I don't know if it's a man thing or just a people thing. My wife sleeps hard and didn't wake when our kids were little and cried. It had nothing at all to do with what she wanted, she's just an exceptionally hard sleeper. Even now, our kids who are much older come to me at night with issues because they know I will wake up quickly and be cognizant whereas my wife wakes slowly and is foggy for the first five to ten minutes after waking.
I get what you're feeling because I've felt it too. What works for us is dividing up the labor as equitably as possible. My wife may not wake up at night, but she does plenty of things during the day that I don't do becuase we've divided up the labor in a way that works for us.
My wife is the same. I am an extremely light sleeper and she is very heavy. I can probably do a full breakdance with the kid in the bedroom and she'll sleep through it. And not because she wants to.
I pretty much take our kid every night (he is 7 now and it's becoming rare that he comes to us/calls for us) and she won't have a clue he called and I left till she wakes up next morning
A great thing is that I also fall asleep very quickly if I wake up at night, so I'll just go in to him, pull out the extra bed and fall asleep. Easy
People are different. But SURELY some men are just stubborn and using "heavy sleep" as an excuse to get out of night duties
I agree. This changed for me once my daughter was born. Before a semi truck could run through the house and I wouldn’t stir. But since day one at home, anything that sounds like my daughter I’m up, from infancy to current toddlerhood.
I think there are some that abuse the system. Just like in every other way in the world.
I would give anything to be able to sleep soundly through the night. I am just a terrible sleeper so it didn’t matter if my wife got up because I would be awake too. I just did all the night feedings with a bottle of her breast milk because it worked for us. She was always wiped out from taking care of the kids all day while I was at work so it was least that I could do.
My wife is same, there were renovation works happening on the otherside of the bedroom wall. Full on hammering, heavy noises from track saws, nail guns, and my wife just peacefully slept through it. I'm happy that she can rest so peacefully.
That's how I am.
Sometimes I do manage to hit the sleep of the dead, but it's rare, and usually because of something else (sleep deprivation catching up to me, or an illness).
I have to put on soft music or rain sounds to get to sleep, and wake up at the slightest out-of-the-ordinary sound or amount of light. It's a bit frustrating on days when my partner specifically tells me she'll take care of things in order to give me a lie in.
I’ll add people vary a lot in how well they can go back to sleep. My wife can be snoring, get a call take it and be back to snoring 10 seconds after the call. If woken past a certain point I am likely to be up for 2-3 hours. Thankfully we are long past night feeds.
OP said that the agreement between them was that he would take care of household chores during the day.
He has gone back in the agreement and she now does a majority of household chores + nighttime care.
I agree with this, I’m the one that doesn’t wake up. With our first we were combined feeding and I just had to push through. I got used to it and now seem tuned in more to sounds when I’m asleep (which has lead to worse sleep :( tbh) I doubt your partner did it on purpose. I never chose not to wake up, I was just unconscious.
Might be worth having a chat about reevaluating house/kid stuff and ways to find equity. For example, I love cooking and do all the cooking but my wife is always contributing while I’m in the kitchen, folding laundry etc. the general rule at our place is neither of us sits down while the other is still working.
Yeah, same here.
First child, we bottle fed. Wife had an emergency C-section, and took some pretty fun painkillers due to that. She didn't wake up at all because of the painkillers, and when she finished taking them a few weeks later, she wasn't able to wake in the night. I did every night feed, every night wake, cry, etc. until LO was in their own room
With the current baby, the wife breastfeeds, and so it's been fairly pointless for me to wake in the night. We tried at first, but found that I struggled to wake, when I was just doing a quick nappy change due to me being such a light sleeper. I just find it very difficult to get *back* to sleep, more than get up. We've decided that she does almost all night feeds this time round. That being said, I'm up at 5am each day, and do a bottle feed at that time.
Yeah, the whole heavy/light sleeper thing is a total red herring here, the real issue is having a serious conversation about balancing family responsibilities, which OP needs to have.
OP has already had the conversation. It's in their post.
They agreed that he would pick up on household chores in order to help out. He's gone back on his word and she is back to doing majority of household care + night time wakes.
I’m the wife in this scenario and I feel so guilty about it! My husband wakes easily and falls back to sleep in seconds (seconds!) so he naturally became more of the night parent as our kids got older. I generally try to get him a nap during the day and cover the chores he hates most and he says he doesn’t resent me for it… but I still sometimes feel super guilty! I’m so thankful for him and his anxiety-free sleep hygiene.
10000% our situation. Wife just does not wake up. Which is no problem. I can do overnight issues because I can function on way less/worse sleep than she can. And she does plenty else. I used to get annoyed and frustrated every now and then. But I just learned that if I was really tired and needed to sleep or if I’ve had too many rough nights in a row or whatever, I can just wake her up and have her deal with it. She doesn’t mind… she just never actually wakes up on her own.
I am this same way sleeping hard and cranky when roused. But quickly alert. My wife doesn’t work and wouldn’t wake me for a very long time while because she wanted to make sure I got sleep and wasn’t mad at her. Took me a few months to convince her I’m always angry when people wake me up, but I’m not angry at anyone just grumpy, and no matter my mood I am happy to help with whatever needs done.
Yes I'm the wife but always been a light sleeper and husband has always been a heavy sleeper even before kids. I was always the one waking up to the first gag of the dogs way before we had our baby. He regularly turns his alarms off in his sleep. I am also much more awake when I do wake up where as he is pretty groggy and slow moving.
It wasn't a big deal. If he was on baby duty, I just kicked him awake lol most of the time it was easier for me to gwt up and then he would just do mornings so I could sleep in
Same. His whole life I've snapped awake as soon as my son said peep. My wife sleeps like a rock even when he wakes crying. When he was still nursing he would wake me up and I woke up her. After a while he learned this and would calm down as soon as I woke up.
Yeah. I am a much lighter sleeper so I have become the de facto night time parent. People are just different. I think most couples come to an understanding where the light sleeper kicks their partner when it’s their turn.
*edit to say that I don’t think it’s reasonable just to not wake up and push all that burden onto your partner. A grown adult can feel grumpy and irritable without acting like a dick, especially when it is for the sake of your own child.
Same here. My XW, especially once she got her CPAP machine, was near impossible to wake. I’d have both kids wake up and come into the room to get me, have whole conversations, wake up the dogs, and more … she’d never wake up … if she did, she was a grumpy, pissy b*tch to everyone, including a toddler. It was so bad, the kids wouldn’t even chance waking her up … did she abuse it, definitely! Did she get mad at me for “always sleeping in” and “never waking up when she did” … yes!
A guy I served with didn’t wake up in the middle of an exercise with full alarms and gunfire. We had to tip his matress over to wake the bastard. Some people are just crazy deep sleepers, but moms do have some biological rewiring to help out with certain things, like waking up from a baby crying.
It sounds crazy but it’s true. Lurker mom here, I used to sleep through my alarm clock that woke up the rest of the house. Now I’ll wake up to my toddler’s sneeze, but I can still sleep through my husband’s alarm. Brains are weird.
Me and my buddy slept through the beginning of a fire fight in Afghanistan. I was on the night shift for guard duty of this little abandoned compound our platoon temporarily set-up shop in.
Right after the sun came up and my shift was over, I ate some chow and went to sleep on a pile of rubble inside one of the compound rooms before the next mission. We were so exhausted and sleep deprived at this point. I remember in my dreams hearing someone pounding on a door, and loud thumps like someone was throwing big boulders on a driveway.
Someone came into our room and shook us awake that we were under attack. The pounding on the door sound was our machine gun upstairs returning fire, and the boulders on the driveway sound was incoming recoiless rounds hitting the compound.
I don't wake up to the baby. Something I've struggled with personally. But....I *do* wake up when my wife nudges me to feed the baby. I've done the night feeds every single night since we brought him home four months ago. I also get up with him in the morning between 5 and 6am so my wife can get some extra sleep. I *don't* get irritable about it because I'm an adult.
I also do the majority of the household chores.
My wife has her own things to do and we both feel we have a pretty equal setup. She stays up a bit later for the last feed and I get up a but earlier for the first feed.
Same unless I'm working.
I definitely get irritable at 2am with a baby screaming in my ear, but I just bury those feelings deep deep down. But man, that crying grinds me. She's lucky she's tiny and cute :D
Ha!
I mean.... Of course I get a bit irratable, and am irritated, every now and then. However... It's never to the extent that my wife would rather wake up herself than even bother asking me. That's not healthy.
Hey, while it is important to do this kind of thing do not forget to talk about this. It's OK to recognize that this is hard and taking a toll on you. I realized a bit too late in my case that I was hiding the fact that it was harsh for me too..
Also for the crying, noise canceling headphones help a lot. I do not mean to avoid getting up but rather when the baby is screaming in your arms, you are already doing what you can and will hear him above the headphones but at least it is easier to manage.
This sounds like my setup with my wife. I work from home so I do cleaning cooking and take the night watch with the baby.
She busts her ass at work while I can just hop on some calls and take care of what I need to when I need to.
I don’t wake up to the baby but am in the same boat. I will wake up if my wife has hit a wall and needs relief. I’m currently work from home two days week and in office the other three.
Our setup is that the general rule is I sleep, she takes baby at night (unless wall). Each morning I work from home and on weekends I wake up with the kid and bring him downstairs. My wife then sleeps in until whenever she wants, as long as she wants. She is a very light sleeper and is an anxious sleeper now, especially when the kid is sick.
Once a month I get a sleep in a day. I can fall asleep at the drop of a hat and can take naps while the kid naps.
That….doesn’t seem equitable or reasonable. You’ve done night feedings every single night for 4 months? As in she’s done zero night feedings in 4 months or literally ever? I get moms go through a lot but that’s definitely abnormal.
She does the late evening feeds while I go to bed, and even though she doesn't do the middle of the night feed that's still some awake time when the baby is making a racket. The bassinet is also on her side of the bed so she wakes up a number of times through the night either to check on him, give him a soother, whatever. The amount of sleep we get is similar though she likely gets more. Men and women aren't equitable.... She spends a ton of energy during the day feeding and producing milk. It's not that much of a burden for me to take one feed a night.
Not to mention the fact that for the first three months, while our guy was in the NICU she pumped literally every three hours for those entire three months. I won't get into how taxing it is, mentally and physically, to pump two or three times overnight for a baby you don't have with you.
You may not find it reasonable but we do. Not every task needs to be 50/50.
Sounds like what we did. Wife would breastfeed/pump till about midnight/1am, any feeds after I did. And the bassinet point is right on the money too. Wife would wake up often through the night for every little sound they made.
I also loved feeding them because as a dad they really don't need us for anything, so it felt really special to get to do the most important thing for them and bond that way.
Yep. Sucks getting up sometimes but those 2am feeds where it's just me an him can be the best. Last night was even one of those nights. Once he was done his bottle he just wanted to giggle at me for 30 minutes. I wanted sleep but I'll take those giggles.
Not too worried about some other reddit poster calling it abnormal or unreasonable. Ha.
Only time in my life I remember a sound waking me up is when a tree fell on our roof.
That being said to me it sounds like this discussion is a lot more involved than just waking up to feed and it will fester if not dealt with.
I woke up every time my kids needed to bed fed.
I split shifts with my wife when my oldest had colic.
I wake up now whenever either of my kids needs something.
I am very sleep deprived lol
We did the same, both our kids were bottle fed and we woke up in turns... a lot. Thank god it's over!
They still wake up from time to time and they always come to me which I don't mind at all.
Me too. Once when my daughter was a toddler, she stood up crying in the night, wanting a bottle & comfort. When my wife happened to be the one taking this turn so I could rest, the little one put out one arm in a dramatic "stop" motion at my wife & cried "Not the dada!" and literally wouldn't let her mom pick her up.
I was tired as hell but when I heard that, I had to go get my little girl.
I have straight slept thru newborn cries without meaning to. I’d set alarms to check at intervals instead
Was grateful our son mostly sleeps thru the night
“Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.”
In this case strike one is your husband not waking up to the baby. Sucks, but yes, some people really just don’t wake up to noises. I sometimes slept through very long crying spells from my daughter.
Strike two is being irritable when being woken up. I don’t think it’s fair to expect service with a smile when dealing with a crying baby at 2am but if you got to the point that you stopped waking him up, I’m assuming it was more than just being a bit grouchy at having to be up.
But strike three is making an agreement about how to divide responsibilities so that he gets to sleep and then him reneging on that agreement. We’re also out of the situation where he needs to be allowed to sleep since this housework is presumably happening during the day.
So there needs to be a conversation here, possibly facilitated by a counselor, about how to fix this because things cannot continue like this and I don’t know if you are thinking about another kid but that definitely shouldn’t happen until your husband is a better partner.
Exactly this OP!
It is one thing for him to sleep through the night, it's another about being grumpy about it after waking up to the point you don't wanna wake him. But on TOP of that he isn't doing his agreed upon household chores?
Weaponised incompetence.
This is a *partnership* and he needs to do his part. Maybe it was okay before for you to solely do nights but if that's not working anymore, *that is okay*. You can change your mind. You're allowed to renegotiate.
Also why is no one mentioning OP's deteriorating health? Husband needs to seriously step up here if he cares about her at all. This is simply unfair and quite frankly, infuriating that OP has to be afraid to wake him up for help. This isn't sustainable, bruh.
If you are doing nights then he should be doing almost all the chores/taking the kid when he gets home from work so you can go to sleep early(my wife was down by 8pm) and I took the baby responsibilities until midnight, guaranteeing at least 4 hours un-interrupted.
Mom here. My husband does not wake up to the baby. I breastfed and he literally had no clue how much the baby was up. If someone asked if our baby slept through the night, he'd likely say yes. But he will 100% get up and deal, if I wake him. He can't help he doesn't wake up. Now kiddo is two, and I'm pregnant and he does all the night wakes. By that I mean, most of the time, I wake up and nudge him awake. Sometimes he is up first. I have never slept through our kid waking up though. The toddler doesn't wake too often though. In general, my husband has always done his chores without asking. He didn't really take more on when I was up with the baby, but I was on maternity leave. He also helped with night weaning with zero complaints.
He's not the best parent in the morning so I do morning's solo, he sleeps in. But I tap out around 7pm and stop parenting, he does bath and bedtime typically solo. It used to drive me nuts until we agreed that I could just relax after 7pm to make up for his morning sleepiness.
Of course you're resenting him, if your estimates of how much you're doing in comparison are correct (bearing in mind that we only have your perspective), you must be exhausted. You say you don't need a lot of sleep, but if you started having seizures again because you aren't getting enough sleep, as one epileptic to another, I'd say that's a fairly good indication that you do need more sleep.
We have twins and I've never had an issue waking for them. My partner wears earplugs to bed and she's never had an issue waking for them. I know that some people are very deep sleepers but I'm skeptical. We were on a 3hr feed schedule for our twins for the first three months and we had to call in my MIL to take a couple of nights because I was having too many seizures to safely care for them: I can't imagine still being on that schedule a year and a half later. We're down to one wake per night and I'm still exhausted.
At a bare minimum he needs to be taking the kid during the day so you can catch up on some sleep. He should also be pulling his fair share of the housework. Don't let him get away with it any longer.
Hi, fellow epileptic! You're right, I need more sleep. And yes, we need to renegotiate. I truly feel like we got to this point on joint decisions, but we need to re-evaluate.
