

I scheduled two weeks off for the birth of my first child. Not paternity leave, just vacation time. My wife became a SAHM a few months before. I was bored and went back to work after 1 week. I couldn’t imagine 12 weeks.
The kid is just not doing that much. Feed, poop, change, sleep. And the child doesn’t recognize you at that stage. It’s all stimulus response. If he was crying and I picked him up, he didn’t care. I got zero emotional reward for the interaction with the child. Emotional bonding all happened around 3 months old and beyond. Before that the benefit was more in the shared experience with my wife of learning how to take care of a newborn. But really, it’s not that hard, and after one week it was old hat.
You think I didn’t ask her if she wanted help and make the decision with her? She’s a strong woman and perfectly capable of speaking for her self. Her parents were also over and her mom was helping out. But the reality was that she was fine on her own. That was 18 years ago and the first of three kids. She’d tell you the same thing.