To expect DH to do a full night with baby

[BigMama32]

DH works long hours at a high pressure job, out the door by 6am home again 1730/1800. We have a LB who’s 4 months and struggling a bit with his sleep at the moment. So, Sunday to Friday I do the full nights so he can rest and then he gets a lie in on Saturday. The trade off is he does Saturday night and I get a lie in on Sunday,

every Saturday night I end up having to come out of the spare room and intervening. I’ve tried ignoring but DH gets pissed off with baby not sleeping and left him hungry, crying, alone in the nursery and told me he was about to “lose it”. I told him to immediately leave the room and I took over.
the next feed the sand night again from the spare room I hear LB screaming and DH getting angry again. I come out make the prepare his milk, calm LB down while hosannas steps out and then hand him back to my husband and go back to bed.

He gets 8hrs a night 6 days a week, I just want one night to rest. Husbands response is well you didn’t have to step in which resulted in ab argument.
However, I don’t feel I could have not intervened, as I can’t sleep through my LB crying anyway.

AIBU?

We do similar to @Brandybucks

I need more sleep altogether but don't mind it broken down into chunks, whereas DH copes on a lot less sleep than me but does far better if it's in one chunk. So I've always done overnight but he takes DC early in the morning and I go back to bed for a chunk of sleep. I'm breastfeeding anyway so would do nights regardless but this method has got us both plenty of sleep with two DC!

It does sound like he's being a prat, but maybe there's a way that works better for both?

He needs to get a lid on the anger.

How about if you get a broken night's sleep on the Saturday, your night off switches to Sunday night and he tries again... until he gets it right.

That would be more motivation than doing a rubbish job = OP does it for me.

DH copes surprisingly well on very little sleep, but not at all on broken sleep. So our process was a version of this (changing slightly depending now hat was going on etc):

He would do the late night feed etc as he tends to go to bed late anyway. So I'd go to bed at say 10:30 and he'd be up and feed DS at 11:30/1200. Ideally, he'd then get DS to sleep again but worst case, he might find himself awake for longer if DS was difficult to settle.

I'd then do the middle of the night stuff (although Ds was a difficult sleeper so there were nights where if it went on for hours, I might have had to get DH to take over but I usually avoided that).

Then, he was back "on" from around 5:30/600 depending on how the night went.So if it was a week day, he'd be up with DS if necessary very early and h ave him with him while he got ready to work so I could get a few solid hours of sleep. ON the weekend, he might get up with him and then give him back to me at 8am or whatever and have a lie in if it was his turn. (this bit was a bit fluid).

If your DH really doesn't cope in the middle of the night, could something like this work? There were nights when DH would only get 4-5 hours consecutive sleep (not every night - most nights he got about 5-6 at least with the option of a long lie on at least once a weekend), but he coped much better than going to bed only to be woken up an hour later.

...and I agree with splitting the night up instead of trying to do the full thing in one chunk. Me and OH did that too - I did most of overnight and he took over about 4-5am (depending on how badly baby was sleeping).

Your husband is a prick
he gets 8 hours sleep a night
and it looks like approx 4-5 hours to himself a day from when he comes home to when he goes to bed - unless he’s doing all the cooking cleaning etc in that time to give you a break? I suspect not.

i also suspect since his job is light enough that he managed to finish and travel home by 5.30/6 that he also manages to get a lunch break or a coffee break some days, some down time and time to socialise a little even for 10 minutes with other adults, which I imagine you’re not getting much of either.
and the man cannot cope even one night with your child? To the point you fear for your babies safety and have to step in. Honestly that is awful, he’s either a bit unhinged or a horrifically selfish man who cba parenting when he knows he can make a fuss and you’ll do it.
you need to have a serious word with him, the best case scenario here is that he’s a selfish idiot who’s only thinking of himself and not seeing the sacrifices you are making, he will feel guilty and ashamed, and step up and do more.
alternatively nothing will change then you need to think about why you’re with him because you can’t even trust him to keep his child safe and you’re doing all the work anyway

I agree with this

If he can't cope in the middle of the night, then he should do the late night/early start and/or accept that he doesn't get any lie ins - those are reserved for you as a way for you to catch up on the sleep you lose 7 nights a week while he gets a lovely 8 hours.

A few ideas

• next Friday night he’ll shadow you, ie wale up every time you do and observe how you handle things. Then he does the Saturday on his own.
• don’t go when he is looking after the baby - I voted YABU for this as you can’t expect him to get better if you keep taking charge. This is obviously as long as you don’t feel there is a physical risk to the baby. Some crying is to be expected, it doesn’t mean you have to go and check on him.
• switch Friday/Saturday so that he is in charge on Friday - if he asks for your help he is in charge the next night as well.
• whenever he asks for your help at night you are allowed a 2h nap the next day while he looks after the baby

but when he flips it is volcanic

That would massively concern me. What is he doing to deal
with it? His baby is four months old. If he’s irritated to the point of needing to step away now, what will he be like when baby is older, and has more annoying habits, or can deliberately be a bit of a pain?

4 months ago your baby was growing inside you. Able to sleep and feed when ever they chose knowing they were warm and safe inside you; their home.

Now you leave the most vulnerable youngest person in the house in a cold cot in a lonely room when they know their safest place is their home; you.

Stop playing games with your baby.