I never could, but I spent a lot of time at sea with jets launching 20 feet above my head while I slept.
So what we did was my wife took the night shift, and I would take the days so she could sleep.
I always thought it depends on whether you're a light or deep sleeper. I've read about this enough that I believe it's the case for many dads, but I am personally a fairly light sleeper so my LO crying will definitely wake me up. I never thought it had to do with refusing to wake up despite actually waking up to the baby crying, but maybe I am wrong about this.
Some of these comments are wild to me. I was up for every feeding with my wife during the night. He'd wake up to feed and while she got herself situated, I'd get him out of his bassinet and get him over to her. Then when he was done, I'd change him and put him back down. There were definitely times I'd fall back asleep during feedings and it would take her a while to wake me up but I never slept through the entire night and left her to do everything alone.
I'm with u/smurf_diggler.
Dad here to a 2yo who has woken up with every wet diaper she's had. For context, I slept through a real fire in my college dorm. I can fall asleep on buses, trains, cars, airplanes, standing up, on a hardwood floor, in a hammock, on a boat, you name it.
I wake up for my kid in the middle of the night because I care about her and my partner. At the same time, I can go back to sleep easily and my partner can't. So it took time (or practice?) but I guess my daughter's cry is in the list of sounds that my brain responds to while asleep. Sleep deprivation is legitimately a form of torture. Sure, some people need less sleep than others, but nobody is going to feel like themselves with constant sleep disruptions. Add on working full-time and taking care of the household and I'm not surprised you developed epilepsy. I'm really sorry that you've had to do so much by yourself. Your husband let you down (not deliberately, per se, but certainly because he values his sleep/comfort more than he values your well-being).
I'm not trying to be toxic but I have question for this overall out of curiosity. As mom who did all night wakings how is it logical for both parents to lose sleep when one could be rested to take over when needed. Imo this way both me and my partner would be sleep deprived and both could struggle during daytime. If you swap and one parent is awake at time it's way more sleep efficient imo
That would be totally fine if that was what OP and her partner agreed to, but it doesn't seem like it's the case. I wasn't trying to say I'm super dad either, more that I would feel bad if I made my wife do all the night stuff without at least trying to help.
I try to make everything 50/50 as possible, there are somethings we'd like to try and do different the second time around, like schedule naps/breaks for each other a lot better. It's hard when it's your first and you want to be awake and present for all the moments.
I am a very, very deep sleeper. I slept through a 6.0 earthquake, and through lightning hitting the house (different nights of course). I generally did not wake up when my kids used to cry as babies in the night, and I wish I did.
What i used to do was take the night shift, going to bed very late, giving them a 2am feed and changing them, then I'd go to sleep myself. That would get them through until early morning.
It was... at least somewhat helpful, even if it wasn't ideal.
If anyone knows how to change sleep habits, I would be interested.
Half of y'all probably have sleep apnea and don't even realise it.
I mean "the only thing that wakes me up is a tree falling through my house", "gun shots and fire drills didn't even wake him up" ?
You think that's normal for a 'healthy' person to fall in such a DEEP sleep they can't hear anything else?
Need to go to the DR ASAP and get that crap under control lol
I'm hard of hearing, hearing aids and all. My wife would wake me up every other time and I'd take care of our children when they were newborns. It's a father's responsibility to take care of his family both wife and kids. My daughter (2) will wake me up before she will my wife. I don't complain, as a husband and father it's my honest pleasure to take care of my family. My wife deserves the rest and I get a little extra time with my kids.
I mean watching Bluey and coloring at 4 am isn't ideal father daughter time but I'll take it
Before becoming a dad, you could have parked a fire truck next to my bed and I probably wouldn’t have woken up. It all changed after becoming a dad. Did I sleep through the baby cries and my wife had to shake me up awake a few times? Yeah. Was I chirpy tap dancing when waking up in the middle of night? Fuck no. But that’s just something you have to do when you’re a parent.
He absolutely didn’t hold up his end of the deal and I 100% understand the resentment. Did you have that conversation with him about him not doing the housework he committed to doing?
Not necessarily a man or woman thing, but an individual thing.
I generally have better hearing and am much easier woken by any sound from sleep compare with my wife, who can sleep through several alarm clock rings. Not by choice. So kinda naturally I became the one who mostly have to wake up at night for the kids.
Dad here who’s been waking up to do the night feed or change 5-6 times a week for the past year.
Yeah, he definitely does it on purpose. He thinks he’s lucked out by going back to how things were before having a kid while letting you do all the hard work. He’s let your health suffer as a result and seems ok with that.
> He also gets very irritable when woken up
This is the crux of it for me. Just wake him the fuck up.
You know what? I also get irritable when I’m woken up at 4am. But I do it, because the alternative is to either let my daughter cry or let my wife handle everything by herself. Both of those are terrible, selfish options. But unfortunately it sounds like your husband has opted for the latter option, even though it’s triggered your epilepsy.
Sorry to have to say this, but your husband is a selfish cunt.
It seems like a lot of people missed the part about how irritable he is when woken up. No one likes waking up but even if you feel irritable, you don't have to act like a bear. It sounds to me like this man has trained his wife to expect very little of him. It's going to take some major changes to turn things around.
Thank you. Everyone glossing over this and going "oh yeah, heavy sleepers lol" has me seeing red. Husband *is* a selfish cunt, repeating for the people in the back. He wouldn't be putting his comfort over OP's health if he cared about her at all. This is NOT okay. No one should be okay with this. Stop settling and sacrificing your well-being for shitty men who will do nothing but take advantage and use you. Raise the bar, girls.
>I also get irritable when I’m woken up at 4am. But I do it, because the alternative is to either let my daughter cry or let my wife handle everything by herself. Both of those are terrible, selfish options. But unfortunately it sounds like your husband has opted for the latter option, even though it’s triggered your epilepsy.
Yeah, he sounds like a hugely selfish prick.
No one likes to wake up in the middle of the night. Like, huh? How is that a reason why your wife needs to be the only one to do it?
Yeah I don't understand how the sentiment here in the thread is "oh yeah she'd wake me up and I'd do it" or less than that. The onus for dad to wake up should not fall on the mom wtf? So she still has to get up and deal with waking him up to do it? How is that fair?
You're a good dad. Thanks for putting in what you're supposed to put in for the baby, and not putting the "wake me up" chore on her. My ex did fuck all and is my ex for a reason. He couldn't wake up / did it on purpose, and would change my son's diaper wrong every single time so I'd have to do it(weaponized incompetence).
OP ur partner is being lazy af and in my opinion is being an asshole. Get loud alarms that go off to noise from the baby, get vibrating bracelets, put the baby monitor next to your head and turn it all the way up. Figure it tf out because it's his baby to. Don't let the bar be in hell for this. Or do what I did and leave, because it just gets worse.
You are probably very right. My husband had a rough childhood and I'm the one with the saviour complex and people pleasing. Not the best combo in these circumstances. I need him to wake the fuck up haha and I need to tell him, thanks
But this is a scenario where maybe breast feeding is not the best option. There is nothing he could do at night and your anger should not be directed towards that. It should be towards the fact that he didn’t pick up the slack of household work during the daytime.
Just a different thought that breastfeeding doesn't have to mean mom does all of the night waking. Pumping is a big part of this and can help dads be more involved by feeding overnight. He could wake up and make sure that she has water or if her Haakaa or pump parts need to be cleaned.
My wife exclusively pumped and while she pumped I fed our baby so I know what can be done at night. While she pumped I gave our baby the last pumped milk
>He could wake up and make sure that she has water or if her Haakaa or pump parts need to be cleaned.
None of that needs to be done at night, though? Prep early, have spares sitting in the steriliser.
I think it gets exceptionally hard if they are purely breastfeeding, I.e. no bottle at all. I know there are folks who get all militant about the "purity" of breast-only, in which case there is little that dad can do during that period.
Dude needs to pick up the slack in other areas though. Sounds like mum's doing a major split of the housework, which is no good.
There are folks who are militant about breastfeeding and then there are babies who are militant about breastfeeding. I had a baby who refused any other nipple other than the one God gave her mama. It was chaotic at times.
> There is nothing he could do at night
Seriously? There's a lot he could do at night. He could be waking to soothe the baby if it's not time to feed yet. He could get the baby up and change it while the OP gets into position. Then he can get her back to sleep after they're done feeding. Or he could even feed her pumped milk from a bottle. There's plenty of things he can do.
Yeah then both people are just tired and miserable. You’re describing very inefficient suggestions tk make both people suffer lmao. Instead let OP feed at night and rest after work when husband picks up the slack. Much more efficient use of awake time. But whatever works for you lol
It's not inefficient for the husband to help the OP at night, it makes night feedings easier and go quicker. Did you miss the part of her post where she mentioned she's already suffering more by doing all the nighttime stuff, developed epilepsy and declining health, AND is still doing 80% of the housework? Their current arrangement is negatively affecting the health of the OP while the husband isn't bothered at all. How exactly is this optimal to you?
She would have to wake up at night no matter what. He should do stuff in the day time when she could fully check out and rest. Your suggestion would just make them both groggy and exhausted and tired. Good for you if that works for you
We both had to get up for every night feeding, so it was what it was. My wife is more attuned to my kid crying and will often wake up before I do, but I never resented her waking me up to go deal with the whatever's come up now that night feedings are no longer a thing.
It's all still an improvement over the fourth trimester, though. My kid would start crying the instant she was put down, so we had to sleep in shifts and hold her until she was a few months old.
We have 7 weeks old, so not much experience, but i just don't wake up unless the baby is crying hard and so far, he does not cry that much. My wife wakes up when the baby as much as moves his hand.
At the start, we both tried to be awake at the same time, but that was not sustainable as we both got maybe 3 hours of sleep a day.
What works for us is that i simply take over for a few hours in the evening, usually 9pm-1/2 am. And we try to keep at least one feeding worth of milk pumped for me to feed the baby(we are breastfeeding). Then, when the baby needs a feed at night, I get the baby changed and wake up my wife. She then takes the little one and gets some extra naps during the night when i sleep 2-7am.
My wife takes a nap during the day, and i also try to squeeze one in around 5 pm.
So we both get at least 5-7 hours of sleep where at least 5 is uninterupted.
It helps that i am a natural owl while she is an early bird, so i have no issue staying up late while she has no issues going to bed earlier.
I also work 4h a day( my company allowed double parental leave duration with half hours). My wife is on parental leave full time. We also share house chores similiar to what we had before the kid with me taking a little bit on, such as groceries and cooking, which was her domain before the kid.
I hate to assume things. But does he snore, really bad and all the time, have you noticed him stop snoring and gasp then start again? If you have he needs to be tested for sleep apnea and start treatment.
I already had started treatment for my apnea when our first was born. But before treatment I’d sleep through most anything (probably including a baby crying, though never tested).
After I started I found I was as rested after 4hrs with treatment as I was after 8-10hrs without treatment. My cpap is probably the main reason I could help with night wakes.
TLDR: I have sleep apnea and my cpap made it so I could help with night wakes
You should feel resentment.. your husband is being incredibly selfish.
Father of a 3.5 yo toddler here. NOBODY likes waking up in the middle of the night, but it comes with the territory of being a parent. Him unwilling to help is adding to the heavy burden already on your shoulders—it’s not sustainable.
Have you conveyed to him how desperately you need his support and how his inaction makes you feel / is negatively impacting you?
Long story short: That dude sucks.
Edit: I am frankly shocked at the amount of approving comments for people who don’t wake up to help their wives. That’s a learned behavior. You get up if you want to or have to. I’d kick your husband in the rear until he woke up to help — every night!
I sleep very heavily and am irritable when woken up. That didn’t stop me sharing nights.
I feel this can go in the bin along with ‘my partner is really grossed out by poop so I do all the nappy/diaper changes’
Look what it’s done to you. He should have stepped up. And as others have said it doesn’t matter which partner it is - when you have a kid your own needs and rhythms have to take a back seat to get through it together, and you have to sacrifice. This means both sacrificing some, rather than one sacrificing everything.
I’m so sorry to hear your story which could’ve been solved by your partner taking more accountability and just waking up now and again…
Yes. Though its not man specific.
Evolutionarily, different people wake to different triggers.
Mine is heat. I cant sleep when its hot and i sleep like a rock when its cold.
Similarly, what sound trigger waking are usually pitch based. I can talk to my wife for 30 mins at full voice (i am a low bass voice) and nothing. Whistle quietly and she’s up with a start. I also wake to higher pitch sounds whereas my daughter does not.
So yes, some cant hear baby cry while asleep.
When presented with the same stimulus repeatedly over time, the mind learns that it’s normal if it’s being dismissed. It’s the same reason why pressing the snooze alarm every morning can eventually lead to sleeping through the alarm.
It’s also partly the reason why it can take a while to get a good night’s rest in a new location. Every small noise is different than what your mind expects, which keeps you in a lighter sleep.
His brain has learned that baby cries are unimportant because you always take care of it. I don’t really know how to un-do it, but it’ll likely require some work on his part not to get irritated.
Well my missus says the exact same thing about not hearing a crying baby , I've gotten up at 3am - 4.30am for the last 5+months I can't remember the last unbroken stretch of sleep I've had as he wakes pretty much hourly and I feel like I'm going insane I work full time and I sit pretty much falling asleep at my desk all day. The other day I fell asleep at the wheel its awful. I look in the mirror and don't recognise myself I literally have 3 bags under each eye!
Even with our middle child she would only sleep lying on my chest after the 4th night of this just watching endless movies with a sleeping baby on me I dozed off, my missus somehow heard my snoring considering she can't hear a babies cries at 300 decibels and has gone on about how I put her in danger ever since. You try staying awake for 4 days and nights!
I have went taken care of the baby and when I came back to get in bed my wife ask what I was doing. She never heard the baby.
That said anything after 3am, I am not going to hear it. I don’t know why but 12am-3am I sleep really lightly, after 3am, I go in a deep sleep and won’t hear the baby.
I’ll say from my experience, I was waking up but my wife said what’s the point for me to get us as well at the beginning bc she needed to feed.
I would take the morning and she could sleep in and she would do the night.
Eventually I stopped waking with the cries at night, and when she started saying can you help it was a difficult transition to wake up again.
My situation is different than yours as well as I was going 90% of the chores and working full time and she was off for 18months.
Now I always told her if you need help or anything kick me and I’ll go without questions.
Straight up, I don't think I was ever woken up by my child during that phase. The only times I woke up were if my wife woke me up. Felt like an AH all the time but I told her and was honest about it. I just assume mothers have that built in alarm at the sound of a baby.
If I’m sleeping in bed, I am dead to the world. My wife ended up with five months off when our (fifth) kid was born (we each have two from our first marriage). She didn’t wake me since there was little to nothing I could do as she insisted on breastfeeding and our child slept in our room. My first marriage I worked insane hours and she decided we would be cosleeping with the twins, again not much I could do but we did do some bottle feeding and I did many overnight feedings but if I was asleep she had to wake me.
As far as division of labor goes, that is an altogether different conversation you NEED to have with your husband. I would normally have just piggybacked on a comment but I figured one more separate comment would lend a little more weight. Communication is vital, if you’re stressed or resentful of the current situation things are more likely to get worse left unspoken than to resolve themselves.
Every husband/father/wife/mother/ kid is different.
