My (31M) wife (38F) wants constant paid help to watch our 3 month old son even though she doesn't work

So my wife is Mexican and is very used to the idea of having a 24 hour stay at home nanny plus a full staff to cook and clean the house for her. Unfortunately we live in California now and cannot afford that luxury.

After our son was born, i took 3 months of parental leave to help her out while she recovered. I did practically everything except breastfeed him (which is admittedly nontrivial). I cooked all our meals, i cleaned the house, paid all the bills, changed all the diapers, fed him bottles at night so she could sleep, and was constantly by her side to help with whatever random thing she needed. She largely just slept and talked to friends and support groups on her phone (she's a 12 year clean alcoholic). Toward the end I warned her that I needed to go back to work soon and we really needed to transition toward her helping more. She took this as a "violent threat" and broke down in tears multiple times following that. So her solution was to have me hire a nanny to help out some, roughly 5 hours a day everyday I was at work and continue to have me do everything on days off. She also had me hire someone to clean the house. I thought it was totally unneeded but I gave in because we could (barely) afford it.

Fast forward a bit and she has another break down and says she can't handle the current situation and needs more help. She made me call out of work to watch our son and also search for more help and interview a bunch of candidates. So now we're hiring multiple nannys to cover 12 hours a day everyday I work, which we absolutely cannot afford.

I don't know what to do because I need someone to watch my son and I need to work or we'll definitely sink. I told her this is all ridiculous and she needs to be able to watch our son on her own (or work a job) and she became super defensive and went on a rant about how I'm sexist and everyone in the United States is sick, etc. Now she's pissed and won't talk to me.

I can't reason with her. Any critique ends up in her calling me sick or sexist and usually a long breakdown where I have to comfort her. I really don't know what to do.

tl;dr My wife can't watch our son on her own without having a mental break and is financially ruining us by hiring people to do it for her.

Thoughts?

Submitted March 16, 2022 at 09:11PM by guntrivash https://ift.tt/sMS6ZC2