Aibu or is dh selfish?

[Thumperoo]

So we have 5 month old twins, they don't sleep any longer than 3-4 hours in the nights. I'm still on mat leave so obviously imdoing the majority of care. Dh is great on the weekend he encourages me to get some rest etc.

The thing is he works long shifts during the week usually around 12 hours, so for the whole week I get no help, no opportunity to catch up on sleep etc. dh will put washing in the machine and maybe do the dishes.

Ok so aibu to think that even though dh is working he could take over for a few hours once or twice a week?

Same routine as Lynnm63 - dh and I both had a baby each overnight. I also got him to treat the 6/7am feed as a 'night feed' - fed, minimum done & straight back to bed so my actual 'day' started around 10/11am. After we started doing that I started feeling vaguely human again.

i think you are both working very hard,talk talk talk to each other about the situation

I don't think Yabu. But I also don't think he is selfish.

You both sound incredibly busy.

I don't think YABU but I also don't think your DH is being selfish. 12h shifts are horrendous and if your DH is doing anything which requires concentration, there's probably a limit to how much sleep he can go without during the week, to be honest.

Have a look at your routines and where you can make changes to make both of your lives' easier. For example, could you or DH put a batch of meals in the freezer at the weekends so all you have to do in the week is defrost lunch and dinner? can you get some help in? could he sort out a night nanny so that once or twice a week you know you're going to be able to sleep? could you go to bed early with him doing one feed before he goes to bed later or rearrange waking times so that he gets up and looks after the babies for an hour before having to wake you up?

Competetive tiredness is a competition nobody wins DH and I were on our knees with just the one baby but what worked for us was realising that we didn't both have to be awake at the same times. So we staggered it - I find it hard to go off to sleep once I've been woken, so I did the last feed at night and the first one in the morning (to let DH sleep through them) but he did the middle of the night wakings because he could get back to sleep more easily and let me rest. Twins I imagine needs military precision in terms of timetabling rest in for you both, but sit down and talk (over takeaway!) and your DH sounds like a reasonable chap, you should be able to come up with something.

If he's doing 12 hr shifts and doing a lot on his days off I really don't know what's more he could do. You need to make sure you rest while the babies are asleep during the day so you have the ability to cope (catch up on sleep and rest)
Your dh can't really do that while he is at work and he needs to be alert for his job as well as his family
I think you just have to accept that it's a bloody exhausting time and make sure that on his days off you sleep more to catch up
This exhausting time will pass just hang in there

I have 6 month old twins and ds1 is nearly 3, you must be exhausted only getting that little bit of sleep, could you go to bed in the spare room or wherever early (7 or 8) and he deals with them until midnight so you are at least getting a decent solid sleep? Not ideal but means to an end for the minute? One of mine is a bad sleeper so dh will get up with ds1 and ds3 if they wake and I just deal with the bad sleeper and a co sleeper has helped with that massively, would that be an option for you? Hang in there!

So what if he's doing 12 hour shifts! They have twins! Unless driving, machinery or surgery or something he could be doing a share of the nightwork too.

I assume it was his choice to have children too? In which case he needs to do more during the week.
DH is out of the house 12 hours a day but cooks dinner every night/helps with cleaning etc. He also does night wakings with DD1 (23 months and doesn't sleep through) and if I've had a bad night with DD2 (EBF) he'll get up with her at 5 and let me sleep for 2 hours.

I strongly disagree that competitive tiredness is a competition nobody wins. If one person is doing much less than the other and is in better health/less tired then they have essentially "won" at the direct expense of their partner.

Expecting a partner to do a fair share of childcare and domestic work - in addition to paid work - is not being competitive. Here, OP does a 12 hour shift with baby twins. He works for 12 hours. She then does all the work all night on all weekdays. Unfair.

Trying not to be "competitive" so often ends with new mothers doing way more than their partners, becoming more and more tired and even ill. The men - not so much.

I went down that road and ended up exhausted, physically and mentally ill and had several near misses for serious accidents. Realised DH was still running for miles, working hard for credit at work, socialising etc and was obviously in much better health: I woke up to it, and changed things.