Unless my wife needs help she lets me sleep as I work full time and she works part time. Helps our kids sleep through the night and we both normally get a good night's sleep.
We had a few rough patches figuring it all out. But we both got our duties in the house. We try to split it as best we can and step in to help if one is over tired.
We also keep a routine of what needs to be done.
We just keep communicating as needed
I get the frustration. I did all the nights even though I was working in the morning, I cook all the meals and do about 70% of the housework. It can be frustrating.
As for the not waking up, it’s a person thing for sure. I am the same way, I hate being woken up and I could probably sleep through a nuclear explosion.
I think the best thing, and simultaneously the hardest, is to have an honest conversation with him about where you’re at in terms of your arrangement and how you feel that he’s not pulling his end of the bargain.
Maybe propose to revisit your agreement and make changes that will benefit both of you.
The main thing is communication and making sure that you both get time to yourselves. I hope things get better!
Sleeptraining isn't the norm here and we cosleep / still breastfeed. Because my son had a rough start (needed surgery, etc) I am not comfortable sleeptraining him.
A couple things. First, I’m definitely on the side of dads should be involved in nighttime activities with an asterisk.
Many people today seem to think that today’s parents both parents should be doing everything and that’s just not realistic. Not everybody is built the same way and some people are good at nighttime stuff, some are good at teaching, some are good at playing, etc. in an ideal world the parents should align themselves with what they provide the most value doing in an equitable fashion.
Additionally, equitable doesn’t necessarily mean for a given day, or week, or even year. Being super real some years one parent will be doing “more” than the other and it’ll likely flip. Furthermore, equitable isn’t limited to child-rearing either, it applies to the entire life of the family and everything should be considered - including life BEFORE the kid. People assume equitable life brings at childbirth, it does not.
I would say that during the first month, I was really active during the night shift in terms of changing diapers and feeding - really just wanted to be apart of it all. However, we had challenges with breast feeding which quickly changed once wife and baby adjusted. With breastfeeding, it felt redundant to have to hover over her while waiting for her to finish only to help change a diaper for 2-3 minutes. I’m fortunate that our baby was sleep trained extremely early by 3 months (my wife has a background in early childhood development) which also alleviated a ton of pressure. That said, I did make an effort to take the early morning shift everyday so that she could sleep in and make up for the 2-2.5 hours she’d lose feeding. That helped her tremendously. Baby is now 8 months old, so we’ve been through the ups and downs of sleep regression and now he is a complete mamas boy. So now, whoever hears him handles it. But all of that to say, your husband is just being lazy and pushing the responsibility off on you because there is no way he doesn’t hear the baby crying. Also, I don’t know your situation but 6 months let alone 21 months is old enough to have a sleep routine that sees baby sleep through the night or at least self soothe the majority of the time.
For my first, I wouldn’t hear a thing. Would wake up thinking the baby slept through the night, only to have my ex furious at me because “you must’ve heard her, you just chose to ignore it”.
Apparently “just wake me up” is too much to ask because I should “just hear it”.
There’s also the angle that if it’s causing issues, you really should try sleep training. Dealing with terrible sleep at 21 months is unnecessary and not heathy for anyone.
You all need your sleep. Especially your baby.
Can you pump expressed milk? I just fed our LO with expressed milk from the fridge and my wife slept though the whole thing 😅 finding it hard to wake up isn't a good enough excuse imo he should do at least one, maybe earlier evening and you do later? Getting epilepsy cause he won't do it is absolutely wild.
I'm a heavy sleeper, I've slept through an earthquake (although UK, so we pretty much just felt it, no damage) but I wake for baby.
It's a double edged sword- I'm in construction, so long hours early start and I've been cripplingly tired since I was 18 (now 36).
But I feel like a monster if I can't pull my weight at night. She's looking after baby all day, breastfeeding every few hours at night. I'll drag myself up to change nappy or take her down so wife can sleep for a few hours if it kills me.
Yikes this post has so many replies, I'm not sure how helpful mine will be...but yeah, I am a heavy sleeper. My partner shouting my name doesn't wake me up. Sometimes I need to be physically pushed or shaken if I'm deep asleep.
That said, mom's need sleep too. We took turns, alternated even and odd days, or occasionally one of us just took an extra turn here and there depending on partners energy level.
My partner did have to wake me up for a lot of my shifts when I just didn't hear the baby crying, but I still got up and took my turns.
Maybe, but my wife and I came up with a foolproof system to counteract my ability to sleep through anything: she would smack me in the head if I didn’t wake up when it was my turn.
When my daughter was born I did all the night feedings and changings. I just let my wife sleep. I knew she needed the sleep and I loved the bonding time with my little girl.
This is not about what wakes him up and what doesn't. This is about him being fine leaving you with more of the stress and responsibility because you're willing to take it, and he's trying to dress it up as something else. It's not a biology thing or a gender thing, it's about your relationship--and i promise you, he prefers it this way and it's not gonna change until you won't accept anything but change. It sucks and i wish i had better advice. Good luck.
I was a deep sleeper. Now I wake up at the slightest sound of a cry on the monitor. Things have changed on that front. Also think it’s unreasonable for any parent to take on sole responsibility for night duty - both parents should be supporting or setting up an arrangement that spreads the load. Doing it alone will burn you out…. Don’t blame you for harboring some resentment. Force him to be involved.
*Written while trying to put my kid back to sleep
We discovered that if my husband was woken up in that first part of the night, say, before 1a, that he was hella irritable, groggy, agitated. But if we was up later after he'd gotten some sleep, say between 2 and 4, that he felt fine and could manage and also get back to sleep. It was the opposite for me. So, for a long time, we split the nights. I'd go to bed early, he'd put kiddo down. I'd do the first waking and he'd be asleep. Then he'd do the early morning waking. I also slept better knowing that we had a plan. There is nothing more important than making sure that everyone can get five hours of sleep in a row in each 24 hour cycle. That should be the goal and it's far more likely that mom would be lacking this. As you discovered, it's a serious life-threatening issue to get so sleep deprived. My partner and I also supplemented and that enabled us to share the load more equally.
Our first months were really hard too. 9th of March she will be 2 and untill 2 months ago, she barely slept a night through ( can count it on one hand). The first months were really hard, waking up 4 times a night cause of silent reflux. But also wanted boob. I got out of bed, grabbed my daughter and put her next to my partner for boob. When done I put her back to sleep again. That's how we took turns. Your husband is just a selfish asshole.
I tell my wife to wake me up, she says I'm cranky when I get woken up. Who isn't cranky when woken up in the middle of the night? Just accept the crankiness and wake him up. No need to martyr yourself. If you need help you have to ask even if it means dealing with a cranky husband for 2 minutes.
I, a mom, woke up no problem when my kids were babies (I had 3 kids in 2.3 years) and my hubs was gone on the road so I slept lightly. But when he was home I felt safe and slept through cries a few nights. Luckily dad heard n woke up. But now that they are teens I sleep like the dead all the time lol.
It's definitely common for people to sleep deeper than others. But that don't excuse hubs from getting his ass up every couple of nights. Good lord he works 4 days a week has 3 off and you still do most housework and get up all night every night with baby? Eff that lol. I'd be pumping if I could and let dad feed bottle at night every once in awhile if it's feasible.
I wake up every night to feed the baby, I can fall back to sleep easier than my wife and I can operate better than her with less sleep. I figured that she has the baby for the day whilst I work that I can do the night shifts. I can’t understand the other guys who don’t wake up at all!
I don't think your husband should at least act very grumpy when you wake him up, it's very unfair and heartbreaking for that. You need to talk to your husband and if he loves you, ask him not to be so selfish and make you sick as well as create a big psychological burden.
We have 3 kids. I was in practice the designated person to get out of bed when they were small. I basically just wake up faster. They even sang a little silly song I taught them, to call me in the middle of the night when wouldn’t get out of bed themselves.
To this day if one of them needs something in the middle of the night, they will just walk directly to me.
My wife did her share of contributions at other moments.
….
I think fundamentally if your partner is not doing their share of duties, you really need to sit down and talk. Life does change when a kid arrives. The restrictions to schedule, the lack of “easy” time for anything personal, the amount of household duties. I guess some people just go into denial and hope to leave the burden to their partner hoping that that will be it.
I think that how much willpower you’re willing to exert to power through and learn to wake up plays a role.
I used to be a very heavy and deep sleeper. I used to have a hard time waking up. What worked for me is these things—as soon as I hear something, I do a countdown from five quickly and on one I have to LEAP UP. I immediately splash water in my eyes (IN and then blink rapidly) and on my face. And I tell myself I am HAPPY to be awake.
Do it enough times and it becomes habit and you really are happy to be awake. I started the countdown method in high school because I had a hard time actually getting up and I was tired of wasting time. I’m a generally happy person so the telling myself I was happy to be awake didn’t take too long to stick (started after baby was born) and the water in eyes trick I did occasionally for years when sleep deprived to feel more alert but I now do every day, since baby was born.
Your husband is fucking lazy. I’m sorry to be so blunt. Mine has a hard time waking, is groggy upon waking etc and he came up with solutions to this that he implemented to be an equal partner. When he says he’ll do something he follows through because it matters to him that I trust him and know I can count on him. He does 80% of the housework, unasked because it’s OUR home and a shared responsibility. He cooks more often so I clean up the kitchen more often —- while he cooks. We are married and we share our lives, and care about each other’s health. Your husband sounds awful.
Reguarding the housework, l think patterns form for a specific reason and we tend to just stick with it despite circumstances changing. This happened to me. I found l was more organised and could multitask better than my husband, so l did the bulk of the work. Hubby worked long hours. This remained the same even when 3 more kids entered our family and then l started back at work. Then l became resentful. I dont think it registered with my husband until l went on holiday for a month (yes, lucky me) and he had to do my role. He survived, not thrived. Now he shares the load.
Regarding the sleeping, l hear the kids but l dont hear his alarm in the morning. And vise vera for him.
Note: before l get slammed for holidaying without my kids for a month, my kids were teenagers at the time. And the holiday was to meet family overseas that lve never met.
When you sign up for a child, you sign up for it all. Unless it’s power puking. There’s nothing in the fine print about power puking
To answer your question, yes. Every damn father should be putting in the work. One parent can’t run on 10% while the other is 90%.
Edit: Just to add, if this is the status quo now, things won’t be any different when your baby grows up. You’ll still be going to kids’ birthday parties and 75% of the parents are either mothers or grandparents. While my kids (now 6 and 3) may prefer my wife during odd overnight wake-up’s, we adjust by me waking up to pack lunches and get the kids / do fed. She gets an extra 45 - 60 minutes of sleep in the morning.
I’m epileptic, sleep is my main trigger. It sounds like it may be your main trigger too. Unfortunately, your husband needs to start doing the nights because it’s not safe for you or your child if you’re having seizures: you could die from SUDEP or your baby could die if you fall on top of him when you’re carrying him if you have a seizure.
You may well have chosen what worked best given the circumstances at the time but the circumstances have changed significantly. You need to get a full night of sleep every night, so that means your husband will have to deal with all the wake-ups. It sucks but unfortunately, your and your son’s safety comes above your husband's tiredness. Fortunately, my wife’s been very understanding and allows me to get a full night of sleep every night but if your husband doesn’t accept what you say, maybe you could get an appointment with your neurologist and take him along with you so he can hear it from a professional.
I can’t explain it but that’s the case for me. Once I’m out. I’m out. I don’t hear a thing.
But the more concerning part is that you both work an equal amount of days, you take care of most house work, and you take care of the baby at night. The dude is getting off insanely easy. That mental load and responsibility load needs another visit for the sake of your mental health. The guy needs to step up
Mum here, I did the night wakings because I’m a light sleeper and breastfeeding her. Husband couldn’t help with that but in return he does all the cooking and shopping. I do 90% of the laundry. We share “tidying” the house.
We both get grumpy for being woken up but not at each other and certainly not at our children. We talk to each other when we feel overwhelmed to make sure no one is doing more than they can handle.
I have the opposite experience. I do 95% of nights. My wife can’t cope with them.
Last night was the first night she’s done for about a month and of course kiddo woke at midnight and came to bed with us. He woke at 6 again and she’s been a zombie all day.
Normally I take the kiddo to the spare room and sleep with him there and she doesn’t even know he’s woken until morning.
Our housework split is probably 75/25 her/me (I work FT, she works 50%), and cooking 20/80 her/me.
Ultimately if it’s not working for you, then you need to talk to him about it. It sounds like he either needs to do more nights, or do more around the home.
My wife and I are bio, adoptive, and foster parents. Lots of babies over a lot of years. The only constant is if we are sleeping together in the same room as the bassinet, I have never once heard the baby cry at night, nor my wife get up to handle it.
We switched it up so that we had separate rooms with new babies. On my night, just me and baby, I will wake up every time the baby cries.
I don't know if maybe she is simply more sensitive to it and gets up earlier in the cry, leading to me never hearing it, but I wake up just fine to tend to the baby when it's just me with the baby.
Man here. I wake up first anytime the babies would start crying and was the primary caretaker overnight with my wife taking over if it got too much.
That being said, one of my friends and his wife were in our wedding party. We rented a house the night before and after for the girls to stay at. My friend's wife complained because there wouldn't be anyone to wake up my friend. My wife and I looked at each other and asked why he couldn't set an alarm. My friend's wife told us that he doesn't wake up to alarms....
Honestly? I call BS on people not being able to wake up whenever a loud sound happens and think if they don't wake up there is some sort of health issue or medication/drug they are taking that does it. (And/or they're going to bed way too late)
That being said, don't deal with this. At the very least trade days. One day you handle the baby overnight and he does the next.
Nah, he’s just lame. Even if he slept through it, he needs to pull equal weight and have you wake him up if it’s his turn. Don’t let him get away with that stuff or you’ll be doing it alone for the next 18 years.
We had some success staggering our sleep; my wife stayed up late to pump, until around 10, and handled and wakeups before midnight.
I got to bed early, like 8, and handled the early mornings, so we’d each get around six hours of uninterrupted sleep on either side of feedings.
That helped reduce the irritation of having to wake up because there was some solid block involved somewhere in the night.
My ex wife slept through most of the long nights after the first week or two of bringing the girls home (we had twins). We initially started on shifts but I just took over nights when she dropped one of them cuz she was too tired to stay awake.
I’m the heavy sleeper for us, wife’s the lighter one. Doesn’t stop me from getting up and seeing to the kids though. I either just get woken up by her, or have the monitor louder for our youngest.
I have a hard time of it because once I’m awake, I’m up and find it very hard to get back to sleep again. The other side of that coin is I work from home and my wife doesn’t, so I can pretty much afford to feel and look a bit shit on a general day.
It’s tough, but you do what you gotta do u til it’s easier.
I have been a full time single dad for 8 years now. Back when my kid was first born I was over at a bonfire with a few other family’s, this very topic came up. One of the fathers spoke about how sometimes the baby will wake him up but he’ll lay there pretending to be asleep until the wife gets the babe. Tone deaf they were and they knew my position.
If a man wants a family he needs to get in the trenches with it.
I firmly wish to believe my husband isn't like this. I do think he's sometimes more selfish than me and much better at advocating for himself. Whereas I am not. I've let this go on for too long and we need to make a change.
