High sleep needs DH - how do you make it work with DC?

[piloues]

DH and I have been together for the best part of 20 years. Our sleep patterns have always been a bit different - he's a classic night owl but needs a good 10 hours+ whereas I don't seem to need quite so much sleep - happy going to bed around 11pm and still having a reasonably early start.

This worked fine pre-DC and wasn't even too bad with just the one. But now we have a toddler and a 1 year old, both of whom were/are EBF and not particularly good sleepers, I'm starting to feel a bit wrecked.

Take last night. I fell asleep on the sofa in front of the TV and woke up at 1am to the sound of DC2 crying. No signs of life from DH in our room so I fed and sat with DC2 for a while before heading to bed. Next wake up 3am. DH completely out of it - no reaction to the baby monitor - so I did the same again. Back to bed. Then at 6am our toddler starts crying because of a nightmare. Again, DH genuinely doesn't stir. I lie awake with toddler until DC2 wakes up again at 6.45am and so now I've been up since then. DH still fast asleep.

We've tried DH dealing with night wake ups, but he sleeps through the baby monitor/sounds of the DC. So I end up waking up anyway and have to get him up. By that point I'm pretty much wide awake, so not really any less tired than if I did it myself. And once DH's sleep is interrupted he either sleeps in or spends the day out of it. So I have to pick up more of the slack of looking after the two DC on not materially more sleep.

Up until this point I've figured that the best of a few crap options is for me to do the wake-ups and at least DH is then on ok form during the day. But is there another way? I'm due back at work imminently and feel like that's when the lack of sleep is going to become really obvious.

If he's that deep a sleeper despite going to bed at a sensible time it might well be medical.

Have you had his iron and thyroid checked? People who haven't experienced them don't understand how strongly they affect you.

“High sleep needs” 🙈🙈

High sleep needs is a bs excuse imho.

My ex woke up only once, ever, to help me with actual high needs DC. Claimed he needed at least 10 hours sleep every weekend (but funny, didn't need to go to bed at 8pm to be up at 6am on work days, huh) to catch up, but I was struggling on maybe 3h max in the darkest days.

It caused HUGE resentment especially when I was approaching the end of mat leave, to the point I had a bit of a breakdown and decided to go back only PT which had a significant impact on our finances.

Part of the deal of having kids is being tired. But he can't claim superior tiredness if you're the one waking every night multiple times.

It's not true that once you're up you may as well go. Wake him up! Then roll over And sleep

I am someone who needs a lot of sleep.

I could literally sleep anywhere and I’ve always been the first to go to bed even as a teen.

But funnily enough I still manage to parent my kids and wake up during the night for them.

As a single parent I had no option but to cope on barely any sleep.

It’s funny how it seems it’s just the men who are incapable of waking up during the night.

He should see his GP

His sleep is not normal and hes not at all supportive of you

When I had small children I would go to bed really early, asleep by 9pm. DH is a night owl so would do all wake ups until around 12:30am, then he came to bed. I did all wake ups after that, and the early morning. Because I got that chunk of sleep in I didn’t feel too bad.

Rubbish of course it's normal to need a lot of sleep!

My dogs bark every single night. And every time they wake me up and DH sleeps through it.

Men don't have the same instinct to wake up like mothers do. They need to be shoved and told to wake up. And get up!

We all have high sleep needs op, it’s only dads that actually get to get the sleep!!! I agree ti take a break away. Regularly!!

My DH the same, night owl but also could sleep through anything and can’t get up in the mornings. He retired in March, has literally just got up this morning at 10:15 while I was up early to drop our 19 year old into work as his car is in the garage. It drives me insane that he still seems to need so much sleep and isn’t even working but after 36 years and 2 kids I guess he’s not going to change.

I think I probably fall into this category, once I stopped EBF DH has done 80% of the night waking. I just don't wake up because I know he will, which sounds awful but it's fundamentally the truth. If you did go away with the baby, he would wake up for the toddler because he would know you were not there.

Musical beds is a good approach, especially if the 3yo is in a proper bed. The minute one dc wakes up you go to their bed and they come in with DH. They'll go back to sleep quickly because he won't be interacting with them!

Exactly!

He is not a teenager, he has got away with building a routine with 10 hours of sleep - lucky git!
He/you both need to train him out of it. A week of 8 hours a night and he will be in a much more useful place. How on earth does he think laying in bed while you do all the parenting is acceptable?!
DH is a bar manager so late nights. He laid in until 9.30 once - after a discussion, he compromised and was up by 8 since. Yes it took a while for him to adjust, but as he said, why have we had a child if our lives aren’t revolving round them?!
I would get lights on, loud music, ignore the teenage grumps and tell him to man up and grow up!

That would drive me insane OP. You need to find a balance between you!

