sleep training & DH's excuses

[happilyLostCareer]

Ds is nearly 8 months. He is a monumentally terrible sleeper who has slept more than about 45 minutes at a time perhaps 10 or 15 times in his whole life.Yes that is correct, I have not slept for more than about 30 minutes at a time in nearly 8 months.

Because DH works and I don't (no point two adults being wrecked) I have slept in DS' room and done every night waking since he was born. DH gets a full night's sleep in our bedroom.

If I ask DH to take DS for a few hours in the evening, if DH is not too busy with work, DH will have all the lights on, computer screens, iPad, skype calls with colleagues, etc and DS will get very little sleep and will just be crying with hunger and tiredness until I wake up and take him back. DS will then take 3+ hours to settle (falling asleep on the boob, waking a few minutes later, for hours).

So we had planned to try DH sleeping next to DS at night for 4 hour stretches, bringing DS to me for feeds. Except every time we have nearly started DH has an excuse as to why it can't work this week. DH will then claim not to understand why consistency is needed and say he thought we had agreed it was only ever going to be for a couple of nights, or for a couple of hours, or whatever. We will then agree another 5-night window for sleep training and he pulls the same fucking stunt again. I am on my knees with exhaustion. DH is a bit busy with work so can't be expected to commit time and then stick to it.

Then there are all the admiring comments about other mothers who hold down jobs too. Both from DH and his workaholic parents.

AIBU to want to bury DH under the patio? Closely followed by his parents?

Wow, what a selfish arse.

You've probably already done this, but what made it really 'click' for my husband was me appearing in our bedroom at 3am, clutching a wide-awake baby and sobbing that I couldn't cope any more. And my husband was always a lot more helpful during the day/ on weekends than yours is.

It does sound like your baby has a very strong sleep association with BF, and can't settle without it. If you have the energy, I'd start looking at gentle techniques for breaking the association now- things we did included changing DS's bedtime routine so that the feed wasn't the last thing that happened before he slept (we now do bath-feed-story-bed). There's no reason why your husband couldn't get involved with this (doing his story and then settling him), once you've established the routine.

Sounds like your DH is avoiding parenthood, which just isn't acceptable or sustainable. He needs to stop avoiding the issue. Just to give you an idea- my husband is in a very competitive professional role, at senior management level. He would've worked 7am-8pm in the office before DS was born. Now he does 8-6, picks up extra work when the baby is in bed, takes him for an hour in the morning so that I can sleep. He was playing 2 sports at a high amateur level before the birth- he's now dropped down to 1, and left his club's first team so that he doesn't have to attend training sessions after work for the remaining sport.

My view is that, if your husband can't scale back on work, the hobby and sleeping in need to go. He can run at night when the baby is in bed, and be there to support you at the weekend. He needs to accept that his lifestyle must change after having a baby.

Happy to lend the shovel... alternatively My dads got a shotgun and my brother works at a landfill... he could just disappear.

In all seriousness, this sounds awful for you. I have a similar deal with my husband in that I do the "night" shift (so basically all the shifts ) during the working week and he sleeps like he's hibernating so the noise doesn't wake him. That being said firstly my son is a decent sleeper and secondly if I'm really struggling I just wake him and tell him he needs to help. He's never once complained and he's very grateful that I do the nights... I think your OH needs a reality check

(Staring down the barrel of a shotgun can have that effect - Just Saying)

I think he'd need to have time off work to do what you're suggesting. Probably two weeks. PUPD isn't a miracle. It took a few weeks for my DD to get to the point of having significant chunks of sleep on her own and it's still unreliable. She also needs to feed a bit more often than you're thinking of (though she was premature, so adjusted age is a bit younger than yours and I also won't leave her to cry at all). The summer is the perfect time for him to have the time off, has he got any booked?

In the meantime, take the baby into your bed and co-sleep. Even with frequent waking you'll get so much more sleep.

What coconutpie said.

I know it feels all-consuming, but tbh, the sleep is a red herring. The exhaustion is grim, but it would feel a whole lot more bearable (and I've had three of those kinds of sleepers, perhaps not quite so extreme, but definitely constantly being torn out of sleep for the best part of 2 years each - 21 months and counting with no. 3) if your dh was on your team and not simply his own.

I'm not sure there's a lot of point in two of you constantly being disturbed at night, but he NEEDS to give you an evening stretch. My dh still holds dd in the evenings if I need/want a bit of time to wind down in bed without her beside me. The odd time I'm at the utter end of my tether and get him to take her in the early hours, he's fine too. And he has the kind of job to which, when told what he does, most people say 'wow, I couldn't do that'.