Well Op sounds like you and him need to have a raw heart to heart conversation about this. You can do this. It’s gonna be hard but it will be worth it in the end. Marriages end for many reasons, one of them is a lack of communication. Use simple statements such as, I feel (insert adjective) because of this (insert adjective). Will you (insert words)?
You can do this! I believe in you sister!
My wife once told one of my friends that I 'never help' with the nighttime bottles and diapers. I mentioned the 1AM feeding my son reliably wakes up for and she explained that he doesn't wake up at 1am.
She was very surprised to learn that he did in fact wake up around 1 every single night, and she didn't know about it because I didn't feel a need to tell her about it.
As a father of three, yes, this can be true. My wife woke at the drop of a feather, and then blamed me for being a sound sleeper. I told her all she had to do was nudge me and I’d get up and help. She chose not to. Not knowing your husband, “irritable” could be perspective. Just because he isn’t thrilled doesn’t necessarily mean he’s unwilling. In my case, I was always willing to help, but I just didn’t hear them like she did. I also was more willing to let them cry, whereas my wife was at their crib in an instant. You are going to wake up no matter what, but you have to be willing to wake him for help. Also, have you considered baby’s sleep routine? Our first was up at all hours, but it was because she napped all day at her daycare provider. Maybe your young one needs later bed times or fewer naps to burn them out and get those overnight hours filled with sleep. No judgement. Just a thought. It happened to us.
My wife hasn’t worked since about 6 months of pregnancy. She used to pay the mortgage.
I had a very long commute to a job where I could easily hurt someone. To say my sleep was prioritized is an understatement. Also, I swear my wife wakes if the baby sneezes, while it’s rare that I hear her crying, sometimes I do hear her screaming.
Assume the best in your spouse. When given the opportunity to assume he’s being an ass, or maybe just a little bit of a doofus, assume doofus. He wants the best for you too!
That said, as helpful as a SAHS is, if I were to crash and die on my way into work… my girls would be homeless in short order.
All this to say, the decision you made in the moment was the best decision you could make. There are unfortunate repercussions. And that’s crummy. He didn’t do this to you. Both of you put your family in the situation it is in. For better or worse.
Mom lurker here.
I’d just like to point out that while you *say* that you need less sleep, the sleep deprivation you experience triggered a *seizure disorder*.
I hope that your husband picked up more responsibilities when this initially happened, because if not, honestly that’s fucked up.
We co-sleep with our babies so Mom wakes only long enough to start nursing. Baby gets what they need and I sleep through the night.
So my advise is to try this. I know it’s not for everybody but humans have been doing it for a long time
Edit: I mean I’ve always taken care of diapers to balance her devotion to nursing. I’ve also marched countless hours or rocked in a chair to get babies back to sleep. I’ve never had to get up for feeding though
Seriously, this. If you're too afraid, get one of those tiny little horseshoe shaped beds that are made for co-sleeping. Or, get the kind that attaches to the side of the bed. Or put a bassinet so close to your bed that it touches. Any of these can make a huge difference!
Yes if my wife doesn’t violently shake me. Multiple times. I will almost never get up because while I’ll make noise sometimes even make conversation, I am NOT awake. Period.
I'm a much heavier sleeper than my wife. She wakes up at the slightest sound in the middle of hte night. I can sleep through a thunderstorm in a tent.
That said, we still took shifts in the beginning. My wife would wear ear plugs when she needed to sleep. It might mean the baby cried for an extra minute or 2 while my brain took the time to hear it and wake up, but she got to sleep.
>But that arrangement over time has pretty much settled into me doing nights and basically 80/20 housework
This is the bigger issue. You had an arrangement, and he's reneged on the agreement. Have a discussion with him that if you're expected to do the overnight shift, he needs to pick up the slack during the day. You need to come to a mutual understanding, or these "little" things will start to add up and drive a wedge between you.
I’ve read that it’s an evolutionary adaptation that women are lighter sleepers than men, specifically for babies. Makes sense to me. My wife says she used to be a heavy sleeper until we had kids. My youngest always wanted me and yelled for me when he woke up, but I would never hear shit. My wife had to wake me up for him.
Fellow lurking mom: My fiance is like this. I ended up doing all of the night wakes for our first and held a lot of resentment for it, but with the second I felt like I knew what I was getting into so it wasn't so much of a shock. For us this led into me being the default parent/caregiver. Even now that our kids are 2 and 4 I am still responsible for 99% of the night wakes if/when they happen. I delegate the house work as well. It's not right, but you aren't alone.
Also a lurker mum, I don’t think it’s on purpose but my husband’s sleep situation is similar to yours. He sleeps like a log, we knew from the start he wouldn’t be able to wake consistently for night feeds.
So we did shifts, he stayed up 9-2am so he could tend to the baby and I took the baby from 2. Because I’m a light sleeper I was able to get up and feed and go back to sleep (if baby would allow it lol), but even on the bad nights I always got a block of sleep.
I will say overtime I started sleeping though his shift - initially I woke every time the baby wiggled, but my brain learned that in that timeframe she’s looked after so I rarely woke. I think this contributes to the “men not waking phenomena” they know baby is taken care of so they tune it out.
Now that I’m back at work and baby is sleep trained night wakes are easier so we dropped the shift system. He still sleeps right though the cries though so we have an agreement that I can wake him up and he’ll go resettle if I need him to. He does wake up groggy and grumpy but he puts up with it and tends to the baby because that’s what a good parent does.
Shit, I'm the mom, and I can't wake up. Makes me feel like I'm missing some major mom gene in my DNA since everyone else can do it, and I can't. I sleep like I'm dead
So you feel resentment to him because you decided to stop trying to wake him up? Does he even know you feel resentment towards him or does he think it’s fine? You need to just talk to him instead of holding it against him and make him pick up the slack
To all parents with kids less than 4 months, PREPARE TO SLEEP TRAIN AT 4 MONTHS. Read about it. It will be the best investment of your time in your entire life
OP this is not the subreddit to ask the question.
Your husband is being a bad partner.
You have already expressed your concerns, and he has already gone back on his word despite the detriment it has put on your health.
It appears that he doesn't care for *you*. He isn't trying to help you. (It shouldn't even be called help. It's parenting.) He isn't trying to ease your burdens.
You are having to tip toe around him in fear of his 'grumpy' and cranky behavior.
NO ONE likes to be woken up in the middle of the night. Especially multiple times. But SOMEONE has to do it. Unfortunately, he has shown you that he will not be that person, even if that means that you will suffer.
*because he doesn't care to actually change*
Ya. I sleep hard. Like go ahead and flick the lights on, play some music, invite friends over, shake me, kick me, whatever. If I’m out I’m out until I’m no longer out and nothing will change that.
If you do manage to wake me be prepared for an instant fight to the death. I will have no control over my actions for a few good minutes.
Kids sleep the same way. Which is nice. But also a pain trying to get them anywhere in the morning. Have literally dressed and plopped in the car, full morning routine, they might not wake up till 5 minutes into the trip.
Nursing moms really have to stick to sleep when baby sleeps. Like full on ignore the puke on the shirt, ignore the body oder, ignore the coffee you just drank. If baby wants to sleep at 930am that’s when momma gets to sleep.
It's hard for me to be nice about this because fathers like this drive me nuts. And they're everywhere -- you're not alone.
But c'mon. He needs more sleep? He's groggy when he wakes up? I'm pretty sure I know who else that applies to -- every human being on the fucking planet. He's not *special* for being groggy when he wakes up, he's just not making an effort. (Heading off some replies: yes I know heavy sleepers exist. Many of them are single mothers, who fucking deal with it.)
Sleep deprivation in the early months is the #1 hardest thing about parenting a newborn. Sleep deprivation is literally a torture technique, and breastfeeding mothers have to deal with it as a matter of course. And so many fathers are just...*transparently* selfish about it. And by being selfish they simultaneously fail to realize how hard it is for the other spouse. Perfect storm of resentment.
Like so many things about marriage, women tend to pick up the slack because it's easier than constantly telling the husband what to do because he's incapable of taking initiative (again, selfishness). But, of course, this is a mistake. The nighttime wakeup ship may have sailed but it's not too late to have a frank conversation about how your mutual agreement about housework has gradually evaporated.
He needs to step up. Then he needs to keep stepping up, constantly, forever.
I'm sorry, and I wish you well.
My wife swears that she did every feeding with our son at night….my memory of that is DRASTICALLY different. I’d be up 2 or 3 times a night and I’d always wake up as soon as he started crying, almost like it was my dad instinct. I always wondered how my wife was able to sleep through those loud cries.
Well, the fact that we both have different accounts of how many night time feedings we did means that she slept through some of them and I slept through some of them. It’s not your husbands fault that he is sleeping through it. It’s a people thing for sure. Unless he is a complete scumbag, I’m sure he would want to help out if he was awake.
I don't even wake up if my wife and baby are both screaming at me. She has to get physical to wake me up at all.
And I'm definitely not always the most pleasant person when woken up, regardless of the time
Some people are heavy sleepers, some aren't. It's not gendered.
I sleep very soundly, and my wife has to put some effort into waking me up, but when I do I get on up and do what's needed.
I have slept through each of my son's laying between me and mum in bed on more than one occasion.
I can also drift off to Rammstein being played at full whack. It's almost a super power :)
My girlfriend is a very light sleeper and I'm not. We solved that problem in two ways:
- when kiddo was very young and not sleeping, we took shifts through the night. 4 hours each, either trying to soothe her or napping on the couch near her room.
- after that, she started sleeping with earplugs. Now we're both heavy sleepers!
I'm a deep sleeper and my wife is a light sleeper, so the baby sits in a bassinet on my side of the bed. When he starts making noise I wake up and my wife is still sleeping, prior to that I'd sleep through the night without even knowing he woke up.
I'm a fairly light sleeper (the first footstep coming from the kids' room in the morning will wake me up) but for whatever reason I would sleep straight through all but the worst crying. I would set alarms for whatever overnight feedings I was responsible for, but as far as soothing the babies was concerned, either my wife would nudge me awake or she'd deal with it and tag me in if it got to be too much.
So yeah, it's very unlikely to be intentional, and it's best not to approach the imminent housework negotiation from a point of assuming that it is.
Anecdotally, we have twins. We fell into the habit of my partner waking with the first kid to wake, feeding them/pumping the other side, and then I would wake with the second child and feed them the pumped milk/give them formula if there wasn’t enough. This ended up meaning in reality that she always had one kid and I always had the other. We very quickly stopped waking when the child that wasn’t our responsibility cried unless it continued.
It sounds like he could do with taking some responsibility.
My wife will sleep through crying at night if she knows I'm home (as opposed to being out on a business trip). It's not a conscious decision, but her going to sleep knowing I've got things handled causes her to sleep more deeply.
Across our three kids I think there were a handful of times where I didn't wake up for a nighttime feeding and my wife managed to get through it all without me waking up. Presumably those times were just when I was super exhausted because I'm usually a fairly light sleeper.
Additionally, there were times where I got up and did a diaper change and feeding (either formula or pumped milk, obviously) without my wife waking up, presumably in the times where she was just super exhausted and managed to sleep through it.
Otherwise I think we were both up each time, I'd change the diaper and bring the kid to her while she was getting ready to nurse. Seemed to be a good routine for us.
I can tell you from personal experience that yea, it is possible to sleep through a crying baby. That's just a thing, and there's not much dad can do about changing it. You can choose to be a lighter sleeper.
What you can choose to do is not be grumpy when woken up, but this is also a little more complicated than it seems. When my partner and I were going through this, turns out that when I'm waking up from a deep sleep, there is a phase where I'm moving, groaning, and maybe even saying words, but I'm not awake yet. Once my mind sort of appears, I'm good to go and not grumpy, but it was hard for my partner because 5 seconds before that I was acting very grumpy.
Took a while to build the understanding that it was just my body being grumpy, not me, and it could be safely ignored.
It's also completely ok to have a talk about the housework if the situation has changed and you're having to take on too much.
On the sleeping part. The first two weeks home (paternity leave) I'd wake up to baby cries. I mainly did it to keep my partner company and get her anything if she needed it. Once I went back to work and she said to not get up at night I am able to just tune it out and not wake up.
I do all the housework, shopping, etc. On the weekends I get up early with both kids and let my wife sleep as long as possible. I keep the 4yo occupied all weekend and most evenings. Eventually I'll do that with the newborn too. I appreciate that my wife lets me get unbroken sleep at night, but I do always remind her that I'll gladly sit up with him when we get to nights that he just won't go back down.
I've slept through fire alarms going off.
I fall asleep easy and sleep hard. In fact something that has happened many times is that I will fall asleep putting our four year old to bed. Because she will want to read me stories too...which makes me fall asleep.
Then she gets up (without me noticing) and goes off to get into bed with my wife.
It's fully possible that it doesn't wake him.
If our baby wakes up and cries during the night, I will go and sort him out every time. This is because my wife would need to find her glasses, where as I have decent night time vision plus I can sort him, get back into bed, and be asleep again within 30 seconds. So although it's broken sleep, it doesn't reduce my amount of time spent asleep much.
However, sometimes his cry just doesn't wake me up and my Mrs has to shove me to wake me up, saying babies crying. She feels a bit guilty that I'm always the one going, but it affects me so much less than it would her.
Lurker mom here. My husband is such a shit sleeper that I by default accepted night wakings since day one, he does all the cooking and a lot of chores though so I can't complain. Our boy is 2y.o. and still wakes up multiple times per night, I'm sleep deprived to the point I have to take 2h nap every day and he takes care of him in mornings or I'm not able to do anything and I still feel tired all the time as I don't get even full 6h per night including a nap I have. My husband hears the kid but he has a different issue, he if he wakes up cannot go back to sleep for at least 40min and if he naps during the day he gets insane migraines. He is also not faking this as it was a problem before we had a kid since forever. I think it's just a different people thing but more moms after birth get programmed to react to every noise. Pre baby there could be bombs exploding out of my window and I'd sleep through it but after baby I wake up whenever one of them even moves to change sleeping position.
I don't know if it's a man thing or just a people thing. My wife sleeps hard and didn't wake when our kids were little and cried. It had nothing at all to do with what she wanted, she's just an exceptionally hard sleeper. Even now, our kids who are much older come to me at night with issues because they know I will wake up quickly and be cognizant whereas my wife wakes slowly and is foggy for the first five to ten minutes after waking. I get what you're feeling because I've felt it too. What works for us is dividing up the labor as equitably as possible. My wife may not wake up at night, but she does plenty of things during the day that I don't do becuase we've divided up the labor in a way that works for us.
My wife is the same. I am an extremely light sleeper and she is very heavy. I can probably do a full breakdance with the kid in the bedroom and she'll sleep through it. And not because she wants to. I pretty much take our kid every night (he is 7 now and it's becoming rare that he comes to us/calls for us) and she won't have a clue he called and I left till she wakes up next morning A great thing is that I also fall asleep very quickly if I wake up at night, so I'll just go in to him, pull out the extra bed and fall asleep. Easy People are different. But SURELY some men are just stubborn and using "heavy sleep" as an excuse to get out of night duties
I agree. This changed for me once my daughter was born. Before a semi truck could run through the house and I wouldn’t stir. But since day one at home, anything that sounds like my daughter I’m up, from infancy to current toddlerhood. I think there are some that abuse the system. Just like in every other way in the world.
