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I agree with all the comments that it's hard work and the first few months nothing will really get done. For me, it was around the 6 month mark when I felt able to start contributing to the household chores again. Just make sure to pump some milk so that your husband can experience the joys of a day at home!!

Also, I really like this funny take on being a SAHM: http://theuglyvolvo.com/2014/01/31/what-i-do-all-day-when-i-am-home-with-the-baby/

I think it really depends on your LO! You might have a super easy going baby who eats, sleeps and poops! Or you can have a super fussy baby who never sleeps. You can have a super clingy baby who wants to be attached to you all the time. Or is fine sitting in a bouncer for over 30 minutes.
I could never ever get anything done when LO was a infant. She wanted to be attached to me all the time. When DH was home with her he would managed to do laundry, clean house and prep dinner. All with a sick and fussy baby. Don't ask me how. Lol

Being a SAHM is just so different for everyone and it's a role that constantly changing...you may find your groove for 3-4 months and then nap schedules change and feeding needs change and awake times change and sickness happens, etc

I had a pretty stressful job before becoming a SAHM. I feel it was MUCH harder working as an attorney than being a SAHM. It was so exhausting both physically and mentally. My escape was leaving the office and leaving work at the office for a few hours. I sleep so much better now as a SAHM than I ever did when I was working. When we had LO we decided rather than paying for childcare that I would stay home with her.

I love being a SAHM. To me, working was harder, but being a SAHM is difficult in other ways. It's often a thankless job and you find yourself doing things that no one appreciates. Sometimes you feel like you could be doing more something more rewarding with your time and energy. No one cares that you mastered diaper changes and can get them done under a minute while only using 2 wipes. It gets exhausting doing the same thing over and over. And there is no real break...you don't get to leave the office. Like OP said, most of us approach being a SAHM like a job and work hard and put our all into it. Just when you have the hang of things it will all change again. There is no mentorship and we don't get promotions or bonuses or raises.

For me the first three months were possibly the most difficult three months of my life. But it got easier when we had a good schedule and I could get stuff done during naps. I thought it got easier as they got older but I have less time bc it's only 1 nap to work with. It is hard for awhile but you figure out how to make it work. And there are times where things are easy.

All this rambling to say, every person is different and each marriage is different. Your husband may have all these ideas of what a SAHM life is like but he'll get a dose of reality when the baby arrives and you guys will figure it out. My husband often says he gets so exhausted watching LO all day but I see the hours he works and I wouldn't trade places with him if I could.

So, I literally laughed out loud about the grocery shopping comment. This blog post pretty much sums up the experience of shopping with a baby. Read it and come back: http://www.pregnantchicken.com/pregnant-chicken-blog/shopping-with-a-baby-easy-right

But DH kind of had a similar take before C was born. Then he was home for a week or so after she was born, and realized how sometimes I couldn't shower, or brush my teeth, because of all that leisurely 'playing with the baby' I was doing (aka nursing for hours, walking, bouncing, rocking, nursing... repeat.) I also made it known early on that my primary job is taking care of the baby, not taking care of the house. Yes, now that she is a little older and can play by herself, I can get more done during the day, and I pick up more of the housework stuff, but if I have to decide between playing with our daughter or sticking her in a baby holder for a long time while I clean the house top to bottom, I choose playing with her. Otherwise I'd rather go back to work to pay for daycare and a maid. Not to say I don't let her play by herself, but, for example, yesterday she was happily playing on the rug while I washed the dishes from lunch. Halfway through, I hear a loud thud-- my non-crawling baby scooted herself off the rug, rolled over, and banged her head on the wood floor. The dishes didn't get done.

You'll work it out. I really think once baby is here, he will see that you aren't going to be cleaning the house top to bottom every day.

@sandy: As an attorney with a real, no kidding, high billable requirement, the same is true for me . . . working is infinitely harder than staying at home (and comments like "it was easier for me to stay at home" generally aren't well-received on the boards, even if they are true). It truly is an underrepresented group on the boards. Thanks for sharing.

@pui: I know! That's why I feel like "showing" is the only way. When he asks what I did all day (even when he's not judging), I can't quite come up with an answer.

I'm a SAHM and honestly, the loneliness/adjustment period/sleep deprivation of being a mom in the first couple of months was probably tougher than taking care of the house. However, I will say that I think I put a ton of pressure on myself to keep the house looking good that it was actually detrimental to my well-being. I felt like I was swimming against a very strong tide of LO's needs. It was awful.

After the initial first few months, things got remarkably better and I really was (for the most part) able to keep up with things while also keeping my sanity and managing to actually enjoy LO more. I was also lucky to have a fairly independent baby who would often entertain herself while I vacuumed or did dishes or whatever.

For your situation, I wouldn't worry too much because as others have said, once your baby arrives your husband will get a big dose of reality. That said, he does need to get on board with taking care of things himself (dishes, picking up clothes, etc.) because he's a grown ass man and you're not his mom - lol

I had a relatively easy newborn. And while on maternity leave I got absolutely nothing done. He slept all the time, except that he woke up every 2-ish hours to eat. Considering all the time it took to feed him and change his diaper, I was a freaking zombie. DS also didn't like to sleep on his own. So I'd spend all day on the couch with him while he slept. If I could, I'd sleep too, since I never got more than 1.5 hours of consecutive sleep. A few weeks in he started having a "witching hour" around 5pm, right when I'd want to start dinner and eat it.

But he was never colicky, only cried when hungry (except during the witching hour), and didn't need help going to sleep until around 6 weeks. And still - nothing got done. A couple times I went grocery shopping and considered myself a freaking rockstar. I was only able to accomplish that with babywearing, and a really nice grocery employee who brought the groceries to my car and loaded it for me.

