to expect my husband to wake up when baby is screaming

[Traveljunkie]

Am i so dreadfully unreasonable to expect him to wake up occasionally and do his share of the dream feeds. Have a 6 months old who is a joy but jetlagged and i have had 4 hours sleep in last 48 hours. husband (don't know all the abreviations) slept for 12 hours last night and went to bed at 10 to read his book
Pathetic

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I agree a sharp elbow in the ribs usually does the trick, failing that a boot in the backside off the bed works a dream!

kick him and pull off the duvet.

Or you could just tell ask him to get up and deal with it.

I am usually up but for the last two nights for some reason have slept through everything while DD has slept terribly

DH is annoyed and giving me daggers in the morning..but didn't wake me up!

So YABU, if you want him awake, wake him up!!!

I was always the heavier sleeper when mine were little - I'd wake up in the morning thinking "that was a good night" and look at dh with circles under his eyes and think "oops!". He never woke me except when I was BFing

that "oops" thing definitely happened to me this morning!

And DD is 2.2...

My DH hardly ever wakes up when DS2 does. It is annoying and I used to 'accidently' wake him up. But now he is back at work I let him sleep.

Nah, DH has never once woken to see to DD in the night but that is quite tyical of him....he woke me the other night to tell me the landing light had been left on!

My DH never gets up either. We have and 'arrangement' where he is supposed to get up at the weekends but he NEVER hears the kids so I am always fully awake and on the move before he has realised that they are crying. It sucks.

He used to make me want to kill him laugh when we had our DD as we had this competitive tiredness thing going. I'd be up 6 times BF and pacing the floor half the night and he would stir once and then tell me how shattered he was after a crap night!!!

The distribution of sleeping labour seems not to be fair in most households.

One of the few times I did sleep through (i was ill) our LO crying, he elbowed ME to get up even though he was awake!!!!!!!!

Jet lag with a baby is horrid; we've just dealt with it too (good news is it passes quickly).

I don't think it is to do with how different sexes hear noises, I think it comes down to who is ultimately responsible. For various reasons, my husband does the majority of night wakings in this house and I honestly don't hear DS a lot of the time. It's because I know I don't have to do anything about it so I can ignore it. The nights where I am on duty it is a different story. Can you try making him responsible for nights one day a week maybe?

My dh has the same ability to sleep through the children crying, so when ours were little and at the age of waking regularly in the night, I perfected a move where I rolled over in bed and elbowed dh in the ribs hard whilst still fast asleep! He'd wake up because he'd been elbowed, and hear the baby crying and, because I was obviously fast asleep, he'd get up and deal with the baby.

I hasten to add that I didn't do this every night - only if I'd had a number of disturbed nights and he'd slept through all of them.

On the three days I have to get up earlier than DH, I don't get up if our toddler cries and wait until he hears the crying. If he doesn't hear it, I TELL him he's crying - and he gets up.

I've lost count of the women I know who say their husband doesn't get up for night feeds because 'he doesn't hear the baby cry'. Pathetic. My husband runs his own business and is a busy man, but he has always done his fair share of nightfeeds. Give him the responsibility if he won't take it. Choose a night/nights/times when you want him to get up and ask. It's only fair.

My DH NEVER hears the baby crying EVER. He could sleep through an earthquake.
In fact he was away on business once and slept through the fire alarm in the hotel he was in and missed the evacuation of the building!!!

I leave him be now and get up myself, then every few days I tell him I need to catch up on MY sleep too. I go in the spare room with ear plugs and send DH off to bed for an early night with TWO baby monitors on full volume RIGHT beisde his ear on the bedside table!!
I'm sure it still does take him a little bit longer to hear the baby than it takes me normally but he definitely does hear him and gets up several times a night on those nights.

It was my turn in the spare room last night...BLISS!!!

MrsMattie - its not a matter of tryin to evade the night feeds, with my DH (and with others I'm sure) he genuinly doesnt hear anything.
It actually takes less time for me to get up, settle DS and get back into bed than it does to wake a dead to the world DH and kick him out of bed to do it himself! (and of course by then DS will have been crying longer and will take longer to settle and by then I'll be wide awake and will take ages to get back to sleep again!)

Wake him up yourself.

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But this not hearing anything malarky is because they allow themselves not to. Honestly. And it's because they think that ultimately they are not responsible. Otherwise why is an affliction that only affects the male sex? (and me, but only when I know I am not on duty.) It's about how deeply you allow yourself to fall asleep.

Agree,Bogey. Dh is fine if he is respnsible for waking up but sleeps through it if he knows I will be dealing with it. I dont mind actually. Get far more cross if I have done all the night stuff and then he complains of a crap night's sleep

I understand your frustration....however, I am sure I have read a study years ago, which gave man the perfect excuse...apparently it isn't their fault, it's the way they are wired...man would, apparenlty, wake up if there was danger, but they don't have the instincts a mother has and are not wired to wake up when their offspring cries....
might be utter bollox,but it certainly seemed rather true to me....i.e. describes dh perfectly...

It is frustrating and they say they don't hear but I think more like they don't want to hear.