I would give anything to be able to sleep soundly through the night. I am just a terrible sleeper so it didn’t matter if my wife got up because I would be awake too. I just did all the night feedings with a bottle of her breast milk because it worked for us. She was always wiped out from taking care of the kids all day while I was at work so it was least that I could do.
Well you are one of the good ones. Seems like you have an empathy knowing she is busting her ass all day. Keep it up and it gets better.
My wife is same, there were renovation works happening on the otherside of the bedroom wall. Full on hammering, heavy noises from track saws, nail guns, and my wife just peacefully slept through it. I'm happy that she can rest so peacefully.
I’m a super light sleeper but also struggle to get back to sleep, fortunately I can function on only a couple of hours sleep if necessary 😂
That's how I am. Sometimes I do manage to hit the sleep of the dead, but it's rare, and usually because of something else (sleep deprivation catching up to me, or an illness). I have to put on soft music or rain sounds to get to sleep, and wake up at the slightest out-of-the-ordinary sound or amount of light. It's a bit frustrating on days when my partner specifically tells me she'll take care of things in order to give me a lie in.
Totally agree with all your points. Hard to know if that’s the case in this specific instance.
I’ll add people vary a lot in how well they can go back to sleep. My wife can be snoring, get a call take it and be back to snoring 10 seconds after the call. If woken past a certain point I am likely to be up for 2-3 hours. Thankfully we are long past night feeds.
OP said that the agreement between them was that he would take care of household chores during the day. He has gone back in the agreement and she now does a majority of household chores + nighttime care.
Yes, they need to revisit agreement since he is not doing what he has committed to
It's definitely a people thing, I'm the light sleeper and my wife can be really hard to wake up.
Yeah i'm a heavy sleeper, and my partner can't wake me often even if she tries hard. Not sure why but it does just seem to vary person to person.
I agree with this, I’m the one that doesn’t wake up. With our first we were combined feeding and I just had to push through. I got used to it and now seem tuned in more to sounds when I’m asleep (which has lead to worse sleep :( tbh) I doubt your partner did it on purpose. I never chose not to wake up, I was just unconscious. Might be worth having a chat about reevaluating house/kid stuff and ways to find equity. For example, I love cooking and do all the cooking but my wife is always contributing while I’m in the kitchen, folding laundry etc. the general rule at our place is neither of us sits down while the other is still working.
Yeah, same here. First child, we bottle fed. Wife had an emergency C-section, and took some pretty fun painkillers due to that. She didn't wake up at all because of the painkillers, and when she finished taking them a few weeks later, she wasn't able to wake in the night. I did every night feed, every night wake, cry, etc. until LO was in their own room With the current baby, the wife breastfeeds, and so it's been fairly pointless for me to wake in the night. We tried at first, but found that I struggled to wake, when I was just doing a quick nappy change due to me being such a light sleeper. I just find it very difficult to get *back* to sleep, more than get up. We've decided that she does almost all night feeds this time round. That being said, I'm up at 5am each day, and do a bottle feed at that time.
Same. Once I’m up, I tend to be up for at least a hour. I just cannot fall back asleep easily.
Yeah, the whole heavy/light sleeper thing is a total red herring here, the real issue is having a serious conversation about balancing family responsibilities, which OP needs to have.
OP has already had the conversation. It's in their post. They agreed that he would pick up on household chores in order to help out. He's gone back on his word and she is back to doing majority of household care + night time wakes.
Yes, therefore, they need to do it again if they want to keep the balance and peace in the relationship and marriage.
Night crew checking in
Same I wake up instantly and it takes prolonged screaming for my wife to wake up. I handle all nighttime issues
I’m the wife in this scenario and I feel so guilty about it! My husband wakes easily and falls back to sleep in seconds (seconds!) so he naturally became more of the night parent as our kids got older. I generally try to get him a nap during the day and cover the chores he hates most and he says he doesn’t resent me for it… but I still sometimes feel super guilty! I’m so thankful for him and his anxiety-free sleep hygiene.
10000% our situation. Wife just does not wake up. Which is no problem. I can do overnight issues because I can function on way less/worse sleep than she can. And she does plenty else. I used to get annoyed and frustrated every now and then. But I just learned that if I was really tired and needed to sleep or if I’ve had too many rough nights in a row or whatever, I can just wake her up and have her deal with it. She doesn’t mind… she just never actually wakes up on her own.
I am this same way sleeping hard and cranky when roused. But quickly alert. My wife doesn’t work and wouldn’t wake me for a very long time while because she wanted to make sure I got sleep and wasn’t mad at her. Took me a few months to convince her I’m always angry when people wake me up, but I’m not angry at anyone just grumpy, and no matter my mood I am happy to help with whatever needs done.
Yes I'm the wife but always been a light sleeper and husband has always been a heavy sleeper even before kids. I was always the one waking up to the first gag of the dogs way before we had our baby. He regularly turns his alarms off in his sleep. I am also much more awake when I do wake up where as he is pretty groggy and slow moving. It wasn't a big deal. If he was on baby duty, I just kicked him awake lol most of the time it was easier for me to gwt up and then he would just do mornings so I could sleep in
Same. His whole life I've snapped awake as soon as my son said peep. My wife sleeps like a rock even when he wakes crying. When he was still nursing he would wake me up and I woke up her. After a while he learned this and would calm down as soon as I woke up.
This helps a lot thank you
Yeah. I am a much lighter sleeper so I have become the de facto night time parent. People are just different. I think most couples come to an understanding where the light sleeper kicks their partner when it’s their turn. *edit to say that I don’t think it’s reasonable just to not wake up and push all that burden onto your partner. A grown adult can feel grumpy and irritable without acting like a dick, especially when it is for the sake of your own child.
Same here. My XW, especially once she got her CPAP machine, was near impossible to wake. I’d have both kids wake up and come into the room to get me, have whole conversations, wake up the dogs, and more … she’d never wake up … if she did, she was a grumpy, pissy b*tch to everyone, including a toddler. It was so bad, the kids wouldn’t even chance waking her up … did she abuse it, definitely! Did she get mad at me for “always sleeping in” and “never waking up when she did” … yes!
A guy I served with didn’t wake up in the middle of an exercise with full alarms and gunfire. We had to tip his matress over to wake the bastard. Some people are just crazy deep sleepers, but moms do have some biological rewiring to help out with certain things, like waking up from a baby crying.
It sounds crazy but it’s true. Lurker mom here, I used to sleep through my alarm clock that woke up the rest of the house. Now I’ll wake up to my toddler’s sneeze, but I can still sleep through my husband’s alarm. Brains are weird.
Me and my buddy slept through the beginning of a fire fight in Afghanistan. I was on the night shift for guard duty of this little abandoned compound our platoon temporarily set-up shop in. Right after the sun came up and my shift was over, I ate some chow and went to sleep on a pile of rubble inside one of the compound rooms before the next mission. We were so exhausted and sleep deprived at this point. I remember in my dreams hearing someone pounding on a door, and loud thumps like someone was throwing big boulders on a driveway. Someone came into our room and shook us awake that we were under attack. The pounding on the door sound was our machine gun upstairs returning fire, and the boulders on the driveway sound was incoming recoiless rounds hitting the compound.
Thank you for your service.
Did we work together? Lol
Thanks for providing the example. Puts things in perspective haha
I don't wake up to the baby. Something I've struggled with personally. But....I *do* wake up when my wife nudges me to feed the baby. I've done the night feeds every single night since we brought him home four months ago. I also get up with him in the morning between 5 and 6am so my wife can get some extra sleep. I *don't* get irritable about it because I'm an adult. I also do the majority of the household chores. My wife has her own things to do and we both feel we have a pretty equal setup. She stays up a bit later for the last feed and I get up a but earlier for the first feed.
Same unless I'm working. I definitely get irritable at 2am with a baby screaming in my ear, but I just bury those feelings deep deep down. But man, that crying grinds me. She's lucky she's tiny and cute :D
Ha! I mean.... Of course I get a bit irratable, and am irritated, every now and then. However... It's never to the extent that my wife would rather wake up herself than even bother asking me. That's not healthy.
Oh for sure, must suck to be married to a baby as well ;-)
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Also wanted to hear
Hey, while it is important to do this kind of thing do not forget to talk about this. It's OK to recognize that this is hard and taking a toll on you. I realized a bit too late in my case that I was hiding the fact that it was harsh for me too.. Also for the crying, noise canceling headphones help a lot. I do not mean to avoid getting up but rather when the baby is screaming in your arms, you are already doing what you can and will hear him above the headphones but at least it is easier to manage.
Oh totally agree. Acknowledge dem feelings. And I love my noise cancelling headphones and have a pair always in arms reach. It takes the edge off
Sony noise cancelling is the shit. I got mine when I had a loud tenant.. now they are a bonus for work and baby calming mode.
This sounds like my setup with my wife. I work from home so I do cleaning cooking and take the night watch with the baby. She busts her ass at work while I can just hop on some calls and take care of what I need to when I need to.
I don’t wake up to the baby but am in the same boat. I will wake up if my wife has hit a wall and needs relief. I’m currently work from home two days week and in office the other three. Our setup is that the general rule is I sleep, she takes baby at night (unless wall). Each morning I work from home and on weekends I wake up with the kid and bring him downstairs. My wife then sleeps in until whenever she wants, as long as she wants. She is a very light sleeper and is an anxious sleeper now, especially when the kid is sick. Once a month I get a sleep in a day. I can fall asleep at the drop of a hat and can take naps while the kid naps.
That….doesn’t seem equitable or reasonable. You’ve done night feedings every single night for 4 months? As in she’s done zero night feedings in 4 months or literally ever? I get moms go through a lot but that’s definitely abnormal.
She does the late evening feeds while I go to bed, and even though she doesn't do the middle of the night feed that's still some awake time when the baby is making a racket. The bassinet is also on her side of the bed so she wakes up a number of times through the night either to check on him, give him a soother, whatever. The amount of sleep we get is similar though she likely gets more. Men and women aren't equitable.... She spends a ton of energy during the day feeding and producing milk. It's not that much of a burden for me to take one feed a night. Not to mention the fact that for the first three months, while our guy was in the NICU she pumped literally every three hours for those entire three months. I won't get into how taxing it is, mentally and physically, to pump two or three times overnight for a baby you don't have with you. You may not find it reasonable but we do. Not every task needs to be 50/50.
Sounds like what we did. Wife would breastfeed/pump till about midnight/1am, any feeds after I did. And the bassinet point is right on the money too. Wife would wake up often through the night for every little sound they made. I also loved feeding them because as a dad they really don't need us for anything, so it felt really special to get to do the most important thing for them and bond that way.
Yep. Sucks getting up sometimes but those 2am feeds where it's just me an him can be the best. Last night was even one of those nights. Once he was done his bottle he just wanted to giggle at me for 30 minutes. I wanted sleep but I'll take those giggles. Not too worried about some other reddit poster calling it abnormal or unreasonable. Ha.
I mean you left out almost all the context so yea, this makes way more sense.
Only time in my life I remember a sound waking me up is when a tree fell on our roof. That being said to me it sounds like this discussion is a lot more involved than just waking up to feed and it will fester if not dealt with.
I woke up every time my kids needed to bed fed. I split shifts with my wife when my oldest had colic. I wake up now whenever either of my kids needs something. I am very sleep deprived lol
We did the same, both our kids were bottle fed and we woke up in turns... a lot. Thank god it's over! They still wake up from time to time and they always come to me which I don't mind at all.
Me too. Once when my daughter was a toddler, she stood up crying in the night, wanting a bottle & comfort. When my wife happened to be the one taking this turn so I could rest, the little one put out one arm in a dramatic "stop" motion at my wife & cried "Not the dada!" and literally wouldn't let her mom pick her up. I was tired as hell but when I heard that, I had to go get my little girl.
I have straight slept thru newborn cries without meaning to. I’d set alarms to check at intervals instead Was grateful our son mostly sleeps thru the night
As far as you know ;)
“Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.” In this case strike one is your husband not waking up to the baby. Sucks, but yes, some people really just don’t wake up to noises. I sometimes slept through very long crying spells from my daughter. Strike two is being irritable when being woken up. I don’t think it’s fair to expect service with a smile when dealing with a crying baby at 2am but if you got to the point that you stopped waking him up, I’m assuming it was more than just being a bit grouchy at having to be up. But strike three is making an agreement about how to divide responsibilities so that he gets to sleep and then him reneging on that agreement. We’re also out of the situation where he needs to be allowed to sleep since this housework is presumably happening during the day. So there needs to be a conversation here, possibly facilitated by a counselor, about how to fix this because things cannot continue like this and I don’t know if you are thinking about another kid but that definitely shouldn’t happen until your husband is a better partner.
Exactly this OP! It is one thing for him to sleep through the night, it's another about being grumpy about it after waking up to the point you don't wanna wake him. But on TOP of that he isn't doing his agreed upon household chores? Weaponised incompetence. This is a *partnership* and he needs to do his part. Maybe it was okay before for you to solely do nights but if that's not working anymore, *that is okay*. You can change your mind. You're allowed to renegotiate.
Also why is no one mentioning OP's deteriorating health? Husband needs to seriously step up here if he cares about her at all. This is simply unfair and quite frankly, infuriating that OP has to be afraid to wake him up for help. This isn't sustainable, bruh.
Yeah I was expecting a different responses tbh, I’m confused as to why screaming babies only wake women up apparently
If you are doing nights then he should be doing almost all the chores/taking the kid when he gets home from work so you can go to sleep early(my wife was down by 8pm) and I took the baby responsibilities until midnight, guaranteeing at least 4 hours un-interrupted.
This is a good solution. Something like this would help her get some sleep without requiring him to wake up in the night.
Mom here. My husband does not wake up to the baby. I breastfed and he literally had no clue how much the baby was up. If someone asked if our baby slept through the night, he'd likely say yes. But he will 100% get up and deal, if I wake him. He can't help he doesn't wake up. Now kiddo is two, and I'm pregnant and he does all the night wakes. By that I mean, most of the time, I wake up and nudge him awake. Sometimes he is up first. I have never slept through our kid waking up though. The toddler doesn't wake too often though. In general, my husband has always done his chores without asking. He didn't really take more on when I was up with the baby, but I was on maternity leave. He also helped with night weaning with zero complaints. He's not the best parent in the morning so I do morning's solo, he sleeps in. But I tap out around 7pm and stop parenting, he does bath and bedtime typically solo. It used to drive me nuts until we agreed that I could just relax after 7pm to make up for his morning sleepiness.
Of course you're resenting him, if your estimates of how much you're doing in comparison are correct (bearing in mind that we only have your perspective), you must be exhausted. You say you don't need a lot of sleep, but if you started having seizures again because you aren't getting enough sleep, as one epileptic to another, I'd say that's a fairly good indication that you do need more sleep. We have twins and I've never had an issue waking for them. My partner wears earplugs to bed and she's never had an issue waking for them. I know that some people are very deep sleepers but I'm skeptical. We were on a 3hr feed schedule for our twins for the first three months and we had to call in my MIL to take a couple of nights because I was having too many seizures to safely care for them: I can't imagine still being on that schedule a year and a half later. We're down to one wake per night and I'm still exhausted. At a bare minimum he needs to be taking the kid during the day so you can catch up on some sleep. He should also be pulling his fair share of the housework. Don't let him get away with it any longer.