@Adira: Oh no! Okay, then maybe periodic daddy time...not just once. : )

Two and a half years into being a stay at home mom to a really easy child, I feel like I've got it down to a science. That means that

- MOST days I make a nice dinner. Sometimes I serve grilled cheese and cut up fruit.

- MOST days the house is vacuumed and picked up. Not all.

- MOST weeks I run and fold the laundry. Not all. And it usually sits for days before I fold it.

- MOST weeks I go to the grocery store. Today, though, we've all been sick, so the dogs ate shredded chicken for breakfast. Lucky mutts.

- MOST days we limit screentime, and she only watches a little. But if we're sick? Curious George marathon!

I feel like I do a great job, and honestly, you can see that I don't do a ton of house work. And I've had several years to figure out how to do it. Taking care of a child is a full time job! And when you're exhausted, way more than that. At first? You will survive. And then you'll add in more, but certainly not all at once, and CERTAINLY not all on your own!

What housework I do is greatly helped by the fact that we do all the things you suggested. Dishes in dishwasher, laundry in basket, etc. It would be IMPOSSIBLE otherwise. These are extremely reasonable requests!

All I can really offer to the conversation is that anything is possible if you have the right mindset. Life is chaotic whether you're at home or at work, it's just a matter of how you compartmentalize things.

Staying at home was a lot easier in terms of being flexible around timing. I didn't have the external pressure of working hours to deal with. If my son was sick, no big deal, we just didn't do what we had planned that day. If he's sick now, I have to factor in what is going on at work when deciding the game plan.

Working out of the home has afforded me more perspective on the whole juggle, and that's all it is, a juggling act.

@Silva: @MsLipGloss: I agree with you both. Being a SAHM has it's challenges/difficulties but being a working parent is harder (especially if you're riddled with guilt every day) and that shouldn't stop us from stating how we feel. The nights i am still up at 1am working because i put LO to bed at 9pm and then started prepping our lunches, and cleaning up the house stresses me out. Because that requirement to keep a perfect house doesn't change whether or not you stay at home!

@oliviaoblivia: exactly what you said!

I am a SAHM to one. I don't think it's hard work really. I can see if you had multiple children at home it would be tough and probably gets tougher as they get older. Right now I've got a 9 month old and ill happily say its way better than WOH.

As with most things in life attitude plays a big part if it. I made sacrifices to stay at home so I plan on enjoying it. Try not to get caught up in the negative. I unashamedly love SAH. You just adapt and get better/faster at everything. Cooking/cleaning/laundry? It's all a doddle to me now. No point arguing over who loads the dishes- it takes like 30 seconds to do!

Enjoy

@Adira: I totally agree. Daddy-baby time doesn't come with all the strings attached that my day does. If DH watches his baby, that's usually the only thing he's responsible for that day.

@Anagram: I dunno if it is fair to compare SAHM life to maternity leave...for me, I didn't have ML, but I definitely didn't expect as much from myself re:cleanliness/cooking in those first few months. Also I think a lot of SAHMs internalize the idea that cleaning/cooking is their "job," and they don't ask for help as much from their spouses. My experience with friends who are WOHM is that their marriages are more egalitarian, even on the weekends, than mine is, because I struggle with feeling that SAHM is my "job." I think a lot of SAHM might feel the same way! My husband had one week of paternity leave (and that included a weekend so lots of visitors) so I felt like I got started in the SAHM "job" from the get-go. Plus, as a WOHM you may have felt like you needed to devote all that ML time to spending time with baby, whereas with SAHM that pressure isn't as present in the mind, which means the pressure to clean/cook/etc. can take up more mental space.

@pui: if the dishes thing is important to you I'm sure you will work it out. My DH has no expectations if me which is nice! I cook all food from scratch, do all laundry, no screen time for my son etc etc. but he'd probably be happy if we lived on take out, in mess with piles of laundry and dishes surrounding him. I just crack on and get my stuff done so our house is how I like it, and we are all fed to my standard. It would be harder if he had opinions on housekeeping/child rearing!

You'll work it out. If your husband has unrealistic expectations there's nothing like a newborn to bring them down to reality. For the first 3 months I don't know what we lived on to be honest. Then one day you find your groove and you wonder how you couldn't do it all before.

Doing all the house stuff never really bothered me. I guess I find comfort in the repetitive mundaneness of it? There's always something to do and and I quite like that.

Good luck!

I don't think you're overestimating at all. And I do think his expectations are entirely too high.

I had a friend who had a baby 2 weeks before I did. Her baby was a breeze while I had the most colicky baby on the block. She would come over and talk to me about how much she was enjoying her maternity leave and all the new recipes she was trying all while I was straining to hear what she was saying over my son's screaming and fussing and not being able to latch or get to sleep or general unhappiness. I would cry every day over how I wasn't cut out to be a mother and just plain couldn't do it.

I know the newborn stage and later on are very different, but I still look at SAHM at awe. I couldn't do what they do all day every day and I won't kid myself that I could.

I don't think you're overestimating. It is amazing how "little" you can get done in a day, compared to before baby. I think once baby is here, you should have an honest conversation with DH about what you can realistically get done. DH and I needed to chat about the specific tasks I could get done (his expectations vs my expectations), and it definitely caused a few arguments at first.

Yeah, DH is largely supportive of my desire to be a SAHM eventually (we're paying off student loans at the moment), but I told him that I wont do it until he realizes how difficult it is. His mom was a SAHM with 3 kids that were two years apart and his recollection of her is that she never did anything.

I think once our baby arrives and DH sees how much work it is, he wont say a word. I think being a SAHM probably gets more fun once the kid gets a little older, but newborn to age 3 I'm going to assume is killer, especially if you have a second child in the mix.

I say just get your husband VERY involved from VERY early on so he can see how hard it is and he'll probably shut up quickly.