# Advice on a little situation?



## tobio (Nov 30, 2010)

Wanted to get some male advice about a little situation that has been bothering me. I posted about this previously on one of the other boards but wanted to get specifically male thoughts.

I am a stay at home mum, and OH works full time with early starts during the week in a physical job. We have a four-month-old baby who is still waking in the night and currently goes to bed around 8.30pm/9pm-ish, but can be later if he's feeling tetchy/poorly (he's poorly at the mo and didn't go to sleep until 11.30pm last night.) I take care of baby's bedtimes and always do the night wakes/feeds as he is breastfed.

We found we would both be tired at the weekend and after ages of falling out over who would get up with the kids in the mornings (fighting the "who's the most tired?" battle ) we agreed a system whereby he would get Saturday as a lie in, and I would get Sunday.

Now, I know it's not for me to decide when he gets up on a Saturday, I tend to leave him to it. What I do object to is that it'll often be 12pm or later before he rises -I've left him before and he's not got up until 2pm. To me this is unreasonable, which I have told him.

What happens Sundays is he won't hear the kids wake up, I will usually wake anyway to feed the baby, and will have to rouse him to get up. He will roll over and go back to sleep, or try and negotiate another lie in - this happens nearly every Sunday. He will ask me to take the kids downstairs and he'll "be down in a minute" - this usually turns into an hour or two hours, by which time I'm furious, then somehow I turn into the bad guy for being cross?

He doesn't seem to appreciate that I might have only had a couple of hours sleep (has happened this last week with baby being poorly) and might need to catch up. I have suggested him taking the kids out in the afternoon and me staying at home so I can have an hour or two to nap but he always wants us to spend family time together so that never happens.

I'm getting REALLY resentful that my job seems to last all week long but he gets to sleep and nap whenever he feels like it, and ignores the fact it's my day for a lie in, or doesn't want me to nap in the day at the weekend. How can I manage this - it feels like he doesn't respect me at all or appreciate how tiring it is having broken sleep for the last four months?


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## Deejo (May 20, 2008)

He's breaking the deal. Willingly, week after week. That makes him an ass.

Next time send the kids in to jump all over him and scream until he gets his ass out of bed.


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## WadeWilson (Jul 4, 2010)

I don't think this will help you... But me and my wife do not do deals... And yes I would probably break them... Now when our trips were born I was doing two jobs and school while she was taking care of sick mother... Now it may have been easy to assign days... I still wanted her time and she mine, so the first to hear one cry got up by the second the other would wake... But now that they're older, they are curious and destructive... And I have things, so so if I don't get up but my wife don't they will randomly break something... And if you get up early when he should you might find yourself going to bed early when he wants you up later... That could lead to major problems and you need to let him know where it might boil over to...


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## coops (Jan 24, 2011)

Before I jump in to give an opinion, I did not hear you say that he is staying up super late playing games or watching TV. All I heard was sleeping late. So if he is staying up late and then sleeping late, he is being an ass and needs to adjust himself to the life he has chosen. However, if he is just physically drained and his body just wants to sleep then read on.. 

I'm going to play "devils advocate here" and take the side of your husbands perspective. Not because I necessarily feel hes doing everything right in this case but maybe it'll give you some things to think about when you finally decide how to approach this. 

You have a 1 income family, with the husband working in a physical job. What happens if he loses that income? Say he wears out his back and it goes out on him? will there be insurance that covers him for his full income? if not, would the amount you get cover the bills?

Is there any element of danger to his job? Could he screw up and have a mental lapse that leaves him badly injured? Say hes out of work for 1 year while he recovers, what happens then? Right now, he is your way to eat and survive as a family. Don't downplay that. 

Also, here is another question. Do you ever get to sleep during the day? if the baby goes to sleep, do you get to lay down for a nap too? Cause if your husband is exhausted come Monday, he gets to bust his butt all day and come home even more exhausted. There is no nap time for him. Is there any way you can adjust how you run your day to get some additional sleep? Could you wait till hes out of bed, then let him take over the kids for a while so you can go take an hour or two nap?

This is a temporary thing till the baby gets a bit older. I would see if there are compromises to be made to get what you need, but I would be very careful about things that can cause fights/resentment. If you're so backed into a corner that those 2 hours on Sunday matter that much, then fight over it but if you can find ways to make it less of an issue, I think you should consider it. 

Again, if hes just being lazy and staying up late at night, give it to him, but if he is so physically drained that his body is needing that sleep, I think you should consider adjusting if you can.


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## alphaomega (Nov 7, 2010)

This is a hard one, but really, you BOTH have to take turns. We had the Saturday, Sunday deal too, and we both stuck to it. Not only that, as soon as I got home from work, I would watch the kids for an hour while I told my wife to go lay down. It was only an hour, and an hour passes by really fast with active baby and toddlers, but an hour of sleep did wonders for my wife.

