Snoring Partner

[MM321]

If anyone has any ideas how to deal with this I’d be grateful 😓

DH snores...loudly 😓 I’m a terrible sleeper anyway and this just adds to my sleep issues so a lot of time I’ll take myself off to the spare room (or give him a kick and send him if I’m cosy 😅).
However, we now have a baby. And he also wakes the baby constantly - like every 15/20 minutes 😓
Baby is now 5 months (still quite unsettled in the night and wakes twice for feeds) and so far DH has never done a full night with him. He’ll split the night with me quite happily (it means him having to stay awake) but usually ends up dropping off to sleep more than once and waking us both and I have to settle baby then wake DH to get him to take back over...by which time I’m wide awake anyway and just send him to the spare room 😔
DH is really bothered by it. There’s no obvious issues that we know of...not overweight etc. He’s just always snored badly. He was really embarrassed by it but decided to go to the doctor about it not long before covid started just incase there was anything wrong that was causing the snoring. Asked me to go with him for moral support and the old pig of a doctor laughed and suggested I get ear plugs 🙄🙄

Any constructive suggestions? 😓 obviously I’m a very tired mummy 😅 the longest stretch I’ve had since the baby arrived is 3 hours and that is RARE 😓

Omg he wakes the baby! It’d be separate rooms for us. It was in small baby days anyway, as both need as much rest as possible. Is baby ff? Why can’t DH do the whole night?

Sleep separately!!!

But different as we don't have a baby in with us but we watch some TV and snuggle in bed for an hour then one of us wants to sleep he goes off to the spare room to sleep.

Go to a different GP and ask to be referred for a sleep study. Snoring can be a sign of sleep apnoea which can be dangerous.

@Merename he obviously doesn’t mean to wake the baby 😊 the only way for him to do a night with the baby is for him to stay awake all night to make sure he doesn’t snore. He really struggles staying awake that long. He always ends up dropping off to sleep at some point and starts snoring which then wakes baby and I.

@RandomMess Usually I have no issue with one of us going to the spare room but it’s really bothering DH that he can’t sleep in with baby and I.

@Littlefish I have spoken to him about this. The previous GP told him that he didn’t have sleep apnoea (how he knows that, I’m not sure!). I think DH feels a bit like he’d be wasting another GPs time because the last one pretty much laughed him out of the room. But I’ll be pushing for him to see another one!

How can he miss out if he's actually asleep? Try and find out what he thinks he is missing out on exactly and can you change things like him coming in in the mornings for a snuggle?

I don't think he would be wasting the Drs time to go back about it.

@RandomMess Sorry, I didn’t explain that well. It’s not that he feels he’s missing out. He feels like he should be doing more to help me get some sleep. He works offshore for 3 or 4 weeks at a time then comes home for 3 weeks. Obviously while DH is away I deal with baby’s restless nights on my own which is completely fine. But he’d like to be able to help more with the restless nights when he’s home to let me catch up on some sleep.

You wear ear plugs, DH listens in from the spate room with a baby monitor on full whack?

Would he wake up and you sleep through/get back to sleep more easily?

Go to a different GP and ask to be referred for a sleep study. Snoring can be a sign of sleep apnoea which can be dangerous.

This ^^
The main issue is that you need to tackle the reason why he snores in the first place.

DH has sleep apnoea. We don't know whether the sleep apnoea caused his stroke or whether the stroke caused the sleep apnoea. Either way, your partner does need to talk to a different GP. And any GP who says he doen't have sleep apnoea is talking rubbish. He needs a sleep study before anyone can be sure.

@RandomMess Definitely not. He doesn’t hear the baby at all once he falls asleep, even in the same room. He has to sleep in extremely noisy conditions at work and i think that’s trained him to sleep through just about anything 😅 I’m sure once baby goes into the nursery instead of our room it’ll be fine and I’ll get caught up then 🤣

@RampantIvy Oh gosh, that’s awful 😓 sorry to hear that about your DH! I am going to push him again to go to another GP. I think just because he had been embarrassed about the issue and the other GP laughed him off he’s been a bit reluctant. But as your DH has shown, these things can be serious and there’s a baby to think about now!

I have sleep apnoea, I have snored since I was young. I am obese now, which doesn't help, but also isn't the cause of my sleep apnoea. Apparently I have a short neck, big tonsils and a floppy tongue lol. Before I had a CPAP machine I stopped breathing on average 75 times an hour.

Does he get tired in the day? I never used to be able to stay awake properly, but then not everyone with sleep apnoea gets tired during the day either.

I think he should definitely go back and ask, as there may be another reason for it too which could be rectified.

