My partner and I recently had our first baby together. Our little boy is only a week and a half old and I already feel like Im pulling all the weight. My partner has been off for 2 weeks to be with us, he goes back on Monday. However, my MIL stayed with us the 1st week and did a lot of caregiving to our child to help us get back on our feet. Since she has been gone, I feel like my husband isnt stepping up to the plate.

Im breastfeeding, so understandably Im up with baby 90% of the time throughout the night, and spend a lot of time taking care of him during the day. Occasionally he will take him for diaper changes, I mean like 2-3 times a day. Most of the time I have to jokingly tease him and ask him to, and he will jokingly try to get out of it. When the baby is sleeping, my partner sometimes holds him, but most of the time he puts him down somewhere and just sits by him on his phone or watching tv. When baby is awake, my husband doesnt try to interact with him, again, he will just sit there watching tv or on his phone. I have to ask him to talk to baby, or play with baby. My biggest concern is that my husband will wake up, play video games, go to the gym, come home and want to play video games again. He would rather spend his whole day doing things for himself rather than spending time with our baby.

I feel so heartbroken for our little boy. I tried talking to my husband about it and his arguements were "I feel I have to do everything I want to do for myself before I go back to work and have no time." And "Ill be more interactive with him when hes a bit older." Im worried that when he goes back to work he is going to use the "Im the provider, youre the caregiver" excuse. And that he will expect to have evenings after work to himself...

I tried explaining to him that a child has many stages, all equally important. He learns by seeing your face, hearing your voice. Ive also told him that he should have wanted to do everything for himself before our son arrived, not before returning to work. And that it should be the other way around, that he should want to spend as much time as he can with us before returning to work...

When I talk to him he just gets really sad and feels guilty. He said that its really upsetting that I think hes not a good father. (His words, not mine) I strongly believe that our son should be his top priority and that personal time should happen a few times a week, not a few times a day.

Does anyone have any advice on how to deal with this and positively push my partner towards wanting to interact with our baby?