Mothering is hard, and those days when I had the kids (school days, sick days, etc) I would be exhausted by the time my wife got home from work. All that mental stress when you have really active kids or kids that don't sleep all the way through the night is sure tiring!


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## tobio (Nov 30, 2010)

Deejo said:


> Next time send the kids in to jump all over him and scream until he gets his ass out of bed.


ROFL I feel I may resort to that if things carry on as they have been!



WadeWilson said:


> And if you get up early when he should you might find yourself going to bed early when he wants you up later... That could lead to major problems and you need to let him know where it might boil over to...


I hadn't thought of that but it's a good point, he's definitely a night owl.



coops said:


> Before I jump in to give an opinion, I did not hear you say that he is staying up super late playing games or watching TV. All I heard was sleeping late. So if he is staying up late and then sleeping late, he is being an ass and needs to adjust himself to the life he has chosen.


Yes, he always stays up late, this is mainly the problem IMO.



> Is there any element of danger to his job? Could he screw up and have a mental lapse that leaves him badly injured? Say hes out of work for 1 year while he recovers, what happens then? Right now, he is your way to eat and survive as a family. Don't downplay that.


Yes. He drives to jobs so that's important, for him to be able to concentrate. There's a lot of heavy lifting and working at heights so he does need to concentrate for that also.

I totally get this argument when it comes to the working partner/stay at home partner set up, but apparently lack of sleep through wakeful babies/children isn't as important which IMO is ridiculous -apparently it's ok to be so tired you forget to lock the front door and find the toddler walking off out towards the road, or you fall asleep holding the baby sat up and wake up to find he's slid off you, off the side of the sofa and is dangling with his head just off the floor whilst the toddler is sat in the middle of the dining table... and when I *do* get a lie in, I so often come downstairs to find he's asleep on the sofa, with the baby lying on him, and the toddler is running riot...



> Also, here is another question. Do you ever get to sleep during the day? if the baby goes to sleep, do you get to lay down for a nap too? Cause if your husband is exhausted come Monday, he gets to bust his butt all day and come home even more exhausted. There is no nap time for him. Is there any way you can adjust how you run your day to get some additional sleep? Could you wait till hes out of bed, then let him take over the kids for a while so you can go take an hour or two nap?


I have suggested this previously at the weekend. He likes to get out of the house and so is quite insistent that I come along when he goes out. We don't get to spend much time together in the week so I inevitably say yes, he is very persuasive that I can have a nap "later", but always gets annoyed when I fairly frequently crash out on the sofa in the evening because I'm so tired.

I can't have a nap when the baby naps as I have a toddler to look after also, as well as two other infants, the older two are at school in the week but obviously not at the weekend.



> This is a temporary thing till the baby gets a bit older. I would see if there are compromises to be made to get what you need, but I would be very careful about things that can cause fights/resentment. If you're so backed into a corner that those 2 hours on Sunday matter that much, then fight over it but if you can find ways to make it less of an issue, I think you should consider it.


Hmm- I see it as being a bit longer? Not "forever" but enough of a time period for it to need dealing with asap.



> Again, if hes just being lazy and staying up late at night, give it to him, but if he is so physically drained that his body is needing that sleep, I think you should consider adjusting if you can.


Yep I should really give it to him then as he does stay up late. I can understand that on, say, a Saturday, he might want to sleep in and that is fine but to a reasonable time and not the whole weekend.



alphaomega said:


> This is a hard one, but really, you BOTH have to take turns. We had the Saturday, Sunday deal too, and we both stuck to it. Not only that, as soon as I got home from work, I would watch the kids for an hour while I told my wife to go lay down. It was only an hour, and an hour passes by really fast with active baby and toddlers, but an hour of sleep did wonders for my wife.
> 
> Mothering is hard, and those days when I had the kids (school days, sick days, etc) I would be exhausted by the time my wife got home from work. All that mental stress when you have really active kids or kids that don't sleep all the way through the night is sure tiring!


Yeah. Glad you had a system that worked! I don't think OH would offer to do the hour nap thing, that would be amazing but I see how tired he is sometimes when he walks in the door and I wouldn't feel right. If he were up to it now and again it would be lovely though.

This morning I woke to feed the baby about 7.30am, our toddler woke up half an hour later and it was a while after that before OH got up to get him, he brought him into our room and promptly got back into bed and started to doze off again, I was insistent he needed to get up as the toddler wanted his drink and breakfast and baby needed his eye bathing. OH was *so* resentful, I felt like a nag but if I didn't keep telling him he would have just gone back to sleep *shrugs* I can't see it being any different even if I did give it to him both barrels.


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