SAHM/WOHD Issue
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| Thu, 07-13-2006 - 4:35pm |
My husband came home the other day with this story:
His coworker, J and J's wife, K just had a set of twins born via in-vitro after 17 years of marriage and infertility. Anyway, the end of the pregnancy was difficult and K was on bedrest and the babies were born (I think) 6 weeks early - one of them had to stay in the hospital for 2 weeks after birth. OK - that's the background.
K got a lot of attention during pregnancy - not being able to move around on her own. Now the babies are 4 months old, but although she is a SAHM, she expects (yes, expects) J to leave work every day at 4. That's the normal time, but at times they are required to work overtime if something has broken and needs to be fixed before the next shift comes in. According to my husband, J comes home every night and fixes dinner, washes bottles, takes care of the babies, and then gets up with them in the middle of the night. The only time K is bothered with them is during the day when she's home alone. (I know, this account is how J related it to my husband, so the story is probably more one-sided than the situation really is.) And K may have post-partum depression and that can explain needing J so much....
K's mom and sister both lives within a halfmile of her and can come to help with the babies, but she expects J to leave work everyday at 4 to do it. She also calls a lot during the day. Anyway, the other day something had broken and J needed to stay past 4, but he tried to leave - my husband's and J's boss told J that he needed to decide what is more important - him taking care of those babies or him working to provide for those babies? Sounds to me like J's job is starting to be in jeopardy and he makes pretty good money for the area of the country we live in. Replacing that income would be very hard.
Just wanted to see what y'all thought about this.

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We're making a lot of assumptions on the behalf of the husband here - assuming he's "out" of sick leave - assuming he's "out" of vacation time, assuming he's unable to take any leave at all.
We don't know the facts here, however, if someone is exhausted to the point where they are in danger, they should either take a day out, or *gasp* take a nap in their car on their lunch break.
***1)They theoretically could help but the wife refuses all help (a claim the OP made in a later post)***
Like I said. I have seen this too. The woman I know refuses to let anyone help her with her children. Yet she calls her DH all day and loses it if he works late. It is sort of strange to me.
"No apology for you. Your statement was wrong."
You wrote it, I just copied it and pasted it. So I guess you (in quotations) are wrong.
"Why call so much that his job is in jeopardy?"
You know what's funny? No one has even given thought to the fact that perhaps his job was on shaky ground before the wife started calling. Did OP say the husband was a model employee beforehand and now since wifey calls too much and he actually leaves when quitting time comes around, he is going to be fired? Perhaps you missed it, but the husband's boss could get into a LOT of trouble for his comments.
"I have 3 children. I know that I work. However I can handle caring for my 3 children without calling my DH all day."
To quote from you - your situation has no bearing on this and no relevance to the debate. You have three kids who are all pretty spread out age-wise. In fact, your oldest is babysitting age, so really you have no clue about twin preemies.
The woman probably needs some paid help at home. The husband, instead of bitching about her to his colleagues, should be trying to come up with solutions to their troubles.
<No I can honestly say that I don't remember a time that we just needed to change a diaper and then lay them back down. However I would have still gotten up and done it. My asking my DH to get up and change a diaper isn't grabbing myself anymore than a minute or two of sleep. I nursed in a chair in the babies room. I didn't see any point in waking my DH out of sleep and then getting right up to nurse. Especially not for a minute or two extra sleep. >
Did you ever just not want to do something???
"should waste sick days"
Wow, you consider caring for ones kids to be a waste.
OP said, btw, that the mother also got up at night. Remember, she is outnumbered. Get your facts straight.
"No I didn't. Again try to stick to the facts and not put your personal spin on the situation."
Yes, you did say that if you woke your DH to go and get the baby, he would roll over and laugh.
"I think maybe you are way off base. You might have a point if I would have said big bad neighborhood that is so scary. You said your DH worked in a bad neighborhood. How is that different than what I said? Snarky? I wasn't the one being snarky."
If you weren't being snarky, you wouldn't have said anything about the state of the neighborhood. You would have just said that he "goes off to work."
"
Was your DH a cop then? Did you wake him after you gave birth and he was a cop?"
Yes, he was a cop then. He woke up with DS for the first couple of months. I didn't have to wake him. He heard the baby's cries and was up. After that, we took turns. My sleep was just as precious as his.
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