Please tell me if I AiBU here for being angry at DH

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I've just come back from a night out; first one in 3 months.

Anyway I put 9mth old DS to sleep before I left at 7.30. At about 9pm I get a flurry of texts from DH about how DS has woken up crying, he won't settle, he doesn't know what to do, he won't go back to sleep etc. I immediately try to ring him, he doesn't answer, I figure it's because he is trying to getting him back to sleep. I text him to say that if he won't get back to sleep, just take him downstairs, dim the lights, read him a story or softly talk to him, and then when you see him visibly showing signs of tiredness, take him up and try again.
I get a text shortly after to say that the "panic is over" and that he's asleep.

I begin to relax a bit and enjoy the rest of my night before coming home at 11.
As soon as I walked through the door, DH greeted me and said "I'm sorry, but he wouldn't go back to sleep so I let him cry in his cot until he fell asleep"
He knows I am totally against the crying out method so to hear him say that, I could feel myself getting really upset. I asked him how long he left him crying for and he said 10 minutes. 2 of those minutes were apparently screams and then the other 8 minutes were whimpering until he fell asleep.
I was absolutely livid. He couldn't handle him crying for longer than 5 minutes so put him in the cot and let my poor baby cry himself to sleep. I'm sat here in tears.

Please can you tell me if I am BU to be upset. I know that he's not going to be damaged by this but it still upsets me to know that he cried and that my DH never attended to him, and that also DH knew I am so against crying it out, so why would he go against my wishes

He says he will get more involved when it becomes more fun? So he is opting out of the grunt work? Charming.

You know, Ill bet he isnt this incompetebt at work. He has been in this role for 9 months now - if this was how he acted at work her wouldnt even have been signed off his probation. Wheb jobs and responsibilities come up at work does he phone it in too?

And why dont you force a bit more onto him? If he mentions nipping to the shop - here dh ds is in his buggy and could use the frsh air, off you two go. Or if he is staying in, oh great, heres ds. Ive a few errands to run and itll be easier without him. See you both later.

Yabu. Absolutely. You left your DH in charge and tbh, it's up to him how he handles it! When I'm looking after my baby, I go up and breastfeed her back to sleep, when my DH is, he rocks her a bit, then leaves her to cry a bit. Just be happy your baby went to sleep fine and self settled! If you choose to go out, you can't micromanage your DH'a parenting.

OP - I had years of this across 4 DC and looking back, I can see now that a lot of it was my fault for not giving DH the opportunity to find his own strategies and resilience for parenting.

I will never forget the very first time I ever left DH with DS1 who was about 6 months at the time. My neighbour had asked me in for a drink as it was her birthday and I had asked DH to be with the baby so I could go in for one hour. I'd been there no longer than 15 mins, before he arrived at the door with DS (wrapped in a duvet (!) and screaming) to say that DS had rolled off our bed!! Not only that, he wasn't sure how he had landed or if he'd banged his head on the wood floor. I was so upset.

Now that our 4 DC are older he thinks nothing of taking them all off camping on his own and I've learned to trust his judgement in this kind of thing. But the baby stage doesn't come naturally to a lot of men, imo anyway.

I actually think your DH made a better job of getting your DS to sleep than you do!

Taking a baby downstairs after bedtime is never a good idea IMO & setting you up for all sorts of toddlerish manipulations in the near future!

He does need to be more hands-on & increase his confidence though - you can quite safely "allow" a grown man to bath & sort out a baby - you do not need to "teach" him

You say you haven't prevented him from being involved. But he makes a parenting decision, when he had the sole responsibility to do so. You chose to "disagree" with him when he says he tried all other avenues (basically calling him a liar). You then tell him how "we" will do things (in other words what HE must do next)

He wanted to call his mum over to help him out, you "said no" Why is that your decision? If he wants his mum over, then let him get his mum over. I wouldn't dream of stopping my OH doing that - in fact, he has done. Just like I've had mine in situations where I think I might want some support.