It is not your baby's job to be concerned for your lack of sleep.
It is not your baby's job to support your partner's sleep.

It's yours. You chose to be a parent.

Have healthy foods to keep yourself well and sleep during the day.

Sleep will be different until your child is at least 6 years old. You may get a full 6 hour sleep in 24 hours but not likely in one block.

Parenting isn't just 9-5 it's also overnight too.

YABVVVU @BigMama32 to leave your baby in the care of a man who left him hungry, crying, alone in the nursery this is absolutely disgusting behaviour. Your poor child saddled with an abusive father and a mother who lets him away with it.

Fucksake what a sanctimonious load of twaddle.
Why don't you save your lectures for men who refuse to step up to parenting responsibilities, & leave OP out of it?

I would be afraid to leave him alone with the child.

YABVVVU to suffer such appalling reading comprehension issues that you fail to see that as soon as OP saw what was happening, she told him to immediately leave the room and I took over @Yirumafan.

She hasn't "let him get away with it". That's her whole problem - she is meant to have one overnight off a week, but doesn't get it because she has to supervise her useless, angry dick of an H.

I BF so slightly different but as per pp, I used to do the overnight wakes,,then DP would get up early (whenever the wake up occurred between 4 and 5am normally) and I would have a few hours unbroken sleep. Ditto when he got home from work/ early evening, I’d have a few hours solid sleep before the night shift began.

We’d do this most days and whilst we can’t deny we were both knackered, we both felt ‘ok’ and like it was a pretty fair split in the circumstances.

My DP is very patient though so I felt happy to go off to sleep whenever I could and not worry. He’d take the baby out of the house for a walk before he’d wake me up again. I think that’s what you need to get to the bottom of first.

As you're doing the majority of the parenting here, he probably doesn't know what to do and therefore gets very flustered very quickly and then he gets to the breaking point where his temper is concerned and becomes (to use your phrase) volcanic!
So, I would take him through how you do it and be sure to say, "Ok well this is how I look after baby, it might work for you, it works for me and when you're looking after Baby, try this and see how you get on".

I would tell him (in good time) that you're going to use earplugs and he MUST get on with being Daddy to Baby. This is not optional. He is not to disturb you unless Baby's arm is hanging off (don't use that example but make it clear that this is his time with Baby).
He doesn't have the option of saying that he's going to lose it. You respond with "You don't get to say that you're going to lose it. You can't lose it. You're Daddy. You have to deal with this. Work out what Baby wants/needs and look after getting that/doing that/sorting that".

I 100% agree with the suggestions by @BlingLoving and @LovelyLovelyWarmCoffee if he doesn't start pulling his weight.

I guess you're finding out that he's a bit of a shit dad. If he can't do it without getting angry, he can't be alone with the baby sadly.

@KettrickenSmiled I’m afraid it’s you who suffers from a lack of reading comprehension. OP said herself that after she did that feed she left him with her DH again and went off to the spare room to then again from the spare room I hear LB screaming and DH getting angry again

Two unfit parents here imo. The father for obvious reasons and also op for leaving him with the baby again after knowing how he was acting toward the baby.

I could have written this myself a few years ago. My DD never settled as well for DH as she did for me in the first 6 months and it lead to some really horrible middle of the night arguments for us. If we had another I would
not want him to do any of the nights solo and instead would get him to take over early mornings so I could get an extra few hours or take the baby to his mums or something for an afternoon.

wishing you the very best, the first year with a baby is testing on even the strongest marriage x

They’re still so young at 4 MO, when they start sleeping through the night it’s absolutely life changing

Yup. And when that happened again, she was straight back in there to sort it out.
She's not a mind reader & doesn't have precognition. I imagine the last thign she expected was for H to kick off AGAIN.
Now she knows what he's capable of, she's posting for advice about how to get him to step up. How she can control his temper (spoiler - she can't. All she can do is what she is doing now - keep being the one who does all the overnights). I suspect he won't step up, will choose to keep deliberately displaying his temper, & she'll eventually become disillusioned & leave him

Stop blaming a woman for a man's "volcanic" temper.
OP is up 7 nights out of 7 caring for her child. Because he H won't stick to his agreement of parenting his own child one night a week.

I think your husband is going to get an absolute hammering here and maybe rightly, maybe wrongly but I agree with this: Honestly 1 night is probably not enough for him to have the experience and confidence to settle a baby.

He doesn't know what the fuck he's doing, the baby doesn't know where the fuck mum is and it's all going to shit. It's not very nice feeling like the incompetent parent, it's not very nice feeling like the incompetent parent at 3am and not having a clue what to do about it.

That would be my starting point.

Agree with @Brandybucks although I was Bf so a little different. My DH didn't spend enough time with DD due to work to be able to confidently comfort her at night when really all she wanted was her mum anyway. It was causing upset for everyone. So instead he would do any wake up after 5am, and also help me get a 2-3 hour nap at weekends too. Worked well for us as I couldn't sleep with her crying anyway.

The fact that he said is about to ‘lose it’ is very concerning.

I think he needs an anger management course or he could harm baby or you.

Aside from that he sounds like a selfish twat.

Hmmm.

My starting point would be, don't take your volcanic temper out on your 4 month old baby. It's a great starting point, because you need absolutely zero experience with babies to be able to abide by it. It only goes awry if the parent is a total dick.