AIBU... DH "needs 8 hours sleep", 2 week old baby

[Aw12345]

AIBU?

My MIL has convinced my DH that he should sleep in the spare room to ensure he gets 8 hours uninterrupted sleep every night because he has work.

This has annoyed me because obviously DH has taken this straight to heart and doesn't help me at all with DS (2 weeks old) overnight anymore. We have never discussed this and it annoys me that DH wants all the benefits of a baby without the drawbacks (mainly sleepless nights).

He does not have a demanding job and his work place are very child friendly.

AIBU? I'm seriously annoyed!!!

Well except he doesn’t go out, he works from home, and many many women have broken nights and then head to work the next day without getting fired. I don’t think you’ve read the thread have you?

yes indeed. Can you imagine a thread titled “I’m a working mum, AIBU to think I can’t be expected to do a decent job at work because my children wake up at night sometimes?” You’d get absolutely piled on. Yet when it’s a dad doing Important Man-Work, suddenly it’s totally impossible to parent and work as well, and he must be carefully petted and nurtured by a woman to keep him fit for his 9-5 desk job.

Don’t think OP has said whether she’s planning to be a SAHM? She has a tiny baby so is in the very first weeks of maternity leave!

The 50s live, judging by the number of people on this thread, in 2018, who have come out with some variation of The "Wage Earner's" Job Must Be Protected". (Wage earner... boak. Incidentally, I was still bringing in my full salary for several months after my baby was born. Does that get me any respect with these people?)

Women often go back to work while still getting up multiple times a night, sometimes for years. They don't get sacked. Are women just far, far inherently stronger and superior to men? Or are men fully capable of doing their desk jobs on fractured sleep? As a PP rightly pointed out, surgeons do their jobs on buggered sleep all the time, because they work shifts and do on-calls. If they can do it, a desk jockey can.

Men don't get sacked because they're tired from doing wakeups with their newborn.

Oh ffs no one is going to be so exhausted they can’t work properly if they only get 6 hours sleep 3 nights a week and 8 the rest for example

A huge number of jobs expect you to be able to survive on a lot less on a regular basis anyway and pull 24 hr shifts and all nighters

My dh didn't get up in the night with my first until I stopped breastfeeding (and went back to work) at six months. Not because he was an arse but because there wasn't much he could really do as ds just cried, fed and went back to sleep, I only changed his nappy if it was smelly and I didn't wind him as he was breastfed and never needed it. My aim was to wake up as little as possible and I usually went straight back to sleep so the whole thing was fairly painless.

Very different with dd, and dh was much more involved, especially for the three or so hour late night screaming which he pretty much took on while sending me back to bed. Plus he also got up if ds cried (very short age gap). I was back at work when dd was three months so we both had to cope with being very tired. It was pretty hellish but at least we weren't wildly resentful of each other.

Different approaches work with different babies/ circumstances, the important thing is that you can talk to each other and figure out ways that spread the burden in a way you are both OK with. IT does sound as if your dh wants all the good without having to take care of any of the bad and that's really pretty shit. Especially with him home all the time so he can see how much work / how stressful it is.

The OP is not a SAHM, she is on maternity leave with a newborn. The assumption with a SAHM is that the children are older and know the difference between night and day. A newborn makes no such distinction and often does not even want to be put down into a crib. The maternity leave is to gradually get baby to a point where they learn to sleep in a cot or crib and many don't get it initially.

If your DH works mainly at home and does not need to drive anywhere he should be taking more of an equal parent role in that he could do the late feeds or the early morning ones so you get a solid block of 4 hours sleep. That would help you a lot. He could also make you lunch and hold the baby while you eat it. Good he bathed him so you could get some sleep. If men don't get involved in parenting they just use the excuse that you settle the baby easier than him which is just rubbish. You settle the baby better because you do it more often. How else is he going to learn unless he does it?

Yes I am on maternity pay, my income is equally as important as his to our household. Not to mention the savings/car/mortgage overpayments/baby stuff my salary contributed massively to before DS was born.

Ignore all this "wage earner" bollocks OP. It just shows that some people plain don't want to move on from the 1950s and the all-powerful Penis Paycheque.

Like a PP, my DH and I worked together on the basis that 9-5 M-F his job was in the office and mine was at home, and outside of those hours parenting was a joint task to be divided as fairly as possible.

Of course he needs his sleep if he's not on paternity leave, how do you expect him to function and keep his job if he's been up every 2 hours? It won't be forever

Where did OP say she wants him to be up every 2 hours? Do you not realise there's a middle ground between being up for every feed and being up to do the winding etc for maybe one of them and perhaps wake up early plus a bit more at weekend?

Absolutely he can have 8 hours sleep every night- when your D.C. is about 5 (if he’s lucky)

Knob.

Can not believe some of the nonsense on this thread! Of course he should be helping you, especially if he is working from home and has an hour long lunch break. He should definitely be helping at least until midnight even if it’s just bringing you a cup of tea while you feed. It doesn’t sound like his work is so taxing that interrupted sleep would make him unable to do his job. His attitude towards you seems a bit cold considering you’ve only just given birth. It also seems like you don’t communicate with each other well.

