Advice on being apart from infant child
I will start with my question which is: today my unemployed wife proposed taking our infant daughter this summer to a town 2 hours away where her family has a shared cabin and that I visit her and our daughter essentially on the weekends (and/or work remotely 2 days a week --which I am entitled to at work-- and possibly take a day off every week). When I said that being away from our daughter repeatedly for months on end scared me, my wife exploded and suggested we could just divorce and split our time with her. I do not want to get into the relationship issue because the point of this sub is parenting, but I want to know if other parents would have a hard time emotionally dealing with not seeing their infant child each week. Would that bother you or would you enjoy a 3 day break every week?
A little more details: our daughter is only 5 weeks old. I have paid parental leave for 12 weeks. That runs out at the beginning of July. We live in Phoenix where it is planned to be a hot summer and my inlaws have a place in Flagstaff. The inlaws will be there the whole time we potentially visit Flagstaff. My wife and I have had a difficult time making decisions for our daughter since she was born, beginning with her stay in the NICU for glucose issues, and then when we brought her home fighting about which doctor's advice to follow on how often to feed her, or how much sleep she needs, whether it is safe to put her to sleep on certain surfaces, and how much activity she should get. I have been on the more cautious side, particularly because we left the NICU and the doctor said she must eat every 3 hours or she would get a brain injury. For sleeping, I generally advocate for safe sleep principles--for example we just argued today about letting her sleep on a sheepskin ("Everyone in my family grew up sleeping on them" my wife said)--only to find that the label on the back of the sheepskin literally says do not let infants sleep on this. It has been a trying time and I feel like I have been at war for a month to protect my daughter, when we could have just had calm conversations about each of these issues and figured them out together.
Today I was hit with the Flagstaff proposal. My wife also wants me to go to Flagstaff for the last 3.5 weeks of my parental leave and live with my inlaws there. This doesn't feel particularly relaxing to me (we won't have our setup there, I have felt crowded out by how many visitors we have had at our house, I feel like I have lost quality time in the first month of my leave with the NICU and so much stress getting into a routine). Also, I cannot take a day off of work each week even though I have the time because I took 3 months of parental leave and it is unfair to my team. I do not want to go 3 days each week without seeing my daughter. My wife says because she is unemployed the only reason she would not be in Flagstaff with our daughter is me.
Thank you for hearing me I have been really struggling.