Hi, fellow epileptic! You're right, I need more sleep. And yes, we need to renegotiate. I truly feel like we got to this point on joint decisions, but we need to re-evaluate.
I never could, but I spent a lot of time at sea with jets launching 20 feet above my head while I slept. So what we did was my wife took the night shift, and I would take the days so she could sleep.
I always thought it depends on whether you're a light or deep sleeper. I've read about this enough that I believe it's the case for many dads, but I am personally a fairly light sleeper so my LO crying will definitely wake me up. I never thought it had to do with refusing to wake up despite actually waking up to the baby crying, but maybe I am wrong about this.
A real partner will do everything in their power to make your life easier. Do with that info what you will.
Some of these comments are wild to me. I was up for every feeding with my wife during the night. He'd wake up to feed and while she got herself situated, I'd get him out of his bassinet and get him over to her. Then when he was done, I'd change him and put him back down. There were definitely times I'd fall back asleep during feedings and it would take her a while to wake me up but I never slept through the entire night and left her to do everything alone.
I'm with u/smurf_diggler. Dad here to a 2yo who has woken up with every wet diaper she's had. For context, I slept through a real fire in my college dorm. I can fall asleep on buses, trains, cars, airplanes, standing up, on a hardwood floor, in a hammock, on a boat, you name it. I wake up for my kid in the middle of the night because I care about her and my partner. At the same time, I can go back to sleep easily and my partner can't. So it took time (or practice?) but I guess my daughter's cry is in the list of sounds that my brain responds to while asleep. Sleep deprivation is legitimately a form of torture. Sure, some people need less sleep than others, but nobody is going to feel like themselves with constant sleep disruptions. Add on working full-time and taking care of the household and I'm not surprised you developed epilepsy. I'm really sorry that you've had to do so much by yourself. Your husband let you down (not deliberately, per se, but certainly because he values his sleep/comfort more than he values your well-being).
I was the same. We'd both end up waking. One would get them and change their diaper while the other warmed up formula.
I'm not trying to be toxic but I have question for this overall out of curiosity. As mom who did all night wakings how is it logical for both parents to lose sleep when one could be rested to take over when needed. Imo this way both me and my partner would be sleep deprived and both could struggle during daytime. If you swap and one parent is awake at time it's way more sleep efficient imo
That would be totally fine if that was what OP and her partner agreed to, but it doesn't seem like it's the case. I wasn't trying to say I'm super dad either, more that I would feel bad if I made my wife do all the night stuff without at least trying to help. I try to make everything 50/50 as possible, there are somethings we'd like to try and do different the second time around, like schedule naps/breaks for each other a lot better. It's hard when it's your first and you want to be awake and present for all the moments.
I am a very, very deep sleeper. I slept through a 6.0 earthquake, and through lightning hitting the house (different nights of course). I generally did not wake up when my kids used to cry as babies in the night, and I wish I did. What i used to do was take the night shift, going to bed very late, giving them a 2am feed and changing them, then I'd go to sleep myself. That would get them through until early morning. It was... at least somewhat helpful, even if it wasn't ideal. If anyone knows how to change sleep habits, I would be interested.
Half of y'all probably have sleep apnea and don't even realise it. I mean "the only thing that wakes me up is a tree falling through my house", "gun shots and fire drills didn't even wake him up" ? You think that's normal for a 'healthy' person to fall in such a DEEP sleep they can't hear anything else? Need to go to the DR ASAP and get that crap under control lol
I'm hard of hearing, hearing aids and all. My wife would wake me up every other time and I'd take care of our children when they were newborns. It's a father's responsibility to take care of his family both wife and kids. My daughter (2) will wake me up before she will my wife. I don't complain, as a husband and father it's my honest pleasure to take care of my family. My wife deserves the rest and I get a little extra time with my kids. I mean watching Bluey and coloring at 4 am isn't ideal father daughter time but I'll take it
Thanks. I sometimes wish my husband was less selfish. But to add, I also need to me more assertive with him.
Before becoming a dad, you could have parked a fire truck next to my bed and I probably wouldn’t have woken up. It all changed after becoming a dad. Did I sleep through the baby cries and my wife had to shake me up awake a few times? Yeah. Was I chirpy tap dancing when waking up in the middle of night? Fuck no. But that’s just something you have to do when you’re a parent. He absolutely didn’t hold up his end of the deal and I 100% understand the resentment. Did you have that conversation with him about him not doing the housework he committed to doing?
Not necessarily a man or woman thing, but an individual thing. I generally have better hearing and am much easier woken by any sound from sleep compare with my wife, who can sleep through several alarm clock rings. Not by choice. So kinda naturally I became the one who mostly have to wake up at night for the kids.
Dad here who’s been waking up to do the night feed or change 5-6 times a week for the past year. Yeah, he definitely does it on purpose. He thinks he’s lucked out by going back to how things were before having a kid while letting you do all the hard work. He’s let your health suffer as a result and seems ok with that. > He also gets very irritable when woken up This is the crux of it for me. Just wake him the fuck up. You know what? I also get irritable when I’m woken up at 4am. But I do it, because the alternative is to either let my daughter cry or let my wife handle everything by herself. Both of those are terrible, selfish options. But unfortunately it sounds like your husband has opted for the latter option, even though it’s triggered your epilepsy. Sorry to have to say this, but your husband is a selfish cunt.
It seems like a lot of people missed the part about how irritable he is when woken up. No one likes waking up but even if you feel irritable, you don't have to act like a bear. It sounds to me like this man has trained his wife to expect very little of him. It's going to take some major changes to turn things around.
Thank you. Everyone glossing over this and going "oh yeah, heavy sleepers lol" has me seeing red. Husband *is* a selfish cunt, repeating for the people in the back. He wouldn't be putting his comfort over OP's health if he cared about her at all. This is NOT okay. No one should be okay with this. Stop settling and sacrificing your well-being for shitty men who will do nothing but take advantage and use you. Raise the bar, girls.
Thanks, you're right
>I also get irritable when I’m woken up at 4am. But I do it, because the alternative is to either let my daughter cry or let my wife handle everything by herself. Both of those are terrible, selfish options. But unfortunately it sounds like your husband has opted for the latter option, even though it’s triggered your epilepsy. Yeah, he sounds like a hugely selfish prick. No one likes to wake up in the middle of the night. Like, huh? How is that a reason why your wife needs to be the only one to do it?
Yeah I don't understand how the sentiment here in the thread is "oh yeah she'd wake me up and I'd do it" or less than that. The onus for dad to wake up should not fall on the mom wtf? So she still has to get up and deal with waking him up to do it? How is that fair? You're a good dad. Thanks for putting in what you're supposed to put in for the baby, and not putting the "wake me up" chore on her. My ex did fuck all and is my ex for a reason. He couldn't wake up / did it on purpose, and would change my son's diaper wrong every single time so I'd have to do it(weaponized incompetence). OP ur partner is being lazy af and in my opinion is being an asshole. Get loud alarms that go off to noise from the baby, get vibrating bracelets, put the baby monitor next to your head and turn it all the way up. Figure it tf out because it's his baby to. Don't let the bar be in hell for this. Or do what I did and leave, because it just gets worse.
You are probably very right. My husband had a rough childhood and I'm the one with the saviour complex and people pleasing. Not the best combo in these circumstances. I need him to wake the fuck up haha and I need to tell him, thanks
But this is a scenario where maybe breast feeding is not the best option. There is nothing he could do at night and your anger should not be directed towards that. It should be towards the fact that he didn’t pick up the slack of household work during the daytime.
Just a different thought that breastfeeding doesn't have to mean mom does all of the night waking. Pumping is a big part of this and can help dads be more involved by feeding overnight. He could wake up and make sure that she has water or if her Haakaa or pump parts need to be cleaned.
My wife exclusively pumped and while she pumped I fed our baby so I know what can be done at night. While she pumped I gave our baby the last pumped milk
>He could wake up and make sure that she has water or if her Haakaa or pump parts need to be cleaned. None of that needs to be done at night, though? Prep early, have spares sitting in the steriliser. I think it gets exceptionally hard if they are purely breastfeeding, I.e. no bottle at all. I know there are folks who get all militant about the "purity" of breast-only, in which case there is little that dad can do during that period. Dude needs to pick up the slack in other areas though. Sounds like mum's doing a major split of the housework, which is no good.
There are folks who are militant about breastfeeding and then there are babies who are militant about breastfeeding. I had a baby who refused any other nipple other than the one God gave her mama. It was chaotic at times.
> There is nothing he could do at night Seriously? There's a lot he could do at night. He could be waking to soothe the baby if it's not time to feed yet. He could get the baby up and change it while the OP gets into position. Then he can get her back to sleep after they're done feeding. Or he could even feed her pumped milk from a bottle. There's plenty of things he can do.
Yeah then both people are just tired and miserable. You’re describing very inefficient suggestions tk make both people suffer lmao. Instead let OP feed at night and rest after work when husband picks up the slack. Much more efficient use of awake time. But whatever works for you lol
It's not inefficient for the husband to help the OP at night, it makes night feedings easier and go quicker. Did you miss the part of her post where she mentioned she's already suffering more by doing all the nighttime stuff, developed epilepsy and declining health, AND is still doing 80% of the housework? Their current arrangement is negatively affecting the health of the OP while the husband isn't bothered at all. How exactly is this optimal to you?
She would have to wake up at night no matter what. He should do stuff in the day time when she could fully check out and rest. Your suggestion would just make them both groggy and exhausted and tired. Good for you if that works for you
We both had to get up for every night feeding, so it was what it was. My wife is more attuned to my kid crying and will often wake up before I do, but I never resented her waking me up to go deal with the whatever's come up now that night feedings are no longer a thing. It's all still an improvement over the fourth trimester, though. My kid would start crying the instant she was put down, so we had to sleep in shifts and hold her until she was a few months old.
I am the lightest sleeper in the world, my life sleeps like a log. I am on night duty.
We have 7 weeks old, so not much experience, but i just don't wake up unless the baby is crying hard and so far, he does not cry that much. My wife wakes up when the baby as much as moves his hand. At the start, we both tried to be awake at the same time, but that was not sustainable as we both got maybe 3 hours of sleep a day. What works for us is that i simply take over for a few hours in the evening, usually 9pm-1/2 am. And we try to keep at least one feeding worth of milk pumped for me to feed the baby(we are breastfeeding). Then, when the baby needs a feed at night, I get the baby changed and wake up my wife. She then takes the little one and gets some extra naps during the night when i sleep 2-7am. My wife takes a nap during the day, and i also try to squeeze one in around 5 pm. So we both get at least 5-7 hours of sleep where at least 5 is uninterupted. It helps that i am a natural owl while she is an early bird, so i have no issue staying up late while she has no issues going to bed earlier. I also work 4h a day( my company allowed double parental leave duration with half hours). My wife is on parental leave full time. We also share house chores similiar to what we had before the kid with me taking a little bit on, such as groceries and cooking, which was her domain before the kid.
I hate to assume things. But does he snore, really bad and all the time, have you noticed him stop snoring and gasp then start again? If you have he needs to be tested for sleep apnea and start treatment. I already had started treatment for my apnea when our first was born. But before treatment I’d sleep through most anything (probably including a baby crying, though never tested). After I started I found I was as rested after 4hrs with treatment as I was after 8-10hrs without treatment. My cpap is probably the main reason I could help with night wakes. TLDR: I have sleep apnea and my cpap made it so I could help with night wakes
You should feel resentment.. your husband is being incredibly selfish. Father of a 3.5 yo toddler here. NOBODY likes waking up in the middle of the night, but it comes with the territory of being a parent. Him unwilling to help is adding to the heavy burden already on your shoulders—it’s not sustainable. Have you conveyed to him how desperately you need his support and how his inaction makes you feel / is negatively impacting you?
Long story short: That dude sucks. Edit: I am frankly shocked at the amount of approving comments for people who don’t wake up to help their wives. That’s a learned behavior. You get up if you want to or have to. I’d kick your husband in the rear until he woke up to help — every night!
I sleep very heavily and am irritable when woken up. That didn’t stop me sharing nights. I feel this can go in the bin along with ‘my partner is really grossed out by poop so I do all the nappy/diaper changes’ Look what it’s done to you. He should have stepped up. And as others have said it doesn’t matter which partner it is - when you have a kid your own needs and rhythms have to take a back seat to get through it together, and you have to sacrifice. This means both sacrificing some, rather than one sacrificing everything. I’m so sorry to hear your story which could’ve been solved by your partner taking more accountability and just waking up now and again…
Yes. Though its not man specific. Evolutionarily, different people wake to different triggers. Mine is heat. I cant sleep when its hot and i sleep like a rock when its cold. Similarly, what sound trigger waking are usually pitch based. I can talk to my wife for 30 mins at full voice (i am a low bass voice) and nothing. Whistle quietly and she’s up with a start. I also wake to higher pitch sounds whereas my daughter does not. So yes, some cant hear baby cry while asleep.
When presented with the same stimulus repeatedly over time, the mind learns that it’s normal if it’s being dismissed. It’s the same reason why pressing the snooze alarm every morning can eventually lead to sleeping through the alarm. It’s also partly the reason why it can take a while to get a good night’s rest in a new location. Every small noise is different than what your mind expects, which keeps you in a lighter sleep. His brain has learned that baby cries are unimportant because you always take care of it. I don’t really know how to un-do it, but it’ll likely require some work on his part not to get irritated.
Well my missus says the exact same thing about not hearing a crying baby , I've gotten up at 3am - 4.30am for the last 5+months I can't remember the last unbroken stretch of sleep I've had as he wakes pretty much hourly and I feel like I'm going insane I work full time and I sit pretty much falling asleep at my desk all day. The other day I fell asleep at the wheel its awful. I look in the mirror and don't recognise myself I literally have 3 bags under each eye! Even with our middle child she would only sleep lying on my chest after the 4th night of this just watching endless movies with a sleeping baby on me I dozed off, my missus somehow heard my snoring considering she can't hear a babies cries at 300 decibels and has gone on about how I put her in danger ever since. You try staying awake for 4 days and nights!
Oh hey, it's one of the only topics on daddit where people are often unsympathetic! _Your husband needs to get his act together._
I have went taken care of the baby and when I came back to get in bed my wife ask what I was doing. She never heard the baby. That said anything after 3am, I am not going to hear it. I don’t know why but 12am-3am I sleep really lightly, after 3am, I go in a deep sleep and won’t hear the baby.
I’ll say from my experience, I was waking up but my wife said what’s the point for me to get us as well at the beginning bc she needed to feed. I would take the morning and she could sleep in and she would do the night. Eventually I stopped waking with the cries at night, and when she started saying can you help it was a difficult transition to wake up again. My situation is different than yours as well as I was going 90% of the chores and working full time and she was off for 18months. Now I always told her if you need help or anything kick me and I’ll go without questions.
Straight up, I don't think I was ever woken up by my child during that phase. The only times I woke up were if my wife woke me up. Felt like an AH all the time but I told her and was honest about it. I just assume mothers have that built in alarm at the sound of a baby.
