To think DH should apologise for deliberately waking me?

[Somanysocksbutnopairs]

Some background: I am a sahm with an autoimmune condition that makes mornings very difficult for me. I wake up feeling more tired than when I went to bed, often in a lot of pain and unable to move much. Today was a bad one, felt like I'd been hit by a bus. I have a series of alarms on my phone to make sure my two DC are ready on time for school. DH, family and friends walk them round for me (very short walk). DH WFH a couple of times a week.

Which brings me to this morning. DH starts off before my 1st alarm ~7.30 by doing something in the bed he knows disturbs my sleep (not to me tho!). But I'm so tired I'm able to fall back to sleep anyway. He then leaves the curtains open before going to his home office. I ask him to shut them but he ignores me. At this point I'm wondering if he's being a dick today.

First alarm goes at 7.45. I call to kids to make sure they're up, as per usual. DC1(9) comes into my bedroom and is already fully dressed, teeth brushed and all. DC closes the curtains for me and goes off to have breakfast.
Next alarm goes, 8am, for getting dressed. I can hear they're still eating so I go back to sleep.

Next thing I know, DH is dumping DC2(6) on top of me, hurting me in the process. DC2 is fully dressed, hair done, so I ask DH wtf?! He says I need to be awake and paying attention to them. So I ask him what exactly do DC1 and 2 still need to do? (My 8.10 finish-getting-ready/hair/teeth alarm hasn't even gone yet). Answer: Nothing, but I should be awake.

Couple of mins later he starts loudly playing music. He doesn't usually do this. Again, I suspect it was to prevent me dozing.

The kids aren't always ready like this, some days they need more help/attention than others and I was so grateful to them that they'd chosen today to be little angels and I could rest, but that was ruined by DHs behaviour. So pissed off at him! I had it out with him over lunch and he's refusing to accept he's done anything wrong, other than hurting me with a child and "communicating badly".

Yabu - no parent should be able to sleep in past 7.30am on a school day! Illness is no excuse you lazy lady!! (This was pretty much his argument when refusing to apologise just now)

Yanbu - he's the unreasonable one and should apologise!

Because from his point of view, he’s pissed off and frustrated with the situation. In his view, you’re just lazing in bed.

OP, it may hurt, but you NEED to force yourself up to be with your kids, even if you’re only just sitting and watching them
get ready. Be a parent, especially as you are a SAHM.

Yet you’re spending time on here. No one’s forcing you to take part.

@DixonD he wasn't pissed off with the situation, he was pissed off with me because I hadn't looked into the activity he wanted to book. We looked at it together last night and booked it.

Nobody here is qualified to talk about my children's wellbeing because they've never met them! I'm raising children to be adults, not minding helpless pets FFS. The eldest is male, the younger female - I'm raising a lovely boy who will become a man who doesn't have the expectation that he has to be served by the women in his life and who looks out for his little sister.

There are lots of things that aren't "ideal" when raising children. Bottle feeding isn't "ideal", single parenting isn't "ideal" and having disability in the family isn't "ideal", but that doesn't mean it can't work and have perfectly good outcomes. I had a good morning today, I was awake and up. It varies.

Also, I am not the problem, the disability is. I am not my disability. The whole family works together, against the disability. Call it Fred if you like, Fred is an evil bastard who makes life difficult for all of us and is attached to me, but I am not Fred.

I'm not saying all this to convince myself either, but in the hope that maybe a few people might reconsider the assumptions they made and why they made them, and next time not be so... Well, plain old nasty in a few cases.

There is a huge difference between I'm raising children to be adults and EXPECTING your children to adult. You are doing the latter.

Same with 'I'm raising a lovely boy who will become a man who doesn't have the expectation that he has to be served by the women in his life and who looks out for his little sister'. What you really mean is 'I am raising a boy who cant not rely on his mother so needs to be self sufficient and also take care of his little sister'.

Can you really not see this?

Also, I am not the problem, the disability is. I am not my disability. The whole family works together, against the disability. Call it Fred if you like, Fred is an evil bastard who makes life difficult for all of us and is attached to me, but I am not Fred.