Why TF do you all have to get up for his parkrun? And he has a catch up on sleep day I have no words for that. He really does seem to think everything should revolve around him, doesn't he? [Mumbles something stereotyped and unfair about narcissistic male academics I have known].

And yy to co-sleeping. I wouldn't manage without.

Another academic here and I am furious on your behalf reading this. How does he think female academics manage it when they have a baby? I suspect his thoughts would be either that their research probably isn't as important as his or that women are better able to cope with it all .

I know very well how intense and all-consuming academic work can be, and that he won't have the summer off, but as pp have said, he has not sacrificed any of his lifestyle to the demands of parenting and that needs to stop now. I too found bfing the easiest way to manage and I wouldn't necessarily drop that in your position - but I would now be going nuclear at him and telling him he will be doing sleep training and giving you his lie ins, or else. I wouldn't even give him the option of leaving in case he thinks he can saunter off entirely for a bit and return when you've done the hard work. Tell him if he doesn't get enough sleep on this new regime, he'll have to ask for tips from female colleagues on how to cope like they do.

Another ex-academic here with a DD who did not sleep until 2yo...your DH is an arse.

When it comes to your DS some babies are just bad sleepers and you may be in the middle of the 9 month sleep regression when things get worse anyway. I survived by co-sleeping but it was very, very tough. This too shall pass.

Your DH on the other hand is not a baby and should have more understanding and compassion. Academic hours are flexible, he should be able to make some time to let you sleep some evenings or some mornings. Academic careers are also flexible, he could adjust his workload to the fact that he now has a baby. But what shows he is a complete arse is his attitude to DS's sleep when he does have him, e.g. lights on, noise, stimulation, etc. It is bloody boring lying in a dark room with a baby that will wake up as soon as you so much as move but that is life with a baby.

Perhaps show your DH this thread and it might wake him up. If you were divorced he'd have to do a lot more parenting than he is doing now and this can't be right.

Have had a long discussion and sorted out that he feels overwhelmed by his work, and that he cannot ever clear the massive backlog of stuff. There are also lots of job cuts looming (the uni termination machine has already come for most of the other depts), so he feels he has to work twice as hard to stay ahead.

We have agreed that there will be a 5 day trial of PUPD next week (before he goes away for work then comes back to teach pg courses). It is in his work diary. If that gets us nowhere we will look at night nannies.

We passed the topics of hobbies & lie-ins a few times in the discussion but I am currently too tired to have that argument properly.

Can't cosleep with rolly baby & single beds, unfortunately. No room to put a double anywhere.

It's not uncommon to feel over pressured in academia but as others have said, the work is flexible so there really is no excuse for not giving you a break. If he was just doing this because of the pressure of work rather than pure selfishness he wouldn't have all the hobbies and lie ins. Don't be a mug OP.

I am not excusing the hobbies etc, and the Oh It's All Too Hard whinge just mostly made me think Awwwww ddiddums because I know that everyone feels like that and some people learn to cope and get on with life. And others will do anything for a bit of parental approval so prefer work-based martyrdom...

But, we have got as far as agreeing a trial, agreeing what it will look like, and agreeing that as he can't help, if we need further help we go private and look for a night nanny for a bit.

I'm glad you've talked although I'm still not sure he really gets it. He's not so overwhelmed with work that he can't go to park run or lie in on a Sunday and being overwhelmed with work doesn't make you make digs at your exhausted wife about other people managing to work as well.

That said I suspect until you can get a reasonable nights sleep you just don't have the reserves to deal with the bigger picture so persevere with the plan and get the night nanny in ASAP if he doesn't hold up his ending the bargain.

With the co-sleeping, can't you sleep in your bedroom with baby (and bed guard) whilst DH sleeps in the single bed? I'm not sure he needs both a full nights sleep and a double bed all to himself!

It's very very hard, I've been there with the 45-min sleep cycles. My DH worked away a lot so I had no choice but to sleep train myself, with DH helping when he could.

My advice: stop wasting energy trying to get DH to help. He clearly doesn't want to and won't commit to it regularly and you can do without that stress at the moment. Get advice from your HV and/or sleep clinic (Millpond does phone consultations) and get a sleep training plan in place. It usually only takes a few nights.

After 2 nights (Gradual Withdrawal method) my DD started sleeping for 3-hour stretches, within a week she was sleeping a solid 5 hours then a feed then 3 more hours.

Op if you want to try co sleeping but don't have a double bed, you can try using the chicco next to me crib. It's brilliant. It allows you to both sleep next to each other with the option of closing the side of crib too.

