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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have spent the past few days reflecting on my life (wife here) and realized that I don't contribute much to the actually running of my household. It's a difficult thing to admit, but it's true and there. I know how I got here (PPD after my second basically made me withdraw from parenting and honestly adulting (bills, laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc). I resisted treatment until my husband literally had an intervention with my parents. It saved my life (I had some dark thoughts). At the time, I fought it because I assumed being consistently overwhelmed to the point of just wanting to quietly leave your family for a cabin in the woods with no outside stimulation was absolutely normal. It's not, apparently.

But two years of therapy, medication, and life later, I am still sort of outside looking in. My husband handles everything. And I mean everything. Here is what I do on a normal working day. I go to work where I am a competent, helpful employee. The process of getting out of the house (without a single interruption) takes me an hour at least). Here's what my husband does. Gets the children dressed, feeds them breakfast, gets dressed, handles the dog, gets lunches packed, backpacks packs, and loads the kids up. He does this within the same amount of time it takes me to get myself put together. Alone. Does drop off. Works (where he makes 5 times what I make -- no, I don't need to work, but until I went back, I was facing a Slyvia Plath outcome). Picks the children up. Dinner? Well, it's already made  -- most likely because he crockpots and cooks on the weekend. He's constantly moving, constantly cleaning, constantly engaging the kids. Laundry? Well, he throws a load in during breakfast, throws it in the dryer when he gets home, and then folds after the kids go to bed. Hell, the man even does MY laundry and dry cleaning runs. It's exhausting to watch and daunting and quite frankly while I appreciate it, I don't know how I can even do 1/10th of what he does. So, this turns into me backing away, hanging back, not doing much, but complaining about the state of affairs (It's a MESS HERE, I say, while absolutely doing nothing about it because I find cleaning and organizing to be overwhemling).

OP - I feel for you. It is really hard to deal with the emotional things you have dealt with. In the meantime, life is passing you by. Now you want to jump back on the train and be a bigger part of your family. It will be awkward and overwhelming at first. But, as a lot of other people have said, start out small. Talk with your husband. Apologize to him and thank him for everything that he does. Then ask him what are some of the things that you can do. Maybe just take on one or two. Your laundry for starters, maybe picking up the kids after work. But, start small and eventually build. After awhile, it will become second nature. The hardest part is taking the first step. Think of it like running a mile. You don't run a mile the first time out. You start by taking a step. Maybe you do a quarter mile. Then you build up to half a mile. Finally, you run a mile. But the most important part is just taking that first step.

You sound like you were doing really well before the PPD. You might even be surprised how naturally it comes back to you once you start. Good luck!

My marriage isn't in the greatest of places because of this. I find myself resentful of my husband's ability to handle life quite frankly. I am fairly certain that he has some resentment of his own, but it's tapered by obvious concern about my mental health. We're in counseling and when the issue came up (mostly because despite my non-involvement, the children prefer me to him by a massive amount, making me feel even more overwhelmed and suffocated by their constant chants of mommomomomomomo), he admitted that the children preferred me because I don't do the bulk of the parenting, I'm never the bad guy, and they just have fun with me -- mostly by design because he doesn't think I can handle doing more because if I could obviously I would. I sort of cried and admitted that I have dropped the ball and agreed to do more, but am at a lost how to get in step with the machine (my family) as it's currently running. He's given me ideas, including leaving me with the kids this week while they are home on break. And I hate to admit this, but I am having the cabin the woods feeling.

Anyway, tl/dr, how can I do better as a parent? [/quote][/quote]

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