I have two children aged 3 and 7. There has been regular conflict between my husband and I since we had our first born about the fact that I get up with our child/children every morning while he stays in bed, sometimes for 5/10 mins or for anything up to an hour. At one point the conflict was frequent and problematic because our kids were going through a long phase of waking up for the day at 5am and I was so very very tired (I also breastfed both so was up in the night too). It’s got easier as our children have grown and now get up at a more reasonable time (between 6-7.30) and most of the time I don’t mind being up with them and having that time before the busy day starts however when there is an unsettled night I can’t help but feel resentful that he never offers to get up. Between Xmas and new year I had to work so he took our children away to their grandparents for a couple of nights so they could see their cousins etc and now he is back he is essentially saying I was given the opportunity to have two lye ins (which is not true as I was working) so why should he get up with them and also pointed out that he does the lions share of the childcare so it all ‘balances out’ (he has my son after school four days a week as he does not want to put him in after school club and has the flexibility to take time away from his business whereas I am working till 5 so his is not an option for me) we can not agree on this. I don’t feel he does the ‘lions share’ because he has my son after school. All he does is pick him up and let him sit on his ipad for two hours while he works on his laptop in the other room. At weekends and as soon as I finish work at 5pm I switch into parent mode to remove the childcare from him. So I’m either working or parenting yet he constantly tells me he does the lions share. I would happily do all the childcare and would love to be a part time worker so I could do the school pick ups every day and have time off with my children but financially we need me to be working. I recently changed my hours to compressed so I work 37 hours over four days so I could have our youngest one day a week rather than my husband having her two days a week. We now have her at home one day each a week but he likes to point out how he did a whole year of having her two days a week. I would have loved to have had her two days a week but again he is needing me to work full time for financial reasons.
it all feels horribly unfair and I find myself feeling restful. When we attempt to talk this through it ends up in a huge row and he accuses me of being completely unreasonable. He says if I want to stay in bed later I should just get out my phone and let the kids watch some TV on that. Just for the record I actually hate staying in bed so don’t fancy lying about, I just desperately want an extra half an hour sleep when the night has been busy with my children waking for various reasons. I’ll of course carry on getting up with the kids but some days I’m just exhausted and would love it if he at least offered to take them downstairs.