Be careful with pick up put down, it's very very easy to get into rocking to sleep and your baby might be a bit old for it.
Would you like the details of a sleep consultant? It's hard to do this on your own (learned from bitter experience)... I can send you a PM.

I think he is taking advantage of your sleep deprived state! Why doesn't he give up his hobby until things get better? Why doesn't he share the lie ins? Why doesn't he sleep in the single bed so you can co sleep in the double?

If you can't cosleep as things stand , how about kicking your Dh out of your bed into a single bed and you and the baby cosleep in your marital bed? Let's face it, you must be far too knackered to give him his conjugal rights.

The exhaustion wouldn't be nearly as bed if he helped you out in the evenings and at weekens - how about he takes ds to parkrun and leaves you for a lie in? He could either volunteer or push ds in the buggy. And yes, he needs to take ds in the evenings for you so you can get your head down.

He needs to actually parent his son

Either cosleep in the double bed and DH sleeps in the single (or the sofa or the floor!) or you get a full sized cot bed and leave it open on one side and push it up against the single mattress on the floor. Make sure they're the same height (you can use thick foam wading underneath the single mattress to raise it up to the same height without affecting the firmness of the mattress.

There are sleep regressions at approx 4-5 months, 9-10 months, 12 months, 18 months and 2 years. My DD also had one at 2.5 when her language really took off. She hit every single bloody bastard one of them. But I survived by cosleeping. And then night weaning by the Dr Jay Gordon technique I linked to above at 15 months.

BUT I also had her silent reflux under control by 5-6 months which made her sleep much better so get these things checked as waking every 45 minutes is extreeme!!

Also, being overwhelmed at work does not even begin to excuse his monumentally selfish behaviour of hobbies, lie ins and refusing to parent or accommodate his sleeping baby when you've gone to bed in the evenings. How can he go about making so much noise with the lights on knowing that he is disturbing his own baby and making things harder for you??!!

This q&a article about cosleeping should answer any qs you have about setting up a safe environment

cosleeping.nd.edu/frequently-asked-questions/#Q28

m.youtube.com/watch?v=9u-IUzGao2U&feature=youtu.be

The video ^^ is a mattress test to make sure it's not too soft

I would definitely recommend sleep training. Your DS is 8 months and is night waking like a newborn. The two things that are key are self settling and not feeding to sleep. Your DS is not suddenly going to sleep longer stretches without some intervention from you. There are several methods for resolving these issues and I urge you to persist. This situation is not sustainable or it will impact severely on your health, your marriage and your DS.

I'm just about there with solving the sleep of an awful nearly 8 month old (one of my twins). My husband has not really ever helped with nights (since first 3 weeks) but he did appreciate that it was very hard for me (he changed jobs when the babies were 3 months old which is much better for our family in the long run but short term very stressful for him).

We agreed to use a sleep consultant which he was totally on board with. I think that by committing and paying money to someone made him step up and do what needed done. I would really recommend this. He did the first 3 nights of work (they cried for more than 3 nights).

I don't think it's very helpful for people to just call your husband a d*ck. Obviously everyone on this thread is just perfect! you are aware there is an issue now you have to try and fix it. Suggestions for how to go about this are much more helpful.

Also we were arguing about my husbands input at weekends. He basically felt like I just bossed him around all the time and I thought he just wasn't bothering. Anyway we've come up with a structured plan which works for us where the mornings are split in 2 and each does a "shift" with the other one having a lie in or going out for a coffee or whatever they chose during the off time (works out as 2 hours each). Then afternoons after nap we will go out as a family and then one of us puts the babies to bed while the other one sorts dinner, this reverses on the other weekend day. If your H needs to do park run on Saturday that can be "his time" but you get yours later in the day on Saturday to do whatever you please? I realise that not everyone would want this structure (obviously flexible for special occasions that occur at weekends). So far it's working great for us and I'm really happy about it.

When I sleep trained my 8 month old DS under the guidance of a Sleep Consultant a lot of her advice/changes focused on breaking the "feed to sleep" association as that's where the majority of our problems lay I think. If you want me to pass on her advice or tips then please PM me, I can also give you her contact details if you wish. I paid £90 for a two hour phone consultation and she was amazing.

I couldn't imagine how not feeding him to sleep was going to pan out but within 3 nights he was self settling.

Co-sleeping was never an option for us because he'd be on me all night, climbing over me, wanting to play etc. I'm very jealous of all the people who say co-sleeping saved them because for me it just made things worse.

My DD cosleeps between me and DP. She sleeps a dream now.
Or kick him into the single bed and you and baby in the double, my DD is eight months too. She's also crawling but hasn't fallen out of the bed if you're worried about that!