to feel that he has no idea what it's like after just doing 1 night waking?

[JeanieBueller]

DS is 16mo and teething wildly in the past 4 weeks. He is ordinarily an excellent sleeper and rarely wakes up in the night, but once the nurofen wears off and the pain wakes him, he's usually fully awake for around 2 hours any time from 2am - 5am.

I don't leave him to cry as we live in a semi-detached house with paper thin walls and though his room is furthest from the neighbours', his shouts and screams of "mummy, mummy" are bound to be as audible to them as their kids are to me from the same room in their house.

DP has a long commute Mon to Fri - he's out of the house from 6.30am to 8pm at the least every day - so as I'm a SAHM and can in theory nap when DS does in the day, I have been dealing with all the waking and taking DS into the spare room to wriggle about until the calpol kicks in and he tires out again.

To be fair, DP does agree to deal with the waking one night at the weekend - usually on a Saturday night - but bizarrely DS hasn't woken on the nights DP is 'on call'! Until last night, when he acted as described above and now DP is moaning on the phone to his mum that he "had a rough night with DS" and is "completely exhausted" despite getting a lie in until 9.30 - I took DS when he woke up at 7.30...

AIBU to be secretly pleased that maybe DP can now see how disruptive it is to be woken for 2 hours a night at least - and to wish I had let DS wake him at 7.30 rather than allow him a lie in, to give him the full experience of what I have to deal with?! [evil grin emoticon]

He's taken DS out to the ILs now, so he can 'have a break' while I MN get on with the shopping, laundry and cleaning...

He will never understand what it is like, even if he only does it once a week. They just don't !!

You are being a bit unreasonable to kind of wish your DH (and your DS)to have a hard time.

Your DH is being entirely reasonable about doing one night at the weekend.

As he works full time, and you are home full time, it's reasonable that you do the night wakings during the week ( as you say, you can rest during the day; your dh can't and is out of the house at 6.30 am). It's then entirely reasonable to split the weekend. But a mean for either of you to wish the other is having a hard time. Its a bit like your DH smugly wishing you had to get up by 5.30 and out of the house by 6.30 5 days a week just because he does!

She isn't saying he should do more, CallMeMrs. She is saying that she is secretly pleased that he now understands a little of what she is going through.

Op, I'm with you. DH shares weekday wakings at the mo as I am pregnant and knackered, but for ages she was a great sleeper (rare) on nights that he had the con. Annoyingly I always wake when she does even if he deals with it, then can't get back to sleep till she does.

It would be ok if you let him get up at 7.30 after a night waking and take of DS all day.... but only if you got up at 5.30, spent a whole day working and then have a long commute back home at 8pm. If you're going to swap routines, it's only fair you get to see his side of it as well.

My husband and I used to have to do this with DD and take it in turns on different nights and we both used to work the next day so no napping. You get used to it after a while and it doesnt last forever (although DD didnt sleep through the night until 2 year 11 mth however but she does now) Just do lots of red bull then you can both survive on limited sleep for months!

Ninky- ciske has put it better than me... Its equivalent to the op agreeing to get up at 5.30, leave for work at 6.30, do a full days work with all the skills and responsibility that goes with it, then return home with a long commute by 8 pm - but only doing this once mind you! - and the dh saying 'ner ner, now you know what its like'. Its just silly point scoring. You are having a tough time at the moment with regular night wakings but by your own admission your ds is normally a good sleeper- so normally you get a full nights sleep plus the advantage of not having to be up at the crack of Dawn and off to work all day. Your dh clearly has a tough work load too, so its a bit unnecessary to criticise him

Sounds like you are both having a tough time. Hope that the LO starts sleeping normally again soon.

In any reasonably balanced relationship you will take on different challenges as a team, but you have to recognize what the other is doing. So he should be thankful for the nights you take, and you should be thankful for the hours he works.

If you are showing appreciation for his work and he isn't then actually I think yanbu. But you haven't said this is the case.

Thanks all for the comments! I definitely don't want DP to do more, he's great when he's home at weekends - does bathtime & dinner for DS, makes the occasional meal and looks after DS when I need to get the housework done.

I think my AIBU centres around the fact that he's not appreciated at all (up till now) just what the effects are of missing at least 2 hours' sleep in the middle of the night and then having to plough on alone through the day with an active and sometimes grizzly toddler - though I do sometimes sleep for a bit at lunchtime, I often have things to get done like prepare dinner / admin etc. I'm so thankful that I don't have to function in an office any more (I work in a different setting to that just 2 mornings a week) and really wouldn't ask DP to do the nights during the week.

He's complaining about how tired he is and how awful it was to have to be awake for 2 hours, even though he's spent the morning chilling and brunching at his parents while they played with DS and has now taken him round to his brother's so he can watch footy while SIL and her sister play with DS, he's that knackered! So I think he does actually now realise how pooped I must be feeling after 4 or 5 nights of the same!

I do appreciate his schedule - before DS and until 3 weeks before he was born I did the same commute and worked longer hours in the same job as DP, so I have no illusion how tough it is to be getting up in the dark, travelling 2 hours each way and doing a high pressured job in the City - it's allowing me to stay at home with DS which we both really wanted. I always make his lunch the night before so he doesn't have to get up earlier than he already does as it's a brutal old commute.