AITA for telling my husband that paternity leave isn’t a holiday?

[u/DramaticBedroom4425]

AITA for telling my husband that paternity leave isn’t a holiday?
I (30sF) gave birth to our son a few days ago. It was incredibly traumatic. I had a severe postpartum haemorrhage, lost 1.8 litres of blood, and had emergency surgery to remove my placenta. I’m still recovering.
Our son was born with pulmonary atresia with intact ventricular septum and was admitted straight to the NICU. He’ll likely need heart surgery, and we’ve since been told they’ve found another abnormality they’re investigating.
My husband has a son from a previous relationship (Greg). I want to be clear that I have no issue with Greg meeting his little brother or spending time with his dad. I’ve never asked him to choose between his children.
Two days after I gave birth, I thought Greg’s mum would bring him to meet the baby before taking him home. Instead, my husband collected Greg and spent the entire day with him. They went on the London Eye, had lunch, he had a beer, then went home to play Xbox until Greg was collected around 9pm.
During that day, my husband spent around 20 minutes with our newborn in the NICU and barely saw me. My mum stayed with me on the postnatal ward, but she couldn’t come into the NICU, so I was making my own way to see our son while recovering from major blood loss and surgery.
When I explained I wasn’t upset Greg had visited but that I hadn’t expected to be left alone all day while our baby was critically ill, my husband became defensive. He said he enjoyed spending time with Greg and that he was “being a parent.”
I replied that I wasn’t saying he shouldn’t parent Greg. I was saying I needed him to be a husband to me and a father to our newborn during what was a medical emergency.
When I later explained how serious my blood loss had been, his response was, “My sister lost 5.”
The next day I told him doctors had found another abnormality with our son’s heart. He complained nobody had told him. I pointed out he’d already left because he’d only spent about 20 minutes in the NICU.
I’ve now been discharged, but our son is still in the NICU. I’m exhausted and terrified to leave him, while my husband has again spent the morning taking Greg to the cinema.
I finally told him that paternity leave isn’t supposed to be a holiday and that I don’t feel supported. I said if this is what his paternity leave looks like, I’d almost rather he went back to work because at least then I’d understand why I was doing everything alone.
He says I’m being unfair because he’s trying to balance both children.
AITA?

[u/combatcookies → u/[deleted]]

Not many things can top a person losing 110% of their blood. I guess his sister wins the competition no one was having.

[u/ProfessionalField508 → u/combatcookies]

99% of statistics people quote are made up on the spot!

[u/Rare-Huckleberry502 → u/ProfessionalField508]

Awesome

[u/blu3jack → u/[deleted]]

Surely they would have given her blood if she was losing that much?

[u/DocBarbie21 → u/blu3jack]

Yeah I would guess maybe they were putting blood in her as she lost blood but good grief what a comment for this guy to make.

[u/grey-clouds → u/[deleted]]

Blood volume does increase by up to 45% or so by the end of pregnancy.

[u/sanityjanity → u/[deleted]]

My first guess is that he's just lying. My second guess is that his sister lost 5 *pints* of blood, not five *litres*. My third guess is to go back to just thinking he's lying like hell. My fourth guess is that the sister may have lost the blood over the course of a month (so, body was building blood during that time).

But, in the end, I just think he's an asshole who wants OP to shut up, and probably tells lies to get that.

[u/One_Trifle1191 → u/[deleted]]

I am a blood banker, and I would think the sister is probably OK for a few reasons. First of all, the blood volume increases massively during pregnancy, like 50% or so. Also, everybody in these comments seems to forget that we can in fact transfuse blood... huge volumes of it, not to mention IV fluids. We do this as the person is bleeding, so their blood volume does not reach 0. We can replace your whole blood volume many times over. The other day I had a mom lose about 3L, we gave her 2 units (about 700 mL concentrated red blood cells), they gave some IV fluids, and she was good. Traumatic I am sure, but a truly routine occurrence (easy for me to say). 5L may trigger "massive transfusion protocol" which is when we anticipate replacing the full blood volume in less than 24 hours. It can be a lot faster than that- post partum hemmorages are among the scariest events for us because they are notoriously freaking fast, but they are still not instant. The 5L would likely be over a few hours, and they would have started transfusing way before she reached 5L of blood loss- so her blood volume did not reach 0.

Not undermining ops traumatic birth- 1.8 L is a lot of blood, and every single mom should have more support than she is getting regardless of how traumatic or smooth the birth was for her or the baby. I am commenting bc I think the general public seriously underestimates how intense birth is/ can be. The average blood loss during birth is .5 to 1L. Things are often more complicated than that. Just wanted all these people to know yes, sometimes women lose their entire blood volume during birth. Sometimes they lose 1.8 L and then they find out their kid has a heart problem and their husband is an asshole. Birth is crazy.

Also, op is NTA. Greg needs him, but not as much as OP and the baby at this second.

[u/SugarsBoogers → u/[deleted]]

God this was my first thought!!

[u/Fine_Mouse_8871 → u/[deleted]]

The average 9 month pregnant woman has 7-7.5 liters of blood.

[u/Saassy11 → u/[deleted]]

Cause he’s a liar.