Saying that I had 2 kids that somehow managed to sleep through my snoring until they went into their own rooms

Asked me to go with him for moral support and the old pig of a doctor laughed and suggested I get ear plugs

i had similar experience with a misogynist old git who laughed and said women always complain about snoring and he obviously couldn't have anything wrong with him as he wasn't overweight.

In the end he went again, this time saw a competent doctor who referred him for the sleep study (just an overnight stay). They found he was having so many incidents of apnoea per minute that they told him to take a temporary CPAP machine and gave him basic guidance on teh spot. Then he went back for a proper "fitting" for his own long term machine. He had been at high risk and once treated a number of other long running low grade health issues started to improve.
Once measured up you just go back periodically to have the machine checked and check his apnoea levels (for which he borrows the kit to use at home and return next day)>

It can't be diagnosed by a GP in the surgery, any GP who tells you that level of snoring isn't sleep apnoea without even a basic test doesn't know enough about apnoea.

@Heartofglass12345

I have sleep apnoea, I have snored since I was young. I am obese now, which doesn't help, but also isn't the cause of my sleep apnoea. Apparently I have a short neck, big tonsils and a floppy tongue lol. Before I had a CPAP machine I stopped breathing on average 75 times an hour.

Does he get tired in the day? I never used to be able to stay awake properly, but then not everyone with sleep apnoea gets tired during the day either.

I think he should definitely go back and ask, as there may be another reason for it too which could be rectified.

🤣🤣 sounds like short neck, big tonsils and a floppy tongue aren’t a good combination 🙈🤣 He doesn’t seem tired during the day that I’ve noticed 🤔 I’ll definitely push him to go back!

@C8H10N4O2 Sorry you guys had the same experience with the GP 🙄
I think he’d definitely benefit from having the study done so will see if I can get him to see another GP!

Pay for a private ENT consultant.

Haha it's really not a good combo
It's worth pushing to get checked, even if it isn't that it can be ruled out. If something is affecting your life that much a GP shouldn't be laughing at you!!

My blood pressure started to rise just reading the title of your post! My partner is the same... there’s no underestimating how much a snoring partner can affect your life. When I was 8 months pregnant I used to sleep on the sofa.

There are sleep clinics which can help, it might also be worth looking at how he’s snoring. It’s the last thing you want to do I know but different snores are associated with different things so it might give you a clue as to what’s going on. Then if you can, raid Boots, anything snoring related (nasal sprays and the like) give them a go, also tilted pillows are meant to be good

@PollyPocket245 I honestly couldn’t tell you how much money we’ve spent on that stuff 🙈 poor DH nearly ended himself choking on some gun shield contraption once 🙈🤣
It really does affect us both, it’s really bad 😔 I’ve been the heavily pregnant woman pacing round the house looking for somewhere quiet to sleep too 😓

Practically I think I'd just cut my losses and give up on him doing whole nights - arrange to do split nights and then you go to bed early or get up late while he's on duty so that you do get more than 3 hours' sleep. I'm assuming he's working, but at weekends you could leave baby with him and go for a long nap in the day.

Sorry to jump onto your post but I have the same issue! Lying here at 11.32 scouring the net for anything to improve the situation as my DH's snoring now makes me want to smother him. He's snoring now. I can hear him through my ear plugs which I resent having to wear anyway cause they make my ears feel itchy and white noise on loud. I can feel my blood pressure rising. My mum is staying this week so can't banish him to the spare room. We had a baby 11 months ago and I feel like I haven't had a good nights sleep for years now anyway. I appreciate this sounds dramatic but I literally want to cry - is it so bad to want to sleep without a foghorn next to your head.

I'm starting to feel like separate bedrooms is the only solution but scared it'll be the start of intimacy problems 😕

My partner and I are both light sleepers so I sympathise. Neither of us really snore (unless we’ve had a drink) but any disturbance wakes the other up. Most nights one of us sleeps in the other room (normally him). It’s not going to be ideal with the baby as he’ll probably feel like your OH but I’m taking the view that one of us sleeping well is better than neither and if he can get up early or stay up late and do a bottle feed giving me a block of uninterrupted sleep then great.

@Starryeyes1984 what is causing his snoring? Has he had the issue medically investigated?

Personally we get on so much better since we sleep separately. DH has now lost weight and I can rarely hear him in the spare room anymore but he's happier to stay there.

Sleep deprivation is used as a successful method of torture for a reason. How long before the resentment of his selfishness at not dealing with it settles in and destroys your relationship anyway!

It hasn't been investigated as such but he had an issue with his eyesight which pointed to a sinus issue but they said that had nothing to do with the snoring. He's otherwise fit, under 40 and well so no obvious cause. His dad is a terrible snorer as well. Can snoring be genetic!