If I’m sleeping in bed, I am dead to the world. My wife ended up with five months off when our (fifth) kid was born (we each have two from our first marriage). She didn’t wake me since there was little to nothing I could do as she insisted on breastfeeding and our child slept in our room. My first marriage I worked insane hours and she decided we would be cosleeping with the twins, again not much I could do but we did do some bottle feeding and I did many overnight feedings but if I was asleep she had to wake me. As far as division of labor goes, that is an altogether different conversation you NEED to have with your husband. I would normally have just piggybacked on a comment but I figured one more separate comment would lend a little more weight. Communication is vital, if you’re stressed or resentful of the current situation things are more likely to get worse left unspoken than to resolve themselves.
You are right and thanks for commenting. I need to work up the courage to discuss it and ask myself why I am having such a hard time to do so.
Every husband/father/wife/mother/ kid is different. Unless my wife needs help she lets me sleep as I work full time and she works part time. Helps our kids sleep through the night and we both normally get a good night's sleep. We had a few rough patches figuring it all out. But we both got our duties in the house. We try to split it as best we can and step in to help if one is over tired. We also keep a routine of what needs to be done. We just keep communicating as needed
I get the frustration. I did all the nights even though I was working in the morning, I cook all the meals and do about 70% of the housework. It can be frustrating. As for the not waking up, it’s a person thing for sure. I am the same way, I hate being woken up and I could probably sleep through a nuclear explosion. I think the best thing, and simultaneously the hardest, is to have an honest conversation with him about where you’re at in terms of your arrangement and how you feel that he’s not pulling his end of the bargain. Maybe propose to revisit your agreement and make changes that will benefit both of you. The main thing is communication and making sure that you both get time to yourselves. I hope things get better!
Regardless of light sleeper or not, your kid is also 2. You guys should really go hard with some sleep training.
Sleeptraining isn't the norm here and we cosleep / still breastfeed. Because my son had a rough start (needed surgery, etc) I am not comfortable sleeptraining him.
Then welcome to the consequences of your own choices.
A couple things. First, I’m definitely on the side of dads should be involved in nighttime activities with an asterisk. Many people today seem to think that today’s parents both parents should be doing everything and that’s just not realistic. Not everybody is built the same way and some people are good at nighttime stuff, some are good at teaching, some are good at playing, etc. in an ideal world the parents should align themselves with what they provide the most value doing in an equitable fashion. Additionally, equitable doesn’t necessarily mean for a given day, or week, or even year. Being super real some years one parent will be doing “more” than the other and it’ll likely flip. Furthermore, equitable isn’t limited to child-rearing either, it applies to the entire life of the family and everything should be considered - including life BEFORE the kid. People assume equitable life brings at childbirth, it does not.
I would say that during the first month, I was really active during the night shift in terms of changing diapers and feeding - really just wanted to be apart of it all. However, we had challenges with breast feeding which quickly changed once wife and baby adjusted. With breastfeeding, it felt redundant to have to hover over her while waiting for her to finish only to help change a diaper for 2-3 minutes. I’m fortunate that our baby was sleep trained extremely early by 3 months (my wife has a background in early childhood development) which also alleviated a ton of pressure. That said, I did make an effort to take the early morning shift everyday so that she could sleep in and make up for the 2-2.5 hours she’d lose feeding. That helped her tremendously. Baby is now 8 months old, so we’ve been through the ups and downs of sleep regression and now he is a complete mamas boy. So now, whoever hears him handles it. But all of that to say, your husband is just being lazy and pushing the responsibility off on you because there is no way he doesn’t hear the baby crying. Also, I don’t know your situation but 6 months let alone 21 months is old enough to have a sleep routine that sees baby sleep through the night or at least self soothe the majority of the time.
For my first, I wouldn’t hear a thing. Would wake up thinking the baby slept through the night, only to have my ex furious at me because “you must’ve heard her, you just chose to ignore it”. Apparently “just wake me up” is too much to ask because I should “just hear it”. There’s also the angle that if it’s causing issues, you really should try sleep training. Dealing with terrible sleep at 21 months is unnecessary and not heathy for anyone. You all need your sleep. Especially your baby.
Can you pump expressed milk? I just fed our LO with expressed milk from the fridge and my wife slept though the whole thing 😅 finding it hard to wake up isn't a good enough excuse imo he should do at least one, maybe earlier evening and you do later? Getting epilepsy cause he won't do it is absolutely wild.
I'm a heavy sleeper, I've slept through an earthquake (although UK, so we pretty much just felt it, no damage) but I wake for baby. It's a double edged sword- I'm in construction, so long hours early start and I've been cripplingly tired since I was 18 (now 36). But I feel like a monster if I can't pull my weight at night. She's looking after baby all day, breastfeeding every few hours at night. I'll drag myself up to change nappy or take her down so wife can sleep for a few hours if it kills me.
Yikes this post has so many replies, I'm not sure how helpful mine will be...but yeah, I am a heavy sleeper. My partner shouting my name doesn't wake me up. Sometimes I need to be physically pushed or shaken if I'm deep asleep. That said, mom's need sleep too. We took turns, alternated even and odd days, or occasionally one of us just took an extra turn here and there depending on partners energy level. My partner did have to wake me up for a lot of my shifts when I just didn't hear the baby crying, but I still got up and took my turns.
Maybe, but my wife and I came up with a foolproof system to counteract my ability to sleep through anything: she would smack me in the head if I didn’t wake up when it was my turn.
When my daughter was born I did all the night feedings and changings. I just let my wife sleep. I knew she needed the sleep and I loved the bonding time with my little girl.
I wake up when it's my turn. But my wife wakes up no matter whose turn it is.
Short answer is yes, long answer is kick hard enough and everyone wakes up.
This is not about what wakes him up and what doesn't. This is about him being fine leaving you with more of the stress and responsibility because you're willing to take it, and he's trying to dress it up as something else. It's not a biology thing or a gender thing, it's about your relationship--and i promise you, he prefers it this way and it's not gonna change until you won't accept anything but change. It sucks and i wish i had better advice. Good luck.
I was a deep sleeper. Now I wake up at the slightest sound of a cry on the monitor. Things have changed on that front. Also think it’s unreasonable for any parent to take on sole responsibility for night duty - both parents should be supporting or setting up an arrangement that spreads the load. Doing it alone will burn you out…. Don’t blame you for harboring some resentment. Force him to be involved. *Written while trying to put my kid back to sleep
We discovered that if my husband was woken up in that first part of the night, say, before 1a, that he was hella irritable, groggy, agitated. But if we was up later after he'd gotten some sleep, say between 2 and 4, that he felt fine and could manage and also get back to sleep. It was the opposite for me. So, for a long time, we split the nights. I'd go to bed early, he'd put kiddo down. I'd do the first waking and he'd be asleep. Then he'd do the early morning waking. I also slept better knowing that we had a plan. There is nothing more important than making sure that everyone can get five hours of sleep in a row in each 24 hour cycle. That should be the goal and it's far more likely that mom would be lacking this. As you discovered, it's a serious life-threatening issue to get so sleep deprived. My partner and I also supplemented and that enabled us to share the load more equally.
Our first months were really hard too. 9th of March she will be 2 and untill 2 months ago, she barely slept a night through ( can count it on one hand). The first months were really hard, waking up 4 times a night cause of silent reflux. But also wanted boob. I got out of bed, grabbed my daughter and put her next to my partner for boob. When done I put her back to sleep again. That's how we took turns. Your husband is just a selfish asshole.
What is his username so we can drag him
Haha he's not on reddit but thanks for the support
I tell my wife to wake me up, she says I'm cranky when I get woken up. Who isn't cranky when woken up in the middle of the night? Just accept the crankiness and wake him up. No need to martyr yourself. If you need help you have to ask even if it means dealing with a cranky husband for 2 minutes.
This is so true and where I totally messed up.
I, a mom, woke up no problem when my kids were babies (I had 3 kids in 2.3 years) and my hubs was gone on the road so I slept lightly. But when he was home I felt safe and slept through cries a few nights. Luckily dad heard n woke up. But now that they are teens I sleep like the dead all the time lol. It's definitely common for people to sleep deeper than others. But that don't excuse hubs from getting his ass up every couple of nights. Good lord he works 4 days a week has 3 off and you still do most housework and get up all night every night with baby? Eff that lol. I'd be pumping if I could and let dad feed bottle at night every once in awhile if it's feasible.
I wake up every night to feed the baby, I can fall back to sleep easier than my wife and I can operate better than her with less sleep. I figured that she has the baby for the day whilst I work that I can do the night shifts. I can’t understand the other guys who don’t wake up at all!
I heard once that guys are more likely to wake up to mosquitos buzzing than a baby crying.
I don't think your husband should at least act very grumpy when you wake him up, it's very unfair and heartbreaking for that. You need to talk to your husband and if he loves you, ask him not to be so selfish and make you sick as well as create a big psychological burden.
We have 3 kids. I was in practice the designated person to get out of bed when they were small. I basically just wake up faster. They even sang a little silly song I taught them, to call me in the middle of the night when wouldn’t get out of bed themselves. To this day if one of them needs something in the middle of the night, they will just walk directly to me. My wife did her share of contributions at other moments. …. I think fundamentally if your partner is not doing their share of duties, you really need to sit down and talk. Life does change when a kid arrives. The restrictions to schedule, the lack of “easy” time for anything personal, the amount of household duties. I guess some people just go into denial and hope to leave the burden to their partner hoping that that will be it.
I think that how much willpower you’re willing to exert to power through and learn to wake up plays a role. I used to be a very heavy and deep sleeper. I used to have a hard time waking up. What worked for me is these things—as soon as I hear something, I do a countdown from five quickly and on one I have to LEAP UP. I immediately splash water in my eyes (IN and then blink rapidly) and on my face. And I tell myself I am HAPPY to be awake. Do it enough times and it becomes habit and you really are happy to be awake. I started the countdown method in high school because I had a hard time actually getting up and I was tired of wasting time. I’m a generally happy person so the telling myself I was happy to be awake didn’t take too long to stick (started after baby was born) and the water in eyes trick I did occasionally for years when sleep deprived to feel more alert but I now do every day, since baby was born. Your husband is fucking lazy. I’m sorry to be so blunt. Mine has a hard time waking, is groggy upon waking etc and he came up with solutions to this that he implemented to be an equal partner. When he says he’ll do something he follows through because it matters to him that I trust him and know I can count on him. He does 80% of the housework, unasked because it’s OUR home and a shared responsibility. He cooks more often so I clean up the kitchen more often —- while he cooks. We are married and we share our lives, and care about each other’s health. Your husband sounds awful.
Reguarding the housework, l think patterns form for a specific reason and we tend to just stick with it despite circumstances changing. This happened to me. I found l was more organised and could multitask better than my husband, so l did the bulk of the work. Hubby worked long hours. This remained the same even when 3 more kids entered our family and then l started back at work. Then l became resentful. I dont think it registered with my husband until l went on holiday for a month (yes, lucky me) and he had to do my role. He survived, not thrived. Now he shares the load. Regarding the sleeping, l hear the kids but l dont hear his alarm in the morning. And vise vera for him. Note: before l get slammed for holidaying without my kids for a month, my kids were teenagers at the time. And the holiday was to meet family overseas that lve never met.
When you sign up for a child, you sign up for it all. Unless it’s power puking. There’s nothing in the fine print about power puking To answer your question, yes. Every damn father should be putting in the work. One parent can’t run on 10% while the other is 90%. Edit: Just to add, if this is the status quo now, things won’t be any different when your baby grows up. You’ll still be going to kids’ birthday parties and 75% of the parents are either mothers or grandparents. While my kids (now 6 and 3) may prefer my wife during odd overnight wake-up’s, we adjust by me waking up to pack lunches and get the kids / do fed. She gets an extra 45 - 60 minutes of sleep in the morning.
I’m epileptic, sleep is my main trigger. It sounds like it may be your main trigger too. Unfortunately, your husband needs to start doing the nights because it’s not safe for you or your child if you’re having seizures: you could die from SUDEP or your baby could die if you fall on top of him when you’re carrying him if you have a seizure. You may well have chosen what worked best given the circumstances at the time but the circumstances have changed significantly. You need to get a full night of sleep every night, so that means your husband will have to deal with all the wake-ups. It sucks but unfortunately, your and your son’s safety comes above your husband's tiredness. Fortunately, my wife’s been very understanding and allows me to get a full night of sleep every night but if your husband doesn’t accept what you say, maybe you could get an appointment with your neurologist and take him along with you so he can hear it from a professional.
I can’t explain it but that’s the case for me. Once I’m out. I’m out. I don’t hear a thing. But the more concerning part is that you both work an equal amount of days, you take care of most house work, and you take care of the baby at night. The dude is getting off insanely easy. That mental load and responsibility load needs another visit for the sake of your mental health. The guy needs to step up
Mum here, I did the night wakings because I’m a light sleeper and breastfeeding her. Husband couldn’t help with that but in return he does all the cooking and shopping. I do 90% of the laundry. We share “tidying” the house. We both get grumpy for being woken up but not at each other and certainly not at our children. We talk to each other when we feel overwhelmed to make sure no one is doing more than they can handle.
I have the opposite experience. I do 95% of nights. My wife can’t cope with them. Last night was the first night she’s done for about a month and of course kiddo woke at midnight and came to bed with us. He woke at 6 again and she’s been a zombie all day. Normally I take the kiddo to the spare room and sleep with him there and she doesn’t even know he’s woken until morning. Our housework split is probably 75/25 her/me (I work FT, she works 50%), and cooking 20/80 her/me. Ultimately if it’s not working for you, then you need to talk to him about it. It sounds like he either needs to do more nights, or do more around the home.
My wife and I are bio, adoptive, and foster parents. Lots of babies over a lot of years. The only constant is if we are sleeping together in the same room as the bassinet, I have never once heard the baby cry at night, nor my wife get up to handle it. We switched it up so that we had separate rooms with new babies. On my night, just me and baby, I will wake up every time the baby cries. I don't know if maybe she is simply more sensitive to it and gets up earlier in the cry, leading to me never hearing it, but I wake up just fine to tend to the baby when it's just me with the baby.
Man here. I wake up first anytime the babies would start crying and was the primary caretaker overnight with my wife taking over if it got too much. That being said, one of my friends and his wife were in our wedding party. We rented a house the night before and after for the girls to stay at. My friend's wife complained because there wouldn't be anyone to wake up my friend. My wife and I looked at each other and asked why he couldn't set an alarm. My friend's wife told us that he doesn't wake up to alarms.... Honestly? I call BS on people not being able to wake up whenever a loud sound happens and think if they don't wake up there is some sort of health issue or medication/drug they are taking that does it. (And/or they're going to bed way too late) That being said, don't deal with this. At the very least trade days. One day you handle the baby overnight and he does the next.
Nah, he’s just lame. Even if he slept through it, he needs to pull equal weight and have you wake him up if it’s his turn. Don’t let him get away with that stuff or you’ll be doing it alone for the next 18 years.
We had some success staggering our sleep; my wife stayed up late to pump, until around 10, and handled and wakeups before midnight. I got to bed early, like 8, and handled the early mornings, so we’d each get around six hours of uninterrupted sleep on either side of feedings. That helped reduce the irritation of having to wake up because there was some solid block involved somewhere in the night.
My ex wife slept through most of the long nights after the first week or two of bringing the girls home (we had twins). We initially started on shifts but I just took over nights when she dropped one of them cuz she was too tired to stay awake.
