I'm not actually asking if I'm being reasonable.

I didn't always want children. Like some women, when I was younger I decided I wasn't interested in having a family. Many woman don't change their minds, but I did. My hormones actually kicked in about 2 years before I changed my mind, then once my husband and I decided we would like to start a family, it was still well over a year before I came off the pill. Now I have a gorgeous baby boy. He is absolutely delightful and the light of my life, I wouldn't change having him for anything.

When my husband and I were first seeing each other, I made it clear to him that I didn't want children and he accepted it. However, he does love kids and he was happy when I changed my mind. I had many reasons for not wanting children. One of the reasons, and I'll admit, it's one of the more minor ones, but still a part of the general idea of why kids weren't for me, is that I hated the idea of being stuck at home whilst my partner got to do whatever he liked. I have always had a rather healthy relationship with the pub, I have always been a very social person, and I hated the idea of being caught in that social construct where the female in the family unit, by virtue of being more maternal, does all of the baby duty whilst the man gets to have his fun. In my case, I was never a particularly maternal woman, I hadn't spent much time with babies in the past. Now, I'm not judging anyone HAPPY to stay home whilst their husband is out and about, some women aren't really that interested and that's absolutely great, I am only talking about myself here.

Fast forward a few years and we're talking about having a baby. I remember saying repeatedly how I would never want to be left at home all the time. I said it when I was pregnant too. It's one thing when you are still breastfeeding, sure I get that. After that though...

We went camping with a few other families over a long weekend. We were staying at a caravan park a short walk away from the pub in town. After sitting around in the sun for a few hours, we all decided on a change of scenery and went to the pub. So we are talking about seven families here, all with kids ranging from a 6 month old baby to an 16 year old. There was some sports on - in the end the women all sat together (fair enough, whatever) and the guys got their table closer to the screen. I found myself watching my little guy pretty much on my own, it was as if my husband abdicated responsibility. I asked him to watch him a couple of times and when I came back he was paying more attention to the game than our child. Now, I'm the first to admit that I'm not as relaxed as my husband about all this, but in this day and age, I feel I have a duty of care to my helpless, gorgeous little boy. A couple of hours later, my child started to get cranky, it was nearing his dinner time and he was tired from all of the activity that day. The husbands all unilaterally decided that they were staying for one more round, that the wives should wait for the next courtesy bus. I was ready to go, however, and really, it was such a short walk, and I only had one child to wrangle, so myself and a couple of the ladies went on our way. I got back to camp and fed my baby, changed him for bed, read him a story and put him down to sleep.

Now don't  get me wrong. My husband is allowed a social life. Just when we are on a family holiday, I expect it to be just that, a trip where we spend time together as a family. I have always been really clear about that. We've gone to Darwin a few times, we lived there for a few years and therefore have a lot of friends there. The first trip with my little guy, he was still breastfeeding. My husband spent the entire trip giddying about leaving me  on my own to deal with naps and meals. Every time bubs had to nap, and it was early enough that we're talking 3 naps a day, that was his cue to leave us to it. It was a pretty lonely trip for me. He'd make his way to wherever our friends were and leave me with the hire car, to get the baby ready on my own and meet him there. The one time I asked him if he could please, for goodness sake, hold his horses and just hang out with me whilst our child slept, he acted like I was being incredibly demanding and unreasonable.

I get to spend all day with my son, which I love. I'll be going back to work soon enough so I'm happy to be home for the moment. However, just because I'm happy to do it, doesn't take away from the fact that it's often pretty lonely. Being a new mum is such a big change, home alone all day, your social life changes completely, you're not at work. I knew much of this going into it, my point is that BEFORE we had the baby, I was extremely clear about the life I wanted to make for myself. No sitting around alone on family trips whilst hubby goes off drinking with the guys. No sitting around on my own waiting for the baby to wake up whilst hubby gads about. To some people this may sound unreasonable but these were my expectations from even before the get-go. I didn't trick him into having a baby with me and then become a complete nightmare with unreasonable demands. He had the choice, before we went down the parent route, of deciding that I was hard work and moving on - it really is as simple as that. What do men think we are doing when we have conversations like that? We trying to work out if we are compatible, have the same ideas in life, the same values.

Back to this camping trip, the guys came back long after that one round, as you'd expect. I was a little quiet with my husband, but I wasn't wanting to even talk about it, I didn't want an argument and I certainly wasn't going to make a scene. I was just going to sit around the camp fire and relax with my cider - the fact that I was annoyed with him would have gone unnoticed in and amongst all of these tipsy, loud opinionated men. He had other ideas though, he obviously came back knowing I'd be annoyed and he was ready to defend himself. He called me aside and asked what my problem was. I explained that I felt that if he'd wanted a boys weekend, he should have organised a boys weekend, that if I came on a family weekend away I didn't expect to be putting our child to bed on my own, and sitting on my own waiting for him to finish at the pub. He told me that he was just doing what everyone else was doing, and he took great pleasure in asking me what the problem was with me that I had an issue when no one else did. I told him that I literally didn't give a crap what other families did. I won't talk about other peoples' relationships but all marriages have their issues at one time or another and it wasn't cool that he was trying to make me out to the ogre wife of the group. I told him that I knew for a fact that some of the other wives were annoyed too but that this was besides the point. In the end I didn't want to argue with a drunk person so I walked away. Later he was a bit of a drunk jerk around the campfire so I ended up going to bed early.

The next day, he had a sore head - obviously I wasn't very sympathetic. I reminded him about all the times we'd agreed that we wouldn't be one of those families where the wife gets left behind on her own to look after the kids on a family weekend. It's not what I had envisioned for myself and he had agreed with me at the time, well before we even started trying for a baby. It feels like I've been tricked - I thought I was marrying and having a family with an enlightened man who understood where I was coming from. Instead I've ended up with this other guy who is more than happy to fall back into the old-school traditional 'man at pub with beer and buddies, wife at home with baby' way of doing things.