@Somanysocksbutnopairs i disagree that you are not your disability, you seem to be making life in your house revolve around you and your disability. I also don't think " the whole family" should be working together against the disability! It should be you working so that the disability has as little effect on the children's lives as possible! Its not their responsibility to help with your disability!

@Somanysocksbutnopairs I can't believe that you are addressing concerns about your children to left to fend for themselves as being the same as being a single parent or bottle feeding. You are insistent the arrangement is working [for you] because your children arrive dressed and telling you you are the best mum ever whle they close the curtains and tip toe out of the room. But I don't think you are being honest about what is necessarily best for your kids.

Yes the whole family works against the disability. But it seems to me that you expect everyone else to pick up the peices without even a whisper of being disgruntled while for you it's fine to adjust your behaviour as you want.

If I was your husband, doing verything around the house, never having a lie in, having to work as the sole earner and supervise my children while I do (or watching my 9 year old parent my 6 year old) because you can't I would sometimes wake up resentful too. Not because I'd blame you for your disability, but because I would be feeling fed up. In much the same way you are fed up with your bad night. All these things are not your fault, but they are not his either.

Fend for themselves?! Listen to yourselves, it's a bowl of cereal and putting on their uniform! Children in Japan walk themselves to school at 5 years old, talk about low expectations!
I'm in the next room, not dead, and not matter how bad a morning I'm having they can and will wake me if needed - I'll wake if I hear anything out of the ordinary too, but I've already explained this.

Here's a question for all of you:

Would you like to watch your own mother shuffling about, clearly in a lot of pain, to do something for you that you know you could easily do yourself?
That would feel good? Make you happy? Set you up for a good morning?

Funnily, my children don't actually like seeing me in pain and being able to do a little something for themselves gives them a way they can help. I don't want them to help me, and don't ever ask them to (even when the little one really wants to help me with my socks!) but it isn't at all bad that they can do something for themselves.

OP - I would disengage from this thread now, you'll only upset yourself. Whats more I would ask MN to close this down as this is becoming very uncomfortable to read re: the vitriol you're getting.

@bloodyplanes
I disagree that you are not your disability, you seem to be making life in your house revolve around you and your disability. I also don't think " the whole family" should be working together against the disability! It should be you working so that the disability has as little effect on the children's lives as possible! Its not their responsibility to help with your disability!

For the OP's pp it seemed as though the whole family did revolve around her disability but I think it is wrong to say that for anyone with a disability or requiring any form of additional consideration that it is not the reasonable of the whole family to care for each. Families should look after each other. But it shouldn't be unidirectional.

@Somanysocksbutnopairs glad to see to are feeling a bit better today and hopefully the meds change will have a positive impact.

I am not sure you are looking at this from your kids' perspective. You are essentially framing this as look after yourself or cause your mum pain. You are still looking at it from the perspective of you.

This thread is pointless.

OP - before you do ask for MN to close it (if you are going to take the previous commenters advice) it might be a good idea to PM the few that can't see why the majority are concerned about the current set up so you can exchange contact details.

That way, when something like this happens again, you can have the echo chamber that you wanted, and others wouldn't waste their time being concerned, making suggestions with children in mind and being accused of bullying and insulting.

I wish you well.

Thank you @sillysmiles , I'm doing my best. This is all so annoying because everything I do is for my family, i push myself as hard as I can every day for them, everything I do is painful and hard but I do it. And it feels like no matter how many times I've tried to explain that, and other people who get it have too, I've had it assumed that I'm some sort of selfish blob who expects everyone to run around after her. They couldn't be further from the truth.

Don’t shuffle around in pain. Don’t leave your children unattended.

Apply for PIP. Get a cleaner and get proper childcare.

Would you like to watch your own mother shuffling about, clearly in a lot of pain, to do something for you that you know you could easily do yourself?
That would feel good? Make you happy? Set you up for a good morning?

Or would you hide your pain by getting up earlier and taking your meds and be present for your kids letting them go off to school happy or would you lie in bed not see your kids and let them go to school worrying because mummy is in bed AGAIN?

Honestly you cant put the responsibility of managing your pain onto your kids. its like talking to a brick wall.

