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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

Aibu to think if DH hears the DC he should bloody well go himself not wake me up to tell me!!

50 replies

bedraggledmumoftwo · 11/12/2015 07:05

I'm pretty fuming having just been robbed of an hour's sleep by an able bodied man child.

I have spent years sleep training our dd1(3.5) who has a gro clock in her room, plus a chart for Santa to know if she slept till the clock went yellow. Her door is left open so she gets out of bed and comes into my room and wakes me up when the clock is yellow (or often before). This is for her benefit as well as mine as she gets tired and cranky if she gets up early but won't nap any more.

So this morning I am blissfully asleep when DH rudely prods me awake to say he can hear dd1 shouting. I ask if he can hear what she's saying and he says no. I look at the time and it is over an hour until she should be awake so I go in, she's saying cuddle, i tell her the clock is going to be blue for a long time and she should try to go back to sleep and give her a cuddle. This all takes less than a minute.

I get back into bed only to have DH start talking to me (presumably because I'm awake anyway ) I settle down to try and see if I can manage to doze back off then DH gets out of bed and his phone lights up. I say are you getting up now? And he says yes. "Then why the fuck did you wake me up?" He snarls: "Because I have to go to fucking work!" Bollocks, it took me less than one minute to go in to dd1, and he was still in bed when I got back. He knows the gro clock rules, it's not like he thought I would be in there for an hour.

Aibu to expect a grown man to go tend to his own DD when he hears her and he is about to get up anyway, not wake his sleeping wife so she can go?! I would probably be asleep now if it had been DD walking me up herself, the reason I lost an hour's sleep is because I'm so furious at dh!

OP posts:

Original poster

bedraggledmumoftwo · 11/12/2015 10:15

You might be BU to your dd though (I know this isn't the topic of the thread). She sems to be an early waker and it's hard for a child that young to stay awake, quiet and alone for long. Have you considered putting her bedtime back? And I honestly wouldn't use Santa to enforce compliance. If she can't manage it (and it may well be can't, not won't) she'll be miserable in te run-up and then you can't follow through anyway (surely??)

I have tried everything and the only thing that works is strictly enforcing the gro clock. She does manage it more days than not, and she isn't required to stay asleep just stay in her room quietly with her soft toys, starry sky nightlight etc. And I have been known to spy over the video monitor and she doesn't usually wake up until it is nearly time. Today it was over an hour early, and it was pitch black outside, which is unusual and I would hazard a guess it is because she knew daddy was home. As I said before it is for her benefit as well as mine, she is visibly tired when she wakes up early, and gets cranky and ends up falling asleep in the car later. Encouraging and rewarding the gro clock is the only thing that works. She is a spirited child and if I let her get up early one day it will be even earlier the next and she will be exhausted.

Santa is just the latest in the reward choice. I haven't said he won't come, just that we are making a chart so he can see how good she is. It started off with lots of blue dots but is now mostly gold stars, with the occasional morning where she wakes me ten or fifteen minutes early, but not an hour.

OP posts:

WoodHeaven · 11/12/2015 10:24

Same problem here when the dcs were little.
His tactic was normally not to wake up as clearly it wasn't his responsibility. I woke him up, told hiim his dc was crying and reminded him it was his turn/his responsibility too.
I refused every tme to get up and sort it out for him (and tbh, he was atually quite good at he as would never have done the pandering on the other side, he could have been too much to the point and quick).

What worked for us was a clear expectation about who was going to get up (we did different arrangements with time, every other night, late evening for him, early am for me etc...).

cailindana · 11/12/2015 10:32

DH and I take turns to get up. I don't even wake if it's not my night. This whole 'I have to work' think is total and utter BOLLOCKS. A person doesn't suddenly stop needing sleep if they don't work and there is absolutely no reason for one parent to be getting a full night's sleep every single night while the other one never gets enough sleep and is exhausted.

