In thinking DP should get up before this time?

[LissyGlitter]

This is an ongoing disagreement. Me and DP are both night people and hate mornings. I am 30 weeks pregnant and we have a 2.5 yo DD. Neither of us work, although DP does go to quite a lot of interviews etc and I start uni part time next week, although I am technically signed off work due to mental health issues (dormant for the moment, thank god, but as I am pregnant, the doctor didn't want to take chances)

DD wakes up around 8am (although it has been known to be anywhere between 5am and 10am) and I get up with her, make her breakfast and let her have a bit of cbeebies time while I come to. If it is ridiculously early when i get up, or I feel ill, I do this for two hours then make DP get up, but generally I let him sleep till he feels like getting up. He does do pretty much all the cooking of big meals (I deal with things like light lunches and snacks) and laundry and washing up, so he is pulling his weight, but it can't be good for him to lie in till about 11am every single morning can it? Plus it means that if we want him to come on an activity with us, we are only getting out of the house at nearly lunchtime, and she has a nap after lunch so she misses half the day!

Any ideas on how to suggest he move his lazy bum without sounding nagging? He is finding it hard to not be working, and, like I say, does do useful things all day when he is awake, but he needs to move his timetable!

Always I was on about the OP she is moaning about her dp. Obviously if it is your day for a lie in the fair enough....

yes I'm jealous of you Janos. No seriously - I'd love to be a morning person. I'd love to be able to get up and actually be able to do something constructive with my time that I don't have to do then.

Yes I can get up and play for an 8am service at church (rare but happens occasionally we have a sung one at 8) - I play as well as I do at the 10am and 6pm ones. But I dream of getting up and having my washing on the line by 9am, the dishwasher emptied, etc etc. But no - just doesn't happen and I doubt it ever will.

Thankfully DS1 is our only early riser - and he's old enough to entertain himself now. Before 8am IS early in our house.

Even DH (who is fabulous in the morning and stays up late ) said that the DS's got him up "early" last week - at 7.15.

oh - ok let you off the TLE

Oh god I would kill to wake up feeling chirpy at a reasonable hour of the morning. It is dreadful waking up when the alarm goes off every day with an "oh god please no not already" feeling. The earliest I have had was a job which meant a 5.45 alarm call - I wouldn't do that again for anything less than a huge salary and certainly not long term. DH job means early shift alarm at 4.45. I honestly couldn't do that I'd get depressed...

Late/evening working on the other hand - fabbo!

It would also be better for the environment and work life balances blah if we could stagger people's working times a bit - and play to their strengths rather than making people work at times when they're frankly not up to much.

Eh - don't be jealous of me, I have to get up early doors and do everything on my own!

I just thought some early risers might be jealous of the OP cause she gets a lie in and has a helpful (if lazy) OH.

I get neither, bah humbug!

Oh I am jealous - the way I do it, I have to run the gauntlet of the eyebrow from my mum every 5 mins.

She had a go at me when I let slip that I had got up very early so DH could have a rare lie-in - and then going back to bed when he got up! Disgraceful! I have a 9wo baby FFS....

And the horror when she found out I did my ironing sitting down in front of the telly...

Janos - nope I'm still jealous - I had to get up early and do it on my own as well at one point (well over a year) - hated every minute of it and would have loved to have been able to get up and actually be "there" in mind as well as body once the DS's were up and about

secondcoming - do you really think that a couple with one child is going to be getting more money each month that your DH working and earning 17k??

As I can tell you as a family with 3 children we'll be £600 a month better off with DH working on 15k a year than we are now on benefits.. BUT that's not extra money "in hand" - that's money to start paying the mortgage again properly with (at the moment they're getting interest only payments - that don't cover all the interest ) and council tax.

We have 3 children = we get more money than the OP will get.

And you know what - even with him working I'll still be able to study part-time with the OU - as you have to be earning quite a lot (with 3 children in tow) to not be eligible for their funding.

thesecondcomings got a good point. I get why she's annoyed.

Also, when you're on benefits, it's not just the money you get thats important, it's all the things you don't have to pay for, people forget about that.

