DH and I are supposed to take it in turns getting up with our 3-year-old and putting him to bed. Our son is autistic, so he needs quite a lot of supervision and support, particularly around sleep, routines and safety. He can't just be told to go back to bed and be expected to manage that independently. Our arrangement is that whoever does bedtime is also responsible for getting up with him when he wakes during the night or early morning.
When our son wakes, we try to get him back into his room and, if it's too early to be awake, back to sleep. I'll lie down with him if necessary. Sometimes he simply isn't going back to sleep, in which case whoever is "on duty" needs to get up with him.
The problem is that when it's my partner's turn, he'll tell our son to go back to his room but won't actually get up. Our son then starts running around the house, switching lights on, going downstairs and generally wandering everywhere. Because he's autistic and has limited awareness of danger, I don't feel comfortable just leaving him to roam around the house unsupervised obviously!
I then tell my partner, "He's awake, you need to get up with him." I'll try repeatedly to wake him, but he either doesn't respond properly or seems to fall straight back asleep. Eventually I have to get up because our son needs supervising.
We can't use stair gates because our son climbs them, which actually makes things more dangerous rather than safer.
There is a complication in that my partner uses a CPAP and struggles with insomnia. I genuinely sympathise with that, which is why I already do the majority of the wake-ups. I'm not expecting a completely rigid 50/50 split.
I have a range of health issues too which is too long to list tbh but it causes extreme fatigue
But the arrangement is supposed to mean that I get some nights/mornings where I can actually switch off and know that my partner is responsible.
What is driving me mad is that afterwards he'll say:
"Why didn't you just wake me up?"
I DID. Multiple times. ðŸ˜
And he seems genuinely baffled when I tell him that.
I honestly can't work out whether his sleep issues mean he genuinely isn't properly waking up and has absolutely no memory of me trying to wake him, or whether on some level he knows that if he doesn't get up, eventually I'll have no choice but to do it.
I feel guilty being annoyed because I know he has genuine sleep problems, but I'm also exhausted and feel like I can never completely switch off because ultimately I know I'll have to intervene if our son isn't being supervised.
For context also when our son was in a cot DH used to be on duty with him and would let him cry in the morning as he would turn the baby monitor off, I would turn it back on and tell him to get up and he did back then, its gotten worse since our little boy is more mobile and went into a bigger bed
AIBU to be getting really frustrated about this? I don't expect everything to be perfectly 50/50 given his sleep problems, but I do need to be able to rely on him when it's actually his turn