Sorry this is long!
In short: OH terrible snorer, no spare room, do I ask OH to convert his 'office' into bedroom or is there a better solution?
My partner and I have been together for 15 years and have three children, 12, nine and four.
In all that time we’ve only really slept in the same bed for a combined total of about two years.
The reasons being his terrible snoring – which made me move to the spare room when our first born was six months old and I couldn’t take his snoring on top of our daughter’s frequent waking.
I moved back in when our first was about two. He then moved to the spare room nine-ish months later when our second was born as she disturbed him. (She was breastfed so there wasn’t much he could do to help in the night and I was happy with the arrangement.)
That was nearly nine years ago and we’ve never slept in the same bed again since bar a couple of nights away!
We’ve since had a third child who’s four.
So there’s five of us and we live in a five bedroom house, but one of the rooms is his work /office/hobby room.
My oldest two children have a bedroom each, OH is in the spare room and I’m in the master with our four year old.
The four year old was probably my worst sleeper yet and so until recently it worked best having him with me as we all got better sleep that way. But now he’s mostly sleeping through and it’d be good for him to have his own room and space, so make the spare room his room.
But OH still snores horrifically. It was bad enough when I only had one child, but now with three, for which I do all of the early morning stuff/drop offs etc, I’m constantly tired and sleep is so very precious and I honestly get anxious at the thought of OH disturbing my sleep all night long. Plus he goes to bed several hours later than me and I get up several hours earlier than him, so we would be disturbing each other a lot.
I’ve tried earplugs in the past which I find very unpleasant to wear, plus I’d be worried I might miss my kids crying or the alarm etc. He’s inquired about investigations into the snoring and thinks he might have sleep apnoea but nothing has come of it.
What do we do?
Part of me would like to go back to sleeping together, at least part time, we basically have no sex life and this would help! But I get more sleep with a four year old kicking me and waking up several times per night than I ever did sleeping with him.
We already extended the house so there’s no space (or funds!) for an extension.
The solutions as I see it are:
A. He moves back into the main bedroom and I just suck it up and have disturbed sleep and end up tired, bitter and resentful.
B. We get bunk beds or a large bed for four year old’s room (currently spare room) and he part time to potentially full time shares with him when his snoring is awful (the kids don’t seem bothered by his snoring – they’ve shared when we’ve been on holiday)
C. He changes up his ‘work room’ and adds a bed somehow.
D. We get a sofa bed for the living room – doesn’t seem like a good long term solution and the children and I would wake him up in the mornings.
This isn’t really about how good a partner/father he is but it’s relevant to say that he never gets up to do/help with school mornings or any mornings so he’s pretty much always asleep when we get up. He usually leaves for work at about 10/11 and it’s rare he’s back for later than 5ish so there’s no reason he couldn’t. This makes me less sympathetic to his sleep needs and feel I should get priority to be honest, is that selfish?
I really think the best option would be C –he sorts out his work/play room and adds a bed somehow and moves in there.
At the moment is is pretty full –it’s a decent sized double bedroom but not massive. It has a massive desk that it full of his hobby stuff, which honestly he doesn’t even do anymore. He has another computer desk on a second wall, and storage on the other two walls. As it stands now there’s nowhere to put a bed. But I reckon he could get one of the high sleeper beds and then have a desk under it, but it might mean getting rid of the massive hobby desk. Plus he’s tall so it’d probably be in the way.
I haven’t even suggested this to him as I think I’m probably being unreasonable. I don’t want it to feel like I’m banishing him to his work room, though he spends a lot of time there by choice.
Perhaps I’m a little resentful of his work/play room. I partake in craft type hobbies a lot more than him and I manage to make do with the dining table/playroom. Plus it’s a place he can disappear and hide from the kids, might as well make use of it and turn into a bedroom too?
It would be quite a bit of work though, and I think it could be damaging to our relationship to suggest it?
I don’t see another long-term solution though. And although I don’t really mind sharing with the four year old at the moment, I think it’s probably best for him that he has his own space soon.