I suppose with the DLA (which isn't easy to get and therefore we are probably talking here about someone with a mental health problem of quite some signifiance) they may have more than we do with 3 children - but highly unlikely and as I said with DH working again for 15k we'll be £600 a month better off than we are now.

I think the lazy sod needs to go get a job and not lie in bed half the day while the tax payer stumps up for him to do so

yeah well get annoyed - you can swap places with us if you like?

It's so motivational sat applying for job after job and getting no-where (if you're lucky you'll get a letter or email back "no thanks" - generally you don't here anything) . Watching the world go by with no power to do anything about it, seeing people sneer at you because you're so "well off" and yet hate being where you are.

Fine those that are happy to scrounge and not bother applying for jobs may be happy - but I don't know anyone that's been where we/DH is now that's really happy watching the gap in their CV getting bigger and bigger. Scroungers don't even bother going to interviews - they come up with a pile of crap to tell the JSA when they go and sign on that doesn't include an interview.

Can't say I'm particularly happy to be getting back on the "other side" and struggling just as much as we do now. But hey - at least I won't be sneered at and told that I'm so much better off than lots of people any more.

Erm, actually I said we don't have any benefits coming in beyond what I was getting from DLA and CTC. Rent is covered for this month and next by money left by DPs brother and we pay full council tax with my DLA, which would be unaffected if I worked. Yes, I probably won't have to pay fees for part time study, but would you rather I sat at home starting into space because I have the nerve to be too ill to work, or am I allowed to improve the prospects for my family whilst improving my own chances of a full recovery?

We have, after rent to make it equivalent, maybe £400 a month from DLA and CTC and £80 from Child Benefit. The DLA is money because the government recognise that I have extra costs through occasionally needing looking after (and of course if I do, so does DD) but we are lucky enough to not be in dire need of it at this exact moment for that purpose. If I do get ill again then DP has to be in charge of making sure I am ok, or I have to go and live with my mother or in hospital.

We moved away from our permanent jobs because DPs brother was dying at the opposite side of the country and we wanted to help look after him and DPs parents. DP worked seven days a week for the first couple of months we were here, then work dried up, he immediately started looking for more work, but then his brother got seriously ill and died, so we were busy for a while. Now, two weeks after the death, he is back to serious job hunting and has a third interview for a good job tomorrow.

I can't work because (and several doctors agree with me) I have a serious mental health problem that would probably lead to me being sectioned and my DD (and my unborn DD) being without their mother while she was stuck in terrifying delusions and doped up on strong drugs if I went back to work. I am fully intending on starting a few hours here and there as soon as I am employable again.

So sorry to make you jealous, because obviously my life is such a fucking picnic.

I thought you had to attend 3 interviews a fortnight to qualify for job-seekers allowance?

famishedass no that's not the case.

We have an appointment with the CAB to work out where we stand with benefit, and I think that situations like this are what benefits are for. I don't see what else we could do.

no you have to make "contact" with 2 employers and do something else toward looking to work.

(DH has his "proper" JSA signing on today - hopefully the last one)

Fine be livid with people like me second coming - I would swap places with you without even blinking.

You know what though - life is shit for me, life is shit for you. Trying to shit on each other 'aint gonna help. I'd rather shit on the bankers and wankers who got the country into the sorry mess it's in now.

Do you have a degree? (2nd coming)

Lissy people are just getting to grips with their personal bugbears now, please don't feel the need to justify yourself and your life. AIBU can get like that I'm afraid.

Stick to your op - I think the consensus was that you need to talk to DP and arrange when you get your lie-in - and what housework you do in place of that. TBH I would think he would quite happily get up with your DC if you explain that you need a rest - I suffered very badly with peri-natal anxiety and totally lost the plot - DH looked after me and letting me rest was a part of that.

Just talk to him

if you've got no degree and you're DH is earning 17k then I'm pretty sure that with 2 dependants under 18 you'd be eligible for full funding for the OU.

I know I put figures up to about 23k (getting hopeful I was ) in with 3 dependants and it covered the full price of the course I'm looking to do next year.

Yep, i'm pretty sure it is the same for a part time course at a "normal" uni if that is what you prefer. Most people can get funded for a course pretty easily if they don't already have a degree.