long bike rides, hanging with friends whilst i survived sleepless nights, horrendous latch issues, colic. he told me he had no time to clean up. when i said he had done nothing, he said “i’ve been up and you’ve been sat in the bedroom all day doing nothing” despite it being the day after i had returned to the flat, the day before i was packing and travelling whilst simultaneously caring for our newborn that doesn’t like to be put down.
i realised. my daughter and i will always come last. his dreams and his hobbies will always come before us. my dreams mean nothing to him, i must always follow his. he prioritised himself over a clean, safe environment for our child. again and again. my breaking point was having to check the clean bottles on the draining board for ants before i put them away.
i need to go back home to my mum. but im scared. there’s no room for us. i want to give my child a better quality of life, better than a controlling, dirty man and better than a cramped living arrangement. he keeps moving us further and further away from support. he wants us to move to a different city in august, no friends or family. then eventually he wants us to move abroad. i can’t do it. i’m going to break. i’m scared of being a single parent.