All this tooing and froing and the answer is in your op!

so I ask DH wtf?! He says I need to be awake and paying attention to them. So I ask him what exactly do DC1 and 2 still need to do? (My 8.10 finish-getting-ready/hair/teeth alarm hasn't even gone yet). Answer: Nothing, but I should be awake

You're quite right OP. No one here knows your family and the impact on your children of your routine. Unfortunately, the one person who is in a position to judge that, your husband, doesn't think its adequate. Its understandable you might dismiss the opinions of strangers, but why are you dismissing those of their other parent?
Obviously you can't force yourself beyond your capacity, but there's a place between that and a stubborn insistence that this works out just fine, when the other parent in the scenario is telling you it doesn't.
To use your own analogy: You need to give Fred your full attention some mornings, so can't be available. What are the options to ensure your children get the full attention their father is saying they need?

Ah, so that's why you don't understand. You don't understand why at that point, on that day, the fatigue meant that I needed a little more time to wake than my children needed me. It's hard to accept, but sometimes, my needs do take priority over other's wants. They didn't need my attention, (DC didn't even want it), I needed a bit longer. I don't like it either, but that's the reality.

The thing was that DH wasn't actually concerned for the children btw, he was lashing out about other things, that's why he was trying to wake me before I'd normally be awake on even a good day.

The hyperbole about my children being left unattended is just getting silly though. They're not toddlers, they're not going to spontaneously combust if an adult isn't in the room with them at all times. I doubt there are many parents out there who spend the entire time they're at home in the same room as their school age children. Or who never call to their children to come here or time to do this or time to do that in the morning.
Or who never have a lie in where their children are already up and about, playing or watching TV or something.

But they are unattended, you are sleeping (or trying to), your DH is working (either in his office or in his home office). You can argue about whether they can cope with that, but you can't dispute that they are.

If your DH is saying to you that you need to give the children some attention, which he did, why do you keep insisting that that is all a guise for being pissed off as something else. So you think he is just lying and manipulating you?

I love this idea that all I need to do is get up a bit earlier and take "my meds", please can I have some of these magic meds please? All the ones I've got don't work like that... Also, if you've got anything that cures me, I'd really really like that instead please. Thank you! 😁

@whatadayforadaydream yes, that's exactly it: he was lying and manipulating me because he was annoyed that I hadn't done the thing he'd wanted me to do yet. He does that sort of thing, and it's really bloody annoying because I'd quite like it if he'd not play silly games. That was the whole reason I posted, I was fed up with exactly that behaviour from him. He was trying to wake me from the minute he was awake, before the children were up!

Or it is something that he is disgruntled about, but it comes up when he is cross with you?

Either he is an ass, or he is at the end of his tether with the situation as it is (his load, your contribution, the kid's situation) and that needs to be addressed. You paint it very one sidedly, with you being the victim and your husband being awful - I wonder if his side would look different. It's easy for me to imagine it could look very different based on the information you have given about your family set up.

Apply for PIP. Get a cleaner and get childcare.

This is the other thing. You are quick to ridicule the suggestions that might make things better for your DC, and then ignore practical advice. Is it because that will be admitting that you are not currently doing what is best for them I wonder? Or that your DH is carrying an unfair burden? Again, I am not having a go. I just think it can be very easy to fall in to a pattern of being defensive, especailly when you clearly love your kids and (I think, given you say he is awful) your DH. It can be really hard to consider the possibility that something you are causing - deliberately or not - isn't the best thing for them.

@whatadayforadaydream When he's cross about something, he often sparks arguments about something completely unrelated. Doesn't even have to be cross at me or something I've done, it's an unhealthy outlet for emotions he's not good at handling. On the other side, I'm a bottler, I'll bottle it all up and then either have a crying session or explode at one of his provocations. Not healthy either, I know, and I try not to! I thought letting a bit out on here might help me not bottle it up quite so much and it did a bit.
Before all this, years ago, we used to sit down together from time to time and have a good old, calm, heart to heart to sort through things, but we've not been able to do that for a while. Wish we could again.

It sounds like resentment has built up on both sides. Him to you for the load he feels he is unfairly carrying, and you to him for not giving you sufficient sympathy and understanding for your condition. I think it would be worth trying to find that communication again, it would probably vastly improve things. Couples counselling might be a good shout.