Get him helping now OP. My DS was so used to DH being at work and not helping in the nights that when I’ve needed him to do a night shift DS screamed the house down for 6 hours. Although I’m back at work next week and absolutely dreading having to function at work while DS is still up every few hours, it has to be done, men shouldn’t get a free pass because of it.

For context, my DC1 was not a good sleeper. I went back to work when he was 8 months, and got up twice a night (on a good night) with him until he was 18 months. That's almost a year. Some days I went to sleep and saw clients on two hours of sleep, or none. I still have my job.

I used to hand my baby DS who suffered from severe reflux to DH at 6pm as soon as he walked through the door, and we would spend our evening taking it in turns to pace round the living room. He also did the weekend nights so I could get some rest. He did this because he’s their Dad, he’s a parent as much as I am and doesn’t try and get off his responsibilities because he ‘works’. Which btw so do I.

What does your DH actually do OP? Apart from cuddle him now and again? Does he do bathtime as a regular thing if not why not?

I remember so much resentment after my DH went back to work. I felt like his life had barely changed and mine was completely unrecognisable. My dd is ebf and there was nothing he could really do at night, she really only woke to eat and went back to sleep there was no use him getting up aswell. The difference is he has a pretty intense job and needs to be rested or its unsafe. I had an office job and managed it perfectly well on 4 hours a night with pregnancy insomnia and severe morning sickness!
My DH also does the bulk of the nappy changes during the day and doesn't hesitate to go to the baby when she starts crying.
He needs to buck his ideas up he's perfectly capable of holding the baby as he eats and sandwich and giving you an hour nap.
Stop this behaviour now or he'll never pull his share.

If there is ANY question about your H’s attitudes and willingness to share parenting (24/7) and domestic work it makes sense to return to work after mat leave.

If in general he’s a good partner, it’s still early days and this could be denial / adjustment, and he could get with the programme! Hope so.

Sadly, some men are selfish/sexist and this is often not obvious until having DC! Some simply won’t do their fair share.

My dh tried the 'ill sleep in the sparetoom and get all the sleep' thing with me when dd2 was born. I said no. I was breastfeeding, but I didnt want to be alone. He slept next to me just fine, but was there if i needed to poke him to get me something or tag in ams hold dd2 whilst I went for a pee. He still averaged a damn sight more sleep than I did. Yanbu.

With baby number 1 I did all the wakings and even left the room to change his nappy so I didn’t disturb my husband too much if he grizzled. My husband always gave me a lie in at the weekends though and would sometimes even take our son out for a drive in the early hrs of the morning if he was unsettled. This time around we had to contend with a toddler who was going through a sleep regression at the same time as a newborn so no chance I was getting up for both, we had to divide and conquer, I obviously took he newborn as I’m bf. Some nights that was actually the easier option as our toddler could be really hard to settle. Now my baby is 12 weeks old and the toddler is back to sleeping through most nights. My husband does have to get up early for work and works long hours as well. In my opinion partners should be helping. Just because they are working doesn’t mean that you can survive on no sleep, it’s not good for your mental health or wellbeing.

I feel we're going too far in the other direction, frankly.

OP said DH does not have a demanding job, which I take to mean it is not one where he will lose his job if he misses a deadline/can't do 5 hours of unexpected overtime, not a job where people will die or millions will be lost if he messes up. So he can take a significant chunk of the sleep loss.

I don't think it's a penis thing to protect the wage earner's job, I just don't think it's unreasonable to expect this level of concession with a newborn. I have a relatively demanding job where missing 6 hours of sleep on a regular basis could be disastrous, so normally getting sleep is an important bargaining chip from my standpoint - still with a newborn I have taken leave as much as possible and been direct in running things past colleagues where I am sleep deprived due to baby, there was no expectation either from myself or colleagues that I would not be tired with a new baby, and frankly I think OP's DH should just communicate to bosses what is happening in his life if he's worried and bloody well pitch in.

If you are breastfeeding and have to get up with the baby through the night anyway, what is the point of you both being up? That seems totally unnecessary. He may as well get some rest tbh.

I think if he works FT and you aren't, then best leave him to his sleep. But he should be helpful when he is awake though.

Wow that's awful! Parents of newborns don't get enough sleep full stop. He is a parent of a newborn so should expect to be sleep deprived. You're doing all the hard work, he only needs to change some nappies!

Maybe talk to him about how he's not a child who needs to do what his Mum says but is now a Dad who needs to be responsible and share the load.

He will be your son's role model and needs to model reasonable behaviour.

2 weeks is early days.
DS was end Things we did ;
1)I co-slept with DS in the spare room, on the understanding I would not be getting up with DH for work
2) I handed DH DS between 5 and 8 am if he wouldn't settle after feeding
3) With Dd (mix fed) DH gave the 10/11pm bottle so I could go to bed at 8:30 or 9.
We never did the share the lie-in thing as neither of us much likes lie-ins, but DH had DS from 8-10:30 every Saturday morning from 12 weeks so I could go to yoga

I don't like these sarky comment about living in the 1950s.

Equality in a relationship means having a choice as to how you're going to split parenting tasks. Some people will choose to do it 50:50, others will do it a different way depending on their circumstances.

The OP's real problem was that her MIL was sticking her nose into their domestic arrangements and telling her what to do. She's addressing this with her DH and I hope they'll find the arrangement that suits them best.