To not get up when my DSD wakes up?

Why should she have to? She's not getting up stupidly early

Yes because we all practiced getting up in the middle of the night before we needed to 🤔

OP has a busy job, it's Sunday and she's not lying in til lunchtime.

6am is quite early for a six year old. By that age she is old enough to understand it's early and to have some rules about getting everyone else up..

We had a 7am rule for the weekend. If kids were awake before that they could stay in their rooms and play but they weren't to wake everyone else up.

It wasn't fair to kids of different ages as well as to us.

If you are going to have another child you really won't want her waking a baby you've just got back down so a few gentle rules now would be sensible for all of you.

Have to wonder if his attitude to childcare is a reason his relationship with the child’s birth mother broke down…….maybe he left it all to mum and she got fed up of doing it all. Boot on the other foot now……is he getting a taste of his own medicine perhaps?
FWIW OP, I’d think seriously about having babies with him……you might eventually find yourself doing it all!

You should keep going, as you mean to on. Don’t get up with dsd- she’s not your child you don’t need to get guilty.

Also she’s nearly old enough where she can get herself up and go watch tv for an hour or so.

If you start the early mornings now. It will become the norm

I've never gotten up with my own dc, it was always dh who did the early mornings. I was not a morning person (am now!) and dh really enjoyed both spending some quality time alone with the dc and giving me a nice lie-in whenever he could.

Your dh is being an arse.

we don’t have any shared DCs atm, but we are trying to conceive in the new year @Frozened

He’ll make you do all the childcare, all the night feeds, all the early wakings. This is probably why his ex broke up with him. 6 year olds are so easy compared to a baby or toddler.

I had one of these. Kept coming in and out so I couldn't go back to sleep. He'd leave the door open to encourage DSD to come in. I'd get up and close it. Stand your ground OP. He does not get to dictate how much sleep you can have and you don't need to justify it.

Tell him straight. You'll get up when you're ready and mean it. She'll be fine once she's used to the new routine of 1-1 time with Daddy on a weekend morning.

He's trying emotional blackmail to avoid solo parenting. When she comes in the bedroom ask her to get Daddy to help make you breakfast in bed (preferably with freshly made bread as that takes a few hours 😂). She'll love that, he won't 😁

He resents you for not having to get up. Sadly, I think once you're up with a baby anyway, he'll try to claim back every one of these 'unauthorised' lay ins.

There is no point in you getting up to your stepdaughter when she wakes up early in the morning. That is her father’s responsibility. She’s not your child.

My sister in law got my partner to sleep over her house and baby sit his two nieces while she went out (no idea where she went - it was somewhere overnight).

This left me with a special needs toddler to look after and weekends were my only break.

It pleased me so much to hear that those girls woke him up at 5.30am. They were a lot older than your stepdaughter is. My partner was a wreck all weekend.

You’re not obligated to get up. You work a job and this child is not your own.

I know (very well 😊) that with some kids it isn’t feasible, but at six I feel your DSD is old enough to be trying to entertain herself if she wakes so early, there are clocks you can get that indicate when it is still ‘night’ and she could have books/toys/water etc on hand. Obviously even children who are good at this won’t do it all the time, but still.

YANBU though, and I would be quite firm about this kind of thing to test the water for having your own DC. Was your DH ever in a long term relationship with DSD’s mother? If so, what led to them splitting up? I would be sceptical enough to want to know more when a man has left the family home while his child is so young.

She can go down and watch tv on her own at 6!!

You say ‘ I look after her when DH is at work, pick ups from school, I just don’t think I need to get up with him?’

Is her mother also unavailable to pick up and drop off - too many men want 50/50 to avoid maintenance. What would he do if you were not together?

The op and this update. I’d be reassessing your relationship.

Why did he split up with her mother?

We often split wake ups on weekends but if DD goes to DH first on both weekend days he just gets up with her. He’s knackered but it’s quality time they don’t get during the week so he’s happy to get up. If he only had her half the week he would definitely be up with her no questions asked, no moaning.

Honestly I would be very careful about having kids with him. He really does think this is woman’s work.

do you always talk such absolute shite?

We never both get up except on a birthday or Xmas! Usually we take turns on a weekend. The passive aggressive mood would annoy me .

He's shown you who he is.

Your choice is, do you believe him?

I suspect not.

I have 2 kids, both are also my husband's, of 1 of us is up before 6 at the weekend the other one gets up at 8ish and the early riser can go for a nap if they like. But we're almost 8 yrs in to terrible sleepers so it's all about survival here. That said if it's only once a week is want to get up and have that 1-1 with my child so your oh is being a bit of a lunatic there really. 7am though isn't an early rise to me and I also love sleep but even before kids 7am wake up is fairly normal. Staying up past 10 though? Madnes

Sounds like having a child isn’t right for you as you like sleep too much!

This! Plenty of times DH has let me sleep in and taken the kids in fact a lot of the times. You need to be careful about having kids with someone who doesn’t want to parent. Also, never really understand young, educated and free women tying themselves down with men who have kids already. Is the pool really that bad?

even with our joint kids, of course we don't both get up at 6AM. When kids were young enough to need supervision, one parent got up and let the other one sleep.
With a 6yo, neither parent would get up at that hour. If they wake at 6, they can amuse themselves quietly.

I would never ever expect a boyfriend to get up early with me and my toddler, in fact I’d prefer they didn’t so I got that one on one time nurturing my child.

I think DHs expectation is that we are a family and we should do everything together. He says DSD wants me to be with her when she wakes up.

Oh nooooo to both of these things OP! It is a load of rubbish that families should do everything together (and impossible when they are a bit older anyway as one of you ends up taking the eldest to their Saturday morning swimming lesson while the other one takes the youngest to a classmate's birthday party etc.), especially weekend mornings which are best divide and conquer! When ours were younger and breastfed at night I did most of the night wakings (DH still did some nappies) and he got up with them every single morning to let me catch up on as much sleep as possible. When they slept well we alternated lie ins. Then when we potty trained the three year old she had a sleep regression so now DH does the overnights and I do the weekend mornings.

It's either sweet or alarming that his daughter wants you and not him when she wakes up (is he trying to interact with her or just putting on the telly and ignoring her?), but either way he needs to redirect her that weekend mornings are currently their one-to-one Daddy and daughter time and your lie ins are to be respected. Should you have children with him (and I'd be giving that idea some serious thought and discussion) then you will find a more shared approach to early mornings as you would then have a shared child and of course you will include SD in that case but there is absolutely no need for you to do so now.

It's not often that we are able to so clearly see what our future will have in store for us as this

I would be thinking very hard about what your joint parenting might look like in the future as it seems that childcare is firmly a 'you' problem, in your husband's eyes

Interested to know if you got out alone today op..
And keen to know his attitude when you get home.

Ah come on, it's fine for her to do this if it suits her.