How to help my husband

My husband and I were on and off 3 times before we got married and now we have a child together and it’s almost our one year anniversary. I’m a sahm so I’m with the baby 99% of the time. He works nights and sleeps during the day. On the weekend he has to stay awake during the night so he doesn’t throw his sleep schedule off, so we decided he will watch him on those nights so he can spend some time with him. Well my sister and I hadn’t seen our siblings for about 5 years since we both moved so we took a trip down to see them and introduce my baby. I invited my husband but he said he would rather work.

So just after I head out on the trip, my husband texts me and says he is feeling depressed. I ask him what’s going on and he just says that he didn’t feel anything when I left, just doesn’t feel anything at all, just numb. And he said he didn’t want to go to work and I have noticed that he hasn’t been eating as well. So I tried to talk to him and see if there was something we could do to help him feel happier, maybe he could go out for a bike ride with his friends that he never spends time with cause he’s working all the time. But instead he chose not to and just stay home like he usually does and plays video games.

Well we continued to talk throughout the trip and he said he was starting to feel better. He asked me how the trip was going but just zoned out every time I started talking about it. I had to be like “.. babe, …babe are you still there?” And he’s just typing in the background playing his video game and then he’s like “yeah yeah I’m here sorry what happened?” And this happened like 4 times in a row. So I just stopped talking about me and asked him to tell me more about his day and what was going on with him. He just says “nothing really, just boring day, just playing my video games”

So Sunday, I woke up at 7 am, we were driving for 8 hours (cause everyone decided to take Presidents’ Day weekend), to visit the family, my sister wanted to sleep so I drove all the way and was trying to take care of the baby. We left the families house about 8 pm and drove about an hour to where we were staying, packed up, and then I drove all the way back home another 4-5 hour drive. My sister took care of the baby part of the way. I was so exhausted, mentally and physically and I was almost falling asleep on the road. We get into town and I have my husband help me get the stuff out of the car, it was 1 am. The baby needed to be fed and I could barely stand I was so exhausted. I wanted to just hand the baby to him and just go crumble on the bed, but I gave him a kiss and told him how happy I was to be home. He started sticking his hands down my pants and I was like, “babe I don’t want to have sex right now, I’m so tired. Maybe in the morning”

He was like, “well in the morning then I’m going to be tired.” Which was understandable. Anyways I asked him instead if he would be willing to take the baby for the night so I wouldn’t have to wake up and feed him. He said he would be happy to cause he missed him too. So I head to bed.

About 5 min later, the baby starts crying. (He usually sleeps through his feedings if you don’t wait until he’s crying to feed him, but my husband, distracted with his games waited too long.) So he’s crying while he makes him a bottle and I am like “he’s got this” so I fell back asleep.

10 min later, he’s crying again, and I start hearing him burping him so I fall back asleep.

A couple hours later, I hear him start fussing, then he starts crying, and I can’t hear him doing anything to help him, he’s just crying and crying and crying. I wait, cause I want to let him be a dad you know, but nothing. So I get up to go check on him and he’s just playing his video games with his headphones on. I was so upset. I grabbed the baby up and was like, why is he still crying! You can’t just ignore him. He was like, I tried everything, I’m just letting him self soothe. I was like babies his age can’t self soothe my love you have to help him. Jesus stand up and walk around with him until he calms down.

The baby calmed down immediately when I picked him up and started bouncing him and he just had a bubble. My husband gets up and goes to bed cause it’s his time to sleep now and he’s like, “I tried everything baby, I gave him his pacifier and changed him and fed him but he just still crying so I left him alone since there is clearly nothing I can do to help him”. I was like “ok, well I’m sorry for yelling at you, thank you for trying.” I went and got the baby a bottle cause he was stuffing his hands in his mouth and he just guzzled it down like he was starving. I don’t think he realized how much time had passed cause of his game. But I fed the baby and went to talk to him again, and before I said anything he just says “I’m sorry I’m a shitty parent, I’m a man so I’m wrong 100% of the time. I’m happy you’re his mom cause you’re clearly the better parent, I love you.”

Wtf. I didn’t even know how to respond. I know he’s depressed but I don’t know how to get him to just be angry with me if he’s going to be angry instead of being angry with himself.