[Apologies in advance, this is super long. As a side note, if you're going to leave your judgements about me or my wife in the comments, don't bother. We're really trying our best here and I do not put any blame on my wife for our current situation. We have tried talking to her doctor about this, which I mention at the end. I'm not looking for medical advice, I'm just looking for advice with how to cope with everything until she can see her OB/GYN.]My wife (28F) and I (32M) are spiraling and I just really, really have no idea how to help. I can feel her starting to resent me and our son. She's stopped holding him, changing him, or interacting with him unless she's nursing him. We've tried getting him to bottle feed the milk she pumps but it's just doesn't seem possible. We tried the special bottles and having her leave for a while and all that and eventually my wife just gets frustrated and does it herself. In a way, I am kind of glad this is happening. I have a suspicion that if she stopped nursing him, she would stop interacting with him entirely. This really scares me. We have no idea how this is going to play out when she needs to go back to work in 3 months.All she wants to do is housework. Everything needs to be done by her or it's not good enough. I wash the dishes, she finds something wrong with them, then takes ALL the dishes from the cabinet and washes all of them. I change the sheets on the bed, she says she doesn't like this set of sheets, washes the ones I just removed, and makes the bed again. Even clothes, I fold a basket, she takes them all out and folds them again. She even does these things when she does the work. She'll fold baskets of clothes 3-4 times before putting them away. She mopped the floor last weekend 3 times in a day. She'll take 45 minutes to vacuum a single room of the house.She's exhausting herself with these mundane tasks that have never bothered her before. I tell her to go lay down or ask her to come and watch a movie with me, but she refuses. After feeding him the other day, we had a friend come over and watch him while we went to vote and I took her out for coffee and it was a really great time because it felt like her again. Then when we got back home and it felt like she was still a bit happier than she usually is now.It's exhausting for me too, because I don't only have to worry about the baby, I have to worry about her too. It concerns me even more now that I have to go back to work (half days/working from home twice a week) and leave her and our child alone together for at least 4 hours a day. This worries me especially because I went to the store while the baby was napping over the weekend and I was gone for maybe 1 1/2 hours. By the time I got back, both her and the baby were crying. He was inconsolable and she couldn't figure out what was wrong and got frustrated. I only made it worse when it only took me a total of 5 minutes to get him settled. The absolute look of devastation on her face when I tried to console her after getting the baby settled was heartbreaking. I was kind of hoping that forcing her to be alone with him would help her in a roundabout way, but there is no way I can do that anymore after what happened.My first thought was to get someone to stay with them while I'm at work, but my mother has always been extremely critical of my wife even before the baby as I came from a very traditional household. Her parents live about 3 hours away and I'm sure they would come if we asked, but she doesn't want to talk to them about this. I was going to ask my SIL because she's a stay at home mom, but when we had her over the other night, my wife tried talking to her (at my request) about the problems she's having and all my wife received was judgement. I want to get a nanny or someone that can come in and help her care for the baby and teach her how to do things, but I don't know how to bring up the topic without further bringing her down.I sat her down a week ago and brought up my concerns and tried to be as supportive as possible. She kept saying that I was judging her and I kept trying to tell her I wasn't, but she just won't listen.I just don't know what else I can here. I feel so alone and I love them both so much, but I'm constantly feeling like I have to choose between my wife and my kid. I was going to bring it up at her 12 week check up, but the clinic has asked to reschedule it twice now, despite us explaining it's kind of urgent. It all just feels like we're not the top priority and I understand that there are a lot of people with a lot of problems, but we have problems too and it feels unfair that we're just being brushed off.At this point, I'm at a loss. If I try to talk to my wife, I'm being judgemental. If I look for help online, all I receive is judgment that I'm not doing enough or that my wife is a terrible mother. If I try to get her help, we're brushed off. I don't know what to do. via /r/daddit https://ift.tt/3odemxp
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