Boredofthinkingofnewnames · 11/12/2015 10:33

We take it in turns. DH apparently doesn't hear when they wake up so the only way this works is for me to kick him wake him up and get him to go and sort it out. So, we are both then awake but I don't see why it should be me, all the bloody time.

cjt110 · 11/12/2015 11:03

It depends - My son tends not to settle for DH in the night, only me. When DH has tended to him, it usually results in frustration and upset for both him and son and I end up going in, tending to DS and we all go back to bed.

However, if thats not the case with you guys, then yep. Pretty annoying.

Kaytee1987 · 11/12/2015 12:09

Yanbu I'd he furious too.

HackerFucker22 · 11/12/2015 12:19

My DP occasionally wakes me to tell me DC1 has done a poo, but he'll change him. I think he expects fanfare and a standing ovation but he is told to fuck off and get on with it.

(DC1 suffers chronic constipation and has senna to help him go and 9 times out of 10 it will be overnight)

Original poster

bedraggledmumoftwo · 11/12/2015 12:56

We do take it in turns at the weekend, during the week I am usually the only one here so of course it would be me. The one day in the week he actually sleeps here I don't think it would kill him to pitch in, although when I thought he was actually sleeping in I was happy to go. He had already woken me up when he got in, then I had to get up to go downstairs to turn the Christmas tree of because he didn't he was too drunk to remember to then be woken up early as well, and for him to start talking to me when I got back into bed just added insult to injury.

I just see no reason why we should both be awake if one of us is awake anyway. Since dcs we are obviously both chronically sleep deprived, hence him staying in hotels and us taking it in turns at the weekend, to maximise the amount of sleep between us, if I woke up racks brains to think of something that could ostensibly be his job and fails I would not even consider waking him up thereby ensuring neither of us was asleep.

OP posts:

YellowDinosaur · 11/12/2015 15:07

Did I read that last post correctly? That your dh stays in hotels in the week to make sure he gets enough sleep

When is it your turn to stay in a hotel to get enough sleep? If that's the reason he's even more of a massive twat than I already thought he was for waking you up when he was already awake and about to get up.

Original poster

bedraggledmumoftwo · 11/12/2015 17:22

To be fair he stays in a hotel because he works 2.5hrs away from here on a project most of the time. That said he does do day trips when it suits him, but I agree there would be no point him traveling back so encourage him to consolidate his time there and stay in a hotel, then he works in London in a Friday

OP posts:

WoodHeaven · 11/12/2015 21:41

One thing jumped out at me.
He was drunk on a week day so you didn't expect him to be able to get up during the night. Even though that the only night out of 5 that he is actually present. AND one where you would expect him to pitch in.

Now I have a question, during the week, when you know you have the responsibility to get up at night, do you get drunk? Do you expect him to pitch up for you (wo asking...) just because?
Or do you actually think, 'No can't do that. I need to be able to get up. I'll wait for the weekend' or rather when dc will be 20yo and I'm not so knackered?

It's not just that he was awake. What he actually telling you by his whole behaviour is that he doesn't think he has ANY responsibility in getting up to look after his dc.
Now you can say that's your arrangement. Or say it's not on. But if it isn't you have a lot of work to do....

Want2bSupermum · 11/12/2015 22:00

You are nuts! First of all him drinking is his problem. The responsibilities don't go away and he shouldn't be drinking so much if he can't manage the DC.

DH did this with me once. 2nd time I ignored him. After about the 5th time of trying to wake me up he gave up and now does about 90% of the night wakings. You need to stop rewarding his behaviour.

Original poster

bedraggledmumoftwo · 11/12/2015 22:42

It is Christmas party season so I am prepared to be a bit more tolerant , although I don't think the possibility of having to deal with the girls even occurred to him. Because that is clearly my job because i have, y'know, ovaries and stuff to make me uniquely qualified to deal with it.

OP posts:

chilledwarmth · 12/12/2015 02:23

I don't get it why couldn't he go and deal with the daughter?

Senpai · 12/12/2015 04:18

Me and DH have a work shift system worked out. 10-5am is his shift, with a little leeway if it's almost 5. 5am on, she's mine.

