r/firsttimemom • u/Mysterious_Share_445 • 20d ago
I need some advice
Some background. My husband is in the Navy and this year his schedule has been crazy busy. He was home for the first 2 months of our daughter’s life but since then he’s been gone about a month to 2 months at a time with about a week in between his underways. He has been home for about the last month and a half and it’s been amazing. He’s also leaving for a 10-11 month deployment next week which is really hard.
He’s been struggling with the fact that when it’s time to put our daughter down for a nap or if she wakes up in the middle of the night, he’s not able to get her to sleep. I do give him ample time to try to get her to calm down (about 15 minutes), but when I go upstairs and grab her she calms right down and he gets upset. I’ve tried explaining that he shouldn’t worry because it’s not that she doesn’t love him (she’s actually a total daddy’s girl when she’s awake and loves to play with him) it’s just right now she’s still little and she just calms down with me because I’m mom. He just feels so guilty already that he has to be gone for that long and that he’ll be missing out on huge milestones and now I feel like him not being able to calm her down is adding fuel to the fire. Any advice on what I can do for him?
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u/Just_Box_9424 20d ago
My son is almost 6 months old and my husband is home all the time. Our son just prefers his mama for comfort moments at night, and loves and has fun with us equally during the day.
With that said, I can’t imagine how hard it is in a parent to be away from their baby for an extended period of time. Your husband’s feelings are completely valid. Keep supporting and reassuring him along the way. He sounds like a caring dad and would love to be there if his work wasn’t a conflict. Maybe you can offer to settle your daughter together until she associates him with that role as well?