Maybe he would be more willing to step in if his decisions weren't second guessed and disagreed with every single time.

Furrylittletwerp

👍👍👍 Totally agree

But the baby stage doesn't come naturally to a lot of men, imo anyway.

First time round, the baby stage doesn't "come naturally" to almost anybody. The only way anyone learns is by doing.

You're a gatekeeper parent.This is classic maternal gatekeeping.

You've undermined his confidence with your child so much that he is unable to just parent. This objectively was a GREAT result. He got your DS to sleep in 10 minutes. DS whimpered for a few minutes SO WHAT? This isn't CIO at all. It's great parenting. Instead of him feeling confident and happy, instead you came home cried and blamed him.

Of course he doesn't want to look after the baby alone. You are storing up YEARS of doing all of the childcare here. YEARS. In five years you will be desperate for him to do his part but all your gatekeeping will have trained the kids to come to you for everything. It will be completely of your own making.

You are over reacting, with the crying for 10 minutes thing. (That's if it WAS 10 minutes, and not half an hour; he may be under estimating it!)

But yeah, your hubby needs to learn to look after baby better, and not have a meltdown. Also, he is not babysitting. A father does not babysit his own child.

Threads like this one amaze me - and I do mean honestly AMAZE me.
Where do people get the patience to be faffing around bringing baby downstairs at nine months? Have you really been doing this for NINE MONTHS!? I think you are mad.
At nine months - unless I had a genuinely awful sleeper - I would be expecting to put baby down at about 6.30pm and not hear a peep until the same time next morning, unless there was a problem. Can't you see that by taking him downstairs and reading him a story you are making waking up an attractive thing to do? I assume - although I do sometimes wonder after some MN posts- that the aim is to get the evening to yourself at some point?
Parenting seems to he more about martyrdom than pragmatism today. Did you have a life before baby came along? I ask because I just can't imagine myself or anyone I know thinking your way is a good way to do things. And your poor husband is being lambasted on here for daring to do his thing. He obviously has more sense and presumably regards a waking baby as an inconvenience - which it is - rather than an opportunity to reward a baby who should by now know how to self-settle.
Am I really the only one who thinks this gentle parenting no crying malarky is complete and utter madness?

I'd be annoyed at him texting you! I'm going out for the first time next week and my boyfriend is under strict instructions to only text positive, baby is fine messages, unless it's an emergency!!

My boyfriend has had issues being a parent. I posted for help myself a while back.
Anyway for us a lot of talking and a willingness from him to step up, as made massive changes. He does bath/bed every night now, I'm breastfeeding but he's got dd taking a few ounce of expressed milk which he does. He also gets up in the morning and changes her and brings her to me to feed. One of his issues/concerns was that, I was very particular about what I expected from him as a dad, in his words he felt like 'he had to be perfect or he wouldn't be good enough'.
I do like to be in control and have quite set ideas about how I want to raise my daughter.
Your issue with bedtime, makes me think you decide how you want to do things and he doesn't get a say, sorry if I'm wrong. But a lot of it rings true with my own relationship.
Give him some responsibility, my boyfriend takes dd swimming on Sunday mornings on his own. Get him to do bath or story time, but let him do it his own way.

Sorry if my post is a bit jumbled, I started when I'd sat down to breastfeed and then dd has been on and off and not settled!

Which would you prefer on a night out? That your son is being properly looked after by your mil, and is comfy and cosy and probably fast asleep, or that he might be awake, crying while dh tears his hair out or dumps him in the cot and turns the volume up on the tv?

Like you, I wanted neither. I wanted to know that dd was comfy and cosy and properly looked after by her dad While I was out. Didn't happen. In the end I accepted that if she were to be properly looked after when I left her with dh, then that meant he'd be on the phone to mil as soon as I was out the door.