So if she cries and it's 4:30, I nudge him out of bed. sometimes I nudge him while it's dark during my shift to chance it.

Ohbehave1 · 12/12/2015 08:08

If he was getting up for work then he needed to get ready. What if he had to deal with something that took lots of time? He would have been late for work. I would have thought it would have been safer for you to deal with it.

WoodHeaven · 12/12/2015 08:45

That's a very crap way to look at it Ohbehave.
There was no way for him to know if it woould take time or not. (And in this case, clearly it didn't take more than 2 mins for the OP to deal with it).

IF it had taken too long (let's say over 20mins) then it would THEN have been easy to ask the OP if she could help.

I think mumoftwo summurized well. She has the ovraies therefore it's her job anbd the fcat he migt need to look after his dcs didn't even occur to him.
I suspect that feelng is compounded by the fact he is away a lot so doesn't see the day to day stuff that needs to be done.
And that's also why it's even more important for the OP to be usre he is getting involved. Not just to get some support. Not just so that the system is fairer. But because there is no way he will be able to build up a relationship with his dcs if he is never involved 'because it's a woman's job'. Talks from experience And that would be a reall loss both for him and for his dcs.

Ohbehave1 · 12/12/2015 10:54

Sorry Wood, but it's how it works in our household and it works well. Whoever is getting up to work ( or do anything where they had to leave by a certain time) is left to get themselves sorted whilst the one that doesn't have a deadline deals with the little one.

whattheseithakasmean · 12/12/2015 11:08

In fairness to your DH, I would hate living in a hotel 4 days a week to support a family I hardly got any time with. The arrangement you have comes to means of course he will be more useless with the children - he doesn't get much time to be a father. If you want more equal parenting, I think you need to look at a broader distribution of roles, to be honest.

Catsize · 12/12/2015 16:42

Thehouse, I wasn't patronising. I was just expressing an opinion. If you re-read your post at 07:15 yesterday and imagine it was written about an elderly relative, then you might see where i am coming from. You can call it a parenting technique, but if you ignored an elderly/ill adult in that way you'd be blasted on here I suspect.
But I get it, you don't want to 'martyr' yourself to a child (per your later post). Different parenting style, yes.

WoodHeaven · 12/12/2015 17:00

But oh then I assume that
1- you are both working at some point in the week so it's not always the same person that has to get up
2- you had agree to that in first place (what are you doing tomorrow morning) rather than expecting your partenr to get up because 'it's HER role'.

None of that is there for the OP.

In my experience though, 4 nights week and 2 full days is plenty for a farther to learn how to look after his OWN children....

Senpai · 12/12/2015 18:01

If you re-read your post at 07:15 yesterday and imagine it was written about an elderly relative, then you might see where i am coming from. You can call it a parenting technique, but if you ignored an elderly/ill adult in that way you'd be blasted on here I suspect.

If you re-read that post about a perfectly NT adult, they'd blast the adult shouting at 4:30am. What's your point?

The situation doesn't translate to elderly parents who are failing in health and have actual medical reasons for needing help when they're awake. Apples and oranges.

The child is young and presumably healthy who needs to learn how to sleep. I put my foot down with DD getting up at night. I tuck her back in and gently but firmly tell her it's bed time no more waking up. No cuddles, no attention, nothing. It's bed time, and she will either sleep or be awake quietly. It's a good life skill to learn proper sleep habits.

When she's older and has better communication skills she'll be getting more stern lectures if she wakes up. I value my sleep, I value her sleep. Children don't just comply because it's the right thing to do, they have to be taught and sometimes those lessons require tough love.

Catsize · 12/12/2015 18:33

Okay! In children, it's called parenting, in adults, it's called care. Why is it okay to ignore a child but not an adult?

Catsize · 12/12/2015 18:45

I should say that sometimes when ours have woken and seemingly cried unnecessarily, we have gone in to find they have been sick or something and have been relieved we have gone in. I also don't want them to be afraid to cry out for us if something is wrong, in case they get some sort of 'stern lecture'.

HappyGirlNow · 12/12/2015 19:24

Do you work OP?

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