u/embrkc

My daughter is almost 6 months old, and my wife and I keep arguing because she feels like I don’t help enough with the baby, even though I genuinely feel like I’m doing everything I can. For context, I wake up around 5:00 every morning. If the baby is awake, I feed her, change her, play with her, and take care of her while I get ready for work and feed our animals. I work about 8 hours a day, and when I get home around 3:00 PM, I immediately take over with the baby. I change her, feed her, play with her, and handle most of it until bedtime. My wife usually gets maybe an hour or so during that time while I handle house stuff or other responsibilities. On weekends, I usually take the baby with me while I do errands, shopping, chores, and so on, to give my wife a break. I honestly enjoy spending time with my daughter and being involved. The frustrating part is that no matter how much I do, my wife still says I don’t help enough or that I don’t want to take care of our daughter. About a month after our daughter was born, we had a big argument about this, and since then I’ve made being present for my daughter my top priority. I’m trying to be understanding because I know being home with a baby all day can be mentally exhausting, isolating, and emotionally draining, even if it doesn’t always look physically demanding from the outside. But I’m starting to feel burnt out and unappreciated because it seems like nothing I do changes how she feels. I feel like I’ve tried everything, even talking to her calmly about it, but we just keep going in circles. Has anyone else dealt with this? Did things improve? Any advice on how to communicate better or figure out what’s actually missing here?

Killdeer (a bird)