I stopped going out - lots of reasons involved in that, but the above was a big one of them. Don't do what I did, it's a bad idea!

cath I was with you up until the sleeping through the night at 9 months. THAT'S a load of absolute twaddle. Even much older children don't sleep through the night. I woke up twice last night myself - I must not be well enough trained!

Some people's kid's sleep through the night but it's mostly down to luck. My DS is a great sleeper - he goes to bed at 7pm, wakes at midnight and 3am. He's 16 months old. He settles quickly. That's not a bad sleeper - he may not sleep through the night but so what. He's a human being - he isn't programmed to sleep solidly without waking. You can't just flick a switch and expect it to happen.

There is a middle ground between expecting wonders of your baby, and complete martyrdom. Most people do fall in to the middle ground.

I think the point is Potato, you would not reward your baby when he wakes, hence he goes straight back down without much/any intervention from you?

Oh I totally agree with you on that point. I just disagreed about the sleeping solidly through the night. My DS has never done that despite being a very, very good sleeper.

My children are 4 and 2
The 2 year old still bf over night.

My eldest still doesn't sleep through. But then Im 34 and I don't either.

Has only been the last 6 months that my youngest has slept in bursts longer than 2 hours.

I'm not a.martyr at all. I'd love to sleep but if they wake and they need me then they need me. I wouldn't leave either to cry.

It drives me mad when people say "oh I wouldn't be having that - let them get on with it" like I'm some kind of freak for not wanting my children to feel distressed.

Maybe some kids do just whinge and then go to sleep, mine don't whinge, mine scream like they're being murdered.

I think YABU for being angry at DH as you seem to want him to stand on his own feet as a new dad and let you enjoy a much needed night out but are not happy that he found his own way to settle dc.

Which is really a contradiction.

Mrs I agree, I wouldn't leave my DS to cry either. I can also tell from the sound of his cry when he is not going to settle. 2 minutes is not "cry it out" though.

This interests me greatly. My children are 10 and 12. I also have a 23-year-old. When my oldest was born in 1993, there was no question about it, three months was the magic point when MOST babies were expected to go through the night. And most in my baby groups did, although bedtime routines were much stricter back then. By the time my daughter was born (2004) things were starting to change and advice was a lot more about following your instincts. Today, we seem to be in a position where you are regarded as a bad parent if you are not completely ruled by your baby and at their constant beck and call. Obviously, these babies are too young to drawn any conclusions about, but as a 1990s mum, I really do think modern methods are setting children up for a lifetime of poor sleeping habits - it seems do blatently obvious to me.

Parenting shouldn't be such a massive drama; you should be enjoying this period which means relaxing just a little and enjoying the baby rather than stressing. Babies cry. That's what they do, for a variety of reasons, and leaving a baby to cry sometimes for very short periods is not going to harm them at all. My sister did similar as you and paid for it in bucketfuls as it got to a stage where her DD just cried constantly until she was picked up. I even visited once and she was doing her housework with DD in a front carrier strapped to her as she wouldn't stop crying otherwise! I know some parents stress over first babies, and it is understandable to a point, but your DH was trying, and it probably didn't help that he was trying to live up to your standards and his stress was projecting onto your DS.

Op, I would be extremely unhappy in this situation. If he had been trying to settle the baby for several hours and put them in the cot to cry in desperation that would be one thing, but this sounds like lazy and uncaring parenting. Similar to when some partners pretend to be unable to do housework so their partners get stuck with it all. Sounds like he's trying to stop you going out or leaving the baby with him again.

I assume you had agreed that you weren't going down a cry it out route so for him to do this without consulting you is a major thing.

I would be extremely unhappy.

I do like to be in control and have quite set ideas about how I want to raise my daughter.
Surely the daughter is his also? And HE was the one who had issues with being a parent? 🤔

shomepotatosalad
"Sleeping though the night" doesn't mean literally sleeping all night. It means not waking up fully and calling for someone to come to them. Nobody sleeps through the night. But a 9 month old is generally fully capable of experiencing natural sleep / wake patterns and not requiring an adult to get them back to sleep. For certain, taking them out of bed and reading them a story is the absolute worst way to encourage them to do that.