My DH is a definite night owl, and he doesn’t really do well with being woken in the night (and he was working) so I did all the night wakings, especially as I was bf anyway. However I used to go to bed early at like 8/9pm and he’d be in charge until then, do a bottle feed about 11ish and then that would often tide them over til 2/3am and I got a fairly decent block of sleep. Quite often he’d take them for a little bit before he went to work as he didn’t need to leave until 8ish so that I could doze after bf first thing.

He’d also do all toddler bedtimes and breakfasts etc.

We split the weekends with one lie in each

10 hours actual sleep a night seems like a lot for a grown man. Is he actually sleeping the whole time or just chilling? DH and probably average about 7-8 on a weekday and then maybe an extra hour, maybe 2 on a weekend (if there’s nothing on). I know we’re all different but it seems a lot!

Ok so tbh I did most wake ups with my two mainly because they were EBF and I was on maternity anyway, then I just seemed to hear them quicker and be able to get up and settle them back down quicker than my DH, and I was awake anyway even if he dealt with them. He certainly did help with out of the ordinary incidents like vomit and nightmares though, and he would get up with them in the morning, we shared the load on weekdays and do one morning each on the weekends.
I also prefer a weekend afternoon nap to a lie in, so what would happen if you did that?

Your DH just sounds lazy tbh, he probably doesn’t hear them at night as well as you do (evolutionary “advantages” of being a mum), and some people genuinely do sleep heavily, but he should be getting up in the morning. A healthy adult does not need 10h sleep a night and if he does he needs to see the GP.

Also confused how he is a “night owl” but not awake at 11pm or 1am? Does he work? How can he lie in of his sleep is interrupted? Or is that a mysterious weekend only affliction?

It sounds like he'll have to learn to be a bit more tired sometimes. He's an adult with children and a wife who need support, he needs to work out how he can stand up and do that.

My husband and is like this. I also function ok on not loads of sleep but there’s a line!! He just would not wake and then I would be awake anyway. So I get it.

If you’re EBF littlest then I would make sure dad camps out in eldest child’s room couple nights a week so that he is defo the parent eldest child wakes up at least sometimes when you’ve been up and down with tiny one.

Also grab an hours nap when you can. Send DH out of the house with both kids for an hour or so after feeding little one so it’s uninterrupted.

We have 3 kids now but had a much bigger gap between 2 and 3 as I was so so tired after EBF 1&2 and little help at night!

All kids 6+ now and sleep through so I guilt free make him make up for it now. He gets and accepts this after a decade of doing the bulk!! They are old enough now to know they wake daddy first 😂.

Some people do sleep very heavily. When we had a digger pulling up the drive outside DS bedroom window he slept through it. He bought a really expensive alarm clock with a light that comes on like a sunrise in his actual room as that does the trick in waking him.

Sleeping very heavily is fine.

but it should be a factor in deciding whether to have children or not.

doing nothing and simply leaving your partner to get exhausted shouldn’t be an option.

if you can’t be a parent, don’t become one.

I guess many people like sleeping but when you are a parent, you have to adjust those set patterns. Does your husband realise all that you are doing through the night? Is he willing to make any changes? Perhaps a medical check up is needed. If it's not a medical issue, then his sleeping is just an excuse. If he is a night owl, why isn't he taking care of the children for an extended period in the night or taking the first shift? What time is he sleeping till? This behaviour is not sustainable because as the children grow older, there will be many tasks that will need parents to be up early. He needs to up his game quickly.

OP can you imagine if you were a 'high-sleep needs' wife? What a pair you would be.

I'd say most parents of young children spend a significant amount of time feeling 'out of it' after months of broken sleep. It is part of being a parent and 'high sleep needs' is absolutely laughable, and not an excuse to duck out of that side of parenting.

What is his attitude like to this situation? Has he tried anything to support?

He needs to be seeing a GP or staying up until 1am to do the first half of the night.

What does your husband suggest? What has he tried?
Agree with the poster suggesting he does until a certain point and you do after - he can do up until 2am for example.
I know you think there's no point in you both being sleep deprived, but the damage lack of sleep can do to your body and your mental health is not to be under estimated - and yes right now you end up awake anyway, but even if you arent asleep, you will still be resting your body and senses rather than getting up, and thats good for your body even if you cant get sleep.

This. What’s all this ‘sleep needs’ b0llocks? It’s just laziness. He would get out of bed if offered £1000, he can get out of bed to see to his own kids.

I do think he’s not waking up because he knows you’ll cover it so his brain is not alerting him. When everyone lived at home I could easily sleep through someone going to the bathroom or even coming into the house in the middle of the night. If that happened now I’d wake up immediately because I’m on my own at the moment (kids grown up husband working away). Your brain filters out noises you don’t need to be alerted to.

My sister tried that theory yes BIL dud eventually wake but after a long time resulting in an hysterical niece