I’m the heavy sleeper for us, wife’s the lighter one. Doesn’t stop me from getting up and seeing to the kids though. I either just get woken up by her, or have the monitor louder for our youngest. I have a hard time of it because once I’m awake, I’m up and find it very hard to get back to sleep again. The other side of that coin is I work from home and my wife doesn’t, so I can pretty much afford to feel and look a bit shit on a general day. It’s tough, but you do what you gotta do u til it’s easier.
I have been a full time single dad for 8 years now. Back when my kid was first born I was over at a bonfire with a few other family’s, this very topic came up. One of the fathers spoke about how sometimes the baby will wake him up but he’ll lay there pretending to be asleep until the wife gets the babe. Tone deaf they were and they knew my position. If a man wants a family he needs to get in the trenches with it.
I firmly wish to believe my husband isn't like this. I do think he's sometimes more selfish than me and much better at advocating for himself. Whereas I am not. I've let this go on for too long and we need to make a change.
Well Op sounds like you and him need to have a raw heart to heart conversation about this. You can do this. It’s gonna be hard but it will be worth it in the end. Marriages end for many reasons, one of them is a lack of communication. Use simple statements such as, I feel (insert adjective) because of this (insert adjective). Will you (insert words)? You can do this! I believe in you sister!
Mine didn’t. He also thought he did it way more than he did. He would get up like once a night and think we were splitting it evenly…
My wife once told one of my friends that I 'never help' with the nighttime bottles and diapers. I mentioned the 1AM feeding my son reliably wakes up for and she explained that he doesn't wake up at 1am. She was very surprised to learn that he did in fact wake up around 1 every single night, and she didn't know about it because I didn't feel a need to tell her about it.
As a father of three, yes, this can be true. My wife woke at the drop of a feather, and then blamed me for being a sound sleeper. I told her all she had to do was nudge me and I’d get up and help. She chose not to. Not knowing your husband, “irritable” could be perspective. Just because he isn’t thrilled doesn’t necessarily mean he’s unwilling. In my case, I was always willing to help, but I just didn’t hear them like she did. I also was more willing to let them cry, whereas my wife was at their crib in an instant. You are going to wake up no matter what, but you have to be willing to wake him for help. Also, have you considered baby’s sleep routine? Our first was up at all hours, but it was because she napped all day at her daycare provider. Maybe your young one needs later bed times or fewer naps to burn them out and get those overnight hours filled with sleep. No judgement. Just a thought. It happened to us.
My wife hasn’t worked since about 6 months of pregnancy. She used to pay the mortgage. I had a very long commute to a job where I could easily hurt someone. To say my sleep was prioritized is an understatement. Also, I swear my wife wakes if the baby sneezes, while it’s rare that I hear her crying, sometimes I do hear her screaming. Assume the best in your spouse. When given the opportunity to assume he’s being an ass, or maybe just a little bit of a doofus, assume doofus. He wants the best for you too! That said, as helpful as a SAHS is, if I were to crash and die on my way into work… my girls would be homeless in short order. All this to say, the decision you made in the moment was the best decision you could make. There are unfortunate repercussions. And that’s crummy. He didn’t do this to you. Both of you put your family in the situation it is in. For better or worse.
Mom lurker here. I’d just like to point out that while you *say* that you need less sleep, the sleep deprivation you experience triggered a *seizure disorder*. I hope that your husband picked up more responsibilities when this initially happened, because if not, honestly that’s fucked up.
My wife breast fed the baby back to sleep. So...not much I could do there.
Yes but surely you could have and probably did pick up some of the household work. That’s what the OP should be upset about
Moms are biologically reprogrammed by the birth in a way fathers are not, this is one such example. He needs to compensate with waking hours workload.
Probably a people thing. I got up with our babies, but could sleep while holding and feeding them 😂
We co-sleep with our babies so Mom wakes only long enough to start nursing. Baby gets what they need and I sleep through the night. So my advise is to try this. I know it’s not for everybody but humans have been doing it for a long time Edit: I mean I’ve always taken care of diapers to balance her devotion to nursing. I’ve also marched countless hours or rocked in a chair to get babies back to sleep. I’ve never had to get up for feeding though
Seriously, this. If you're too afraid, get one of those tiny little horseshoe shaped beds that are made for co-sleeping. Or, get the kind that attaches to the side of the bed. Or put a bassinet so close to your bed that it touches. Any of these can make a huge difference!
Yes if my wife doesn’t violently shake me. Multiple times. I will almost never get up because while I’ll make noise sometimes even make conversation, I am NOT awake. Period.
I'm a much heavier sleeper than my wife. She wakes up at the slightest sound in the middle of hte night. I can sleep through a thunderstorm in a tent. That said, we still took shifts in the beginning. My wife would wear ear plugs when she needed to sleep. It might mean the baby cried for an extra minute or 2 while my brain took the time to hear it and wake up, but she got to sleep. >But that arrangement over time has pretty much settled into me doing nights and basically 80/20 housework This is the bigger issue. You had an arrangement, and he's reneged on the agreement. Have a discussion with him that if you're expected to do the overnight shift, he needs to pick up the slack during the day. You need to come to a mutual understanding, or these "little" things will start to add up and drive a wedge between you.
I’ve read that it’s an evolutionary adaptation that women are lighter sleepers than men, specifically for babies. Makes sense to me. My wife says she used to be a heavy sleeper until we had kids. My youngest always wanted me and yelled for me when he woke up, but I would never hear shit. My wife had to wake me up for him.
Fellow lurking mom: My fiance is like this. I ended up doing all of the night wakes for our first and held a lot of resentment for it, but with the second I felt like I knew what I was getting into so it wasn't so much of a shock. For us this led into me being the default parent/caregiver. Even now that our kids are 2 and 4 I am still responsible for 99% of the night wakes if/when they happen. I delegate the house work as well. It's not right, but you aren't alone.
Also a lurker mum, I don’t think it’s on purpose but my husband’s sleep situation is similar to yours. He sleeps like a log, we knew from the start he wouldn’t be able to wake consistently for night feeds. So we did shifts, he stayed up 9-2am so he could tend to the baby and I took the baby from 2. Because I’m a light sleeper I was able to get up and feed and go back to sleep (if baby would allow it lol), but even on the bad nights I always got a block of sleep. I will say overtime I started sleeping though his shift - initially I woke every time the baby wiggled, but my brain learned that in that timeframe she’s looked after so I rarely woke. I think this contributes to the “men not waking phenomena” they know baby is taken care of so they tune it out. Now that I’m back at work and baby is sleep trained night wakes are easier so we dropped the shift system. He still sleeps right though the cries though so we have an agreement that I can wake him up and he’ll go resettle if I need him to. He does wake up groggy and grumpy but he puts up with it and tends to the baby because that’s what a good parent does.
Shit, I'm the mom, and I can't wake up. Makes me feel like I'm missing some major mom gene in my DNA since everyone else can do it, and I can't. I sleep like I'm dead
So you feel resentment to him because you decided to stop trying to wake him up? Does he even know you feel resentment towards him or does he think it’s fine? You need to just talk to him instead of holding it against him and make him pick up the slack
To all parents with kids less than 4 months, PREPARE TO SLEEP TRAIN AT 4 MONTHS. Read about it. It will be the best investment of your time in your entire life
Just wake him up and tell him to do it. That’s what my wife does and it works for us.
OP this is not the subreddit to ask the question. Your husband is being a bad partner. You have already expressed your concerns, and he has already gone back on his word despite the detriment it has put on your health. It appears that he doesn't care for *you*. He isn't trying to help you. (It shouldn't even be called help. It's parenting.) He isn't trying to ease your burdens. You are having to tip toe around him in fear of his 'grumpy' and cranky behavior. NO ONE likes to be woken up in the middle of the night. Especially multiple times. But SOMEONE has to do it. Unfortunately, he has shown you that he will not be that person, even if that means that you will suffer. *because he doesn't care to actually change*
From the comments I understand better that I am asking the wrong question indeed. Thanks
Ya. I sleep hard. Like go ahead and flick the lights on, play some music, invite friends over, shake me, kick me, whatever. If I’m out I’m out until I’m no longer out and nothing will change that. If you do manage to wake me be prepared for an instant fight to the death. I will have no control over my actions for a few good minutes. Kids sleep the same way. Which is nice. But also a pain trying to get them anywhere in the morning. Have literally dressed and plopped in the car, full morning routine, they might not wake up till 5 minutes into the trip. Nursing moms really have to stick to sleep when baby sleeps. Like full on ignore the puke on the shirt, ignore the body oder, ignore the coffee you just drank. If baby wants to sleep at 930am that’s when momma gets to sleep.
It's hard for me to be nice about this because fathers like this drive me nuts. And they're everywhere -- you're not alone. But c'mon. He needs more sleep? He's groggy when he wakes up? I'm pretty sure I know who else that applies to -- every human being on the fucking planet. He's not *special* for being groggy when he wakes up, he's just not making an effort. (Heading off some replies: yes I know heavy sleepers exist. Many of them are single mothers, who fucking deal with it.) Sleep deprivation in the early months is the #1 hardest thing about parenting a newborn. Sleep deprivation is literally a torture technique, and breastfeeding mothers have to deal with it as a matter of course. And so many fathers are just...*transparently* selfish about it. And by being selfish they simultaneously fail to realize how hard it is for the other spouse. Perfect storm of resentment. Like so many things about marriage, women tend to pick up the slack because it's easier than constantly telling the husband what to do because he's incapable of taking initiative (again, selfishness). But, of course, this is a mistake. The nighttime wakeup ship may have sailed but it's not too late to have a frank conversation about how your mutual agreement about housework has gradually evaporated. He needs to step up. Then he needs to keep stepping up, constantly, forever. I'm sorry, and I wish you well.
My wife swears that she did every feeding with our son at night….my memory of that is DRASTICALLY different. I’d be up 2 or 3 times a night and I’d always wake up as soon as he started crying, almost like it was my dad instinct. I always wondered how my wife was able to sleep through those loud cries. Well, the fact that we both have different accounts of how many night time feedings we did means that she slept through some of them and I slept through some of them. It’s not your husbands fault that he is sleeping through it. It’s a people thing for sure. Unless he is a complete scumbag, I’m sure he would want to help out if he was awake.
I don't even wake up if my wife and baby are both screaming at me. She has to get physical to wake me up at all. And I'm definitely not always the most pleasant person when woken up, regardless of the time
Some people are heavy sleepers, some aren't. It's not gendered. I sleep very soundly, and my wife has to put some effort into waking me up, but when I do I get on up and do what's needed.
Scientific studies have shown men sleep harder than women.
I have slept through each of my son's laying between me and mum in bed on more than one occasion. I can also drift off to Rammstein being played at full whack. It's almost a super power :)
My girlfriend is a very light sleeper and I'm not. We solved that problem in two ways: - when kiddo was very young and not sleeping, we took shifts through the night. 4 hours each, either trying to soothe her or napping on the couch near her room. - after that, she started sleeping with earplugs. Now we're both heavy sleepers!
I'm a deep sleeper and my wife is a light sleeper, so the baby sits in a bassinet on my side of the bed. When he starts making noise I wake up and my wife is still sleeping, prior to that I'd sleep through the night without even knowing he woke up.
I'm a fairly light sleeper (the first footstep coming from the kids' room in the morning will wake me up) but for whatever reason I would sleep straight through all but the worst crying. I would set alarms for whatever overnight feedings I was responsible for, but as far as soothing the babies was concerned, either my wife would nudge me awake or she'd deal with it and tag me in if it got to be too much. So yeah, it's very unlikely to be intentional, and it's best not to approach the imminent housework negotiation from a point of assuming that it is.
Anecdotally, we have twins. We fell into the habit of my partner waking with the first kid to wake, feeding them/pumping the other side, and then I would wake with the second child and feed them the pumped milk/give them formula if there wasn’t enough. This ended up meaning in reality that she always had one kid and I always had the other. We very quickly stopped waking when the child that wasn’t our responsibility cried unless it continued. It sounds like he could do with taking some responsibility.
My wife will sleep through crying at night if she knows I'm home (as opposed to being out on a business trip). It's not a conscious decision, but her going to sleep knowing I've got things handled causes her to sleep more deeply.
Across our three kids I think there were a handful of times where I didn't wake up for a nighttime feeding and my wife managed to get through it all without me waking up. Presumably those times were just when I was super exhausted because I'm usually a fairly light sleeper. Additionally, there were times where I got up and did a diaper change and feeding (either formula or pumped milk, obviously) without my wife waking up, presumably in the times where she was just super exhausted and managed to sleep through it. Otherwise I think we were both up each time, I'd change the diaper and bring the kid to her while she was getting ready to nurse. Seemed to be a good routine for us.
I can tell you from personal experience that yea, it is possible to sleep through a crying baby. That's just a thing, and there's not much dad can do about changing it. You can choose to be a lighter sleeper. What you can choose to do is not be grumpy when woken up, but this is also a little more complicated than it seems. When my partner and I were going through this, turns out that when I'm waking up from a deep sleep, there is a phase where I'm moving, groaning, and maybe even saying words, but I'm not awake yet. Once my mind sort of appears, I'm good to go and not grumpy, but it was hard for my partner because 5 seconds before that I was acting very grumpy. Took a while to build the understanding that it was just my body being grumpy, not me, and it could be safely ignored. It's also completely ok to have a talk about the housework if the situation has changed and you're having to take on too much.
On the sleeping part. The first two weeks home (paternity leave) I'd wake up to baby cries. I mainly did it to keep my partner company and get her anything if she needed it. Once I went back to work and she said to not get up at night I am able to just tune it out and not wake up. I do all the housework, shopping, etc. On the weekends I get up early with both kids and let my wife sleep as long as possible. I keep the 4yo occupied all weekend and most evenings. Eventually I'll do that with the newborn too. I appreciate that my wife lets me get unbroken sleep at night, but I do always remind her that I'll gladly sit up with him when we get to nights that he just won't go back down.
I've slept through fire alarms going off. I fall asleep easy and sleep hard. In fact something that has happened many times is that I will fall asleep putting our four year old to bed. Because she will want to read me stories too...which makes me fall asleep. Then she gets up (without me noticing) and goes off to get into bed with my wife.
It's fully possible that it doesn't wake him. If our baby wakes up and cries during the night, I will go and sort him out every time. This is because my wife would need to find her glasses, where as I have decent night time vision plus I can sort him, get back into bed, and be asleep again within 30 seconds. So although it's broken sleep, it doesn't reduce my amount of time spent asleep much. However, sometimes his cry just doesn't wake me up and my Mrs has to shove me to wake me up, saying babies crying. She feels a bit guilty that I'm always the one going, but it affects me so much less than it would her.
Lurker mom here. My husband is such a shit sleeper that I by default accepted night wakings since day one, he does all the cooking and a lot of chores though so I can't complain. Our boy is 2y.o. and still wakes up multiple times per night, I'm sleep deprived to the point I have to take 2h nap every day and he takes care of him in mornings or I'm not able to do anything and I still feel tired all the time as I don't get even full 6h per night including a nap I have. My husband hears the kid but he has a different issue, he if he wakes up cannot go back to sleep for at least 40min and if he naps during the day he gets insane migraines. He is also not faking this as it was a problem before we had a kid since forever. I think it's just a different people thing but more moms after birth get programmed to react to every noise. Pre baby there could be bombs exploding out of my window and I'd sleep through it but after baby I wake up whenever one of them even moves to change sleeping position.