When I see people complaining their 9 month old, or 3 year old has never slept through the night, invariably they will go on to explain all the wakeful things they do with their child at midnight and 3 am.

cathf
I tend to agree. Sleepless nights for two years seems worn like a badge of honour, like an inevitable battle scar. If people choose to go down the attachment parenting route, it's their choice and if it works for them, great. Where it bothers me is the suggestion that allowing a child to cry in order to encourage good sleeping habits is neglectful or causes brain damage. That is not at all helpful to the mum of a baby who isn't sleeping and looking for suggestions on how to fix it. No, they are told to suck it up, exhaustion is the price to pay for being a parent.

Perspective - when your baby is 20 and pissing it up all night in uni, none of this will matter. Your baby was safe and woke up smiling. Keep trucking on, it gets easier.

I completely get that I was being unreasonable about the crying thing and that yes 10 minutes is nothing. I think it was my initial reaction to "let him cry himself to sleep" that took over.

And yes if it helps him self settle then maybe he's done a great thing!! I am going to take your comments on board about not treating him like a student and actually engaging him differently. I want him to feel confident, all I've wanted from the beginning is to feel like I am not doing most of the parenting by myself, but maybe it's my fault for how I've been approaching it.

cathf - I suggested him taking him downstairs only if he wasn't tired and was wide awake/alert, this is not an unreasonable thing to suggest to help him regain his tiredness, it's hardly a faff to take him downstairs at 9pm, it's not like it's 3 in the morning. I did not say that this is what I do regularly as I have never needed to do that. He has woken up a few times at 1ish when he has been teething and is quite clear he was too awake to go back to sleep. On one occasion I tried to get him back to sleep for ages but he was having none of it. He wasn't crying or anything. So after a few hours, I put him under his play mat in his nursery, once again, not a faff, he played for 15 minutes and then showed all the signs he was tired - he was asleep within 10 minutes after that. That was a complete one off and I've not had to do it again.

The only reason I wasn't keen on the in laws coming over is because rather than him taking the lead and they be in the background, he lets them take the lead and he stays in the background. So I just don't feel like he's going to learn that way. I went to Sainsbury's once and left DS at home with DH. I came back an hour and a half later and DH was in the front garden pulling weeds out, i asked who was with DS and he said he called SiL over because he was running out of ways to entertain him!

I think mum's have such a hard job, especially in this day and age when we are so informed by research and others opinions that really make us think and consider all our parenting choices. Plus 9 months and going out, I'm sure you had mixed feeling, probably tired and anxious at leaving baby with a husband you says shows no interest in the baby.

Equally I think he tried very hard, especially if he's not very involved usually, he called you in a panic then called/texted you back and apologised. I think he did a good job.

Parenting is hard, it's even harder when two parents don't parent from the same book, I've been lucky that my husband has listened to a great deal of our parenting decisions but we discuss them all, come to a conclusion together but even then do parent differently.

Frankly, I think no one will ever parent exactly like anyone else, how you parent and your husband is different and you know what? That's ok!

I think it's sounds like you Paniced over a loss of control in this situation, you had hoped baby would sleep all night, or at least until you were back, and so it wasn't something you considered and you weren't happy with his handing.

I think it has less to do with your husbands parenting decisions and more you we're upset your becautiul baby woke up and you weren't there.

Deep breaths! But give yourself AND your husband a break. I wonder if your husbands disinterest has more to do with not feeling like he can't do right with you than actual disinterest, but either way I don't think he's coming to come around to your way of thinking by screaming and crying.

I think I would have approached with praise to my husband but said something like, you did Great, thank you so much, it was so great to get out, when I go out next time and if he wakes up can you pick him up when he cries? I've read research into leaving babies cry it out and I'm not sure I'm comfortable to leave him to cry, makes me feel like he thinks we have left him. But I'm graceful you were able to get him back to sleep.