My wife won't stay home alone and I don't get to see my family.

Nurses Stress 101

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I work night shift from 7pm-7am. My wife is 26 y/o and does not want to stay home alone because she says she feels lonely. She stays at her parents because of this. She has done this since we got married two and a half years ago. We have a baby daughter now and she does not want to stay home even during the day while I am asleep. So if I work at least two days in a row, I do not see my family for that time. My in-laws have even made extra efforts to make her stay at their house easier with a room with a crib and pretty much every necessity for her not to stay at our home. Our house has a security system and is in a nice neighborhood.

When I am home at night, my wife leaves all child care to me so I do not get enough sleep on my days off. I am attempting to get a dayshift position. There are no dayshift positions in the ICU I work in. One prospect is an afternoon shift position 11am-11pm in the ER.. My wife says she would still stay at her parents so I need to wait for another job. I have told her that I am not getting enough sleep on my days off or when I am working. I get a lot of responses of "you're never here." I have asked her to go to couples counseling but she refuses.

She is also a nurse and we stayed in this town so she could work at the VA. When I first started my nursing career, I had to find jobs out of town because no local facilities were hiring. I spent my first year and a half of nursing driving an hour out. I have told her that I did a lot to accommodate her nursing career. Is it too much to ask her to stay home at night? And possibly see her and my daughter between shifts?

Why divorce can we give marriage a chance?

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Oh my, some of the replies here are...outrageous. I guess that's what happens when you ask for personal advice from strangers, so this probably isn't the best place to get straight-up answers to your questions.

I see that you both have a new baby. I'm a new mom myself. Although my husband is incredibly supportive (he is also in the medical field), it can be incredibly lonely and isolating the days he is at work. Add to that the stresses of being a new parent, the insane sleep deprivation, and let's not forget the postpartum hormonal and emotional changes. Any and all of these things can erode even the best coping mechanisms.

It sounds like this issue may be somewhat short-lived: your baby will get older and easier to manage without enlisting a lot of outside help, and you may soon find that dayshift job. Parenthood can strain even the strongest relationships. My advice is to support and respect each other's needs (even if you don't fully understand them), and to have a serious sit-down talk where you both can figure out how to balance those needs in this stage. Do it before you both build up resentment. Good luck.

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Specializes in NICU.

Oh I hate to see a good man being taken advantage of,I gather you love your family very much because you have tolerated a lot that other men would not put up with .

Family counseling might help or it will at least teach you how to navigate the situation peacefully.As a nurse she well know how lack of proper sleep can affect your job performance and patient safety.If she does not come around she really has no desire or intent in pleasing you, ..sorry..maybe harsh.. I wish you much luck.

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Oh my, some of the replies here are...outrageous. I guess that's what happens when you ask for personal advice from strangers, so this probably isn't the best place to get straight-up answers to your questions.

I see that you both have a new baby. I'm a new mom myself. Although my husband is incredibly supportive (he is also in the medical field), it can be incredibly lonely and isolating the days he is at work. Add to that the stresses of being a new parent, the insane sleep deprivation, and let's not forget the postpartum hormonal and emotional changes. Any and all of these things can erode even the best coping mechanisms.

It sounds like this issue may be somewhat short-lived: your baby will get older and easier to manage without enlisting a lot of outside help, and you may soon find that dayshift job. Parenthood can strain even the strongest relationships. My advice is to support and respect each other's needs (even if you don't fully understand them), and to have a serious sit-down talk where you both can figure out how to balance those needs in this stage. Do it before you both build up resentment. Good luck.

You bring up a good possibility. I wondered about PPD. And I would advise the OP not to underestimate the exhaustion involved in the responsibility of being primarily responsible for the care of infants and young children. In my experience acute care nursing, running for 12 hours, doesn't hold a candle to the work of being a parent 24/7. Make no mistake: Caring for an infant/young child without much help or respite is *very* hard on some people physically, mentally, and emotionally.

[There's no need to call other replies outrageous, though, and yes - various possibilities, advice, and replies are what one gets when one posts on an internet message board.]

FTR, the concern here isn't actually the reported loneliness, or the possibilities of new-mom exhaustion or other reasonable concerns. My concern would be for the fact that this individual seems to be putting the OP in a position where he can't make things better. He can't demand which shift he works, but he made a suggestion that would be somewhat better (according to her voiced complaint) and she rejected that. She also rejected counseling. So far what she has done is blame him and reject his thoughts for improving the situation.

That's where all of this becomes problematic. A person is allowed to express desires, complaints, and concerns in a marriage. What they aren't allowed to do is stymie the other person from any attempt at making things better and then run away.

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Y

[There's no need to call other replies outrageous, though, and yes - various possibilities, advice, and replies are what one gets when one posts on an internet message board.]

LOL is outrageous a bad word or something? And yes, I'm pretty sure that I acknowledged those are the type of replies one would expect to get on a message board.

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FTR, the concern here isn't actually the reported loneliness, or the possibilities of new-mom exhaustion or other reasonable concerns. My concern would be for the fact that this individual seems to be putting the OP in a position where he can't make things better. He can't demand which shift he works, but he made a suggestion that would be somewhat better (according to her voiced complaint) and she rejected that. She also rejected counseling. So far what she has done is blame him and reject his thoughts for improving the situation.

Hmmm I think you should reread my post. I was talking about my personal experience as a new parent. I never said that was anything OP's wife reported. But you seem to take your own liberties on interpreting her actions, so there's that.

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Or you could realize that I was clarifying/adding to my own previous post and things that I wrote in my second post.

Don't let the fact that I also posted some agreement with your thoughts stop you though! :up:

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We should just call this what it is, abuse. Your wife is abusive. Pursue the best possible situation you can for you and your child and get out of an unhealthy situation.

Uhhh, no.

LOL is outrageous a bad word or something? And yes, I'm pretty sure that I acknowledged those are the type of replies one would expect to get on a message board.

Some people on this board are desperate to be offended. I agree with your comments.

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Or you could realize that I was clarifying/adding to my own previous post and things that I wrote in my second post.

By quoting my post and responding directly to me? How do you figure that?

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Don't let the fact that I also posted some agreement with your thoughts stop you though! :up:

Don't worry, it won't.

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Some people on this board are desperate to be offended.

Clearly!

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By quoting my post and responding directly to me? How do you figure that?

Yes, I quoted and responded directly to you. The whole first paragraph of that reply of mine was to acknowledge and agree with your thoughtful comments about new-parent exhaustion, hormones, etc.

Perhaps I then misunderstood what you believed to be outrageous; I inferred that your declaration was in reference to those of us who brought up the potential concern of infidelity. I thought that's what you were referring to. So I attempted to discuss why I felt infidelity was a concern despite the fact that exhaustion (etc.) was also a concern. In other words, I thought I was saying: Yes, it is very rough to be a new parent. Yes, everything you said is helpful/useful/valid....but at the same time the OP being put into a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't position is not okay. So...our concerns about other motivations for the OP's wife (such as infidelity) are not that outrageous.

That's really all I meant by any of this. I guess I don't know what else to make of this interaction with you.

Take care ~

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