Man asks if he's wrong for wanting SAHM to wake up early on weekends for the baby.
This is a tricky one. A couple has a six month old child, and the child wakes up a lot. The wife is a stay-at-home-mom, but also a light sleeper, so on the weekend she's asking for help waking up early with the baby. He wants to split the early wake-ups. She's asking for him to take over on his days off. This is where the conflict starts.
In this post on Reddit from the 'Am I The A**hole' subreddit the husband and father is making the argument that on the weekends they should share the pain of getting up early, and he wants people's advice. Here's his story...
My wife and I have a six month old baby girl. She's mostly a SAHM, she works two half days a week and her sister watches the baby. I work full time and go to school one day a week. We've always had an arrangement where she takes care of the household duties (cooking, cleaning, and now baby care) while I happily support her monetarily.
'I happily support her monetarily,' is setting off some alarms. Kind of a strange way to say you're bringing home the money to pay for the costs of raising a child, and feeding and housing your family.
Honestly, we are both living our dream life and my wife does an absolutely spectacular job taking care of me and our little one.
'Taking care of me,' sounds a bit anachronistic as well. You guys are taking care of each other, like a normal family does.
On the weekends, we share baby duty. We usually make sure each of us gets our own alone time to do whatever we want. However, our girl has hit a bit of a sleep regression, waking up every two hours--since my wife breast feeds, she's always taken care of the baby full time overnight.
She's a light sleeper and unfortunately has insomnia, whereas I am a deep sleeper and wouldn't wake up for baby cries anyways .
There's no sympathy for deep sleepers. Haven't had a deep night's sleep since the 90's.
Recently my wife has been asking me to wake up with the baby both days on the weekends so she can get an extra hour of sleep. Baby wakes up around 7am. I get the baby dressed and take over for that hour.
But sometimes, I want to be the one that gets to sleep in an extra hour. I brought this up to her and she says while she's happy to let me nap during the day, she really needs that hour bc she can't nap like I can.
We got into an argument about it, and she said I'm being very insensitive when I know she is very exhausted and cant nap during the day and she struggles going back to sleep every time the baby wakes up.
But I'm exhausted too, work wears me out, and school days are long... and I sometimes want the hour in the morning. I don't want to spend my off time napping, I want to play videogames and chill out.
And there it is, 'I want to play videogames and chill out.' There's nothing really wrong with that, but saying your insomniac wife can't get the sleep she needs so you can play 'Gears of War' isn't going to get you a ton of sympathy.
I've gotten mixed opinions on who is in the wrong here, or if there even is anyone in the wrong. AITA for asking us to share mornings off for sleep?
Here's what people had to say in the comments:
3i1bo3aggins jokes:
Give her my contact info I'll keep her happy.
tireddad667 OP responded:
Bro 😭😭
angelaheidt writes what most people thought:
YTA - she's perpetually sleep deprived and an extra 1-2 hours on the weekend can make all the difference. Meanwhile, you get a full night's sleep EVERY SINGLE NIGHT
tireddad667 OP responded:
Yes I do get a full night's sleep on the weekends, but sometimes on the week days I don't get a full 8 hours. I understand I'm in the wrong here but it's not like I'm sleeping ALL the time.
bloseja writes:
I was so close to giving a N A H because new babies and sleep is hard, but then we got to 'video games'..... Nope! YTA OP! You can't have both nights and mornings. And your video game time might have to just suffer for a while....
Ancient_TeacherMom20 has some great advice:
NAH. Having worked full time and having done the SAHM thing, it’s all hard OP. It’s all hard. She deserves the extra hour, you deserve the video game time. Everyone needs some sleep and some down time.
I think perspective is needed. The sleep regression won’t last forever. The breastfeeding will get better and once she has more calories by way of food (she is 6 months so you can start feeding her the oatmeal/ baby cereals now) she will sleep better.
Go to the grocery store in the baby aisle and check out the things that say 6month+. Get started on introducing a food per day and especially the cereal and it will lighten the load for breastfeeding.
Around 8 months she can also start drinking from the sippy cup and do water/formula milk and this will also help with keeping her full to decrease night feeding and your wife can sleep better.
So, my advice is take the hit. That extra hour in the morning you wake up go do video games with baby next to you. Then do afternoon nap time. It won’t last forever and fast forward 6 months you won’t have to worry about this stuff anymore as breastfeeding is pretty much done.
Help her out now my friend. She has to breastfeed for a whole year. That whole year equals to over 730 hours+ Take one for the team during the next 2 months till the baby is eating more. Your wife will be grateful. Good luck OP!
tireddad667 OP responded:
Thank you, this answer was very helpful and put a lot of things in perspective. To be honest, I never really thought of how many hours she has to give up to feed our girl. One hour seems pretty embarrassing to complain about compared to 730 hours...I am humbled.
Rohini_rambles writes:
RIP OP. You're going to be buried in the YTA judgements here. She works PT, takes care of baby, has to do all the housework, has to do all of the night feedings, can't sleep.... but sure, you'd like an hour.
You are out of the house all week, and you do what, spend one hour a day 'helping' to take care of your kid? And would like more time to play games?
You have no idea what her day looks like, do you? Take three days off, and send her on a mini vacay to sleep somewhere, and see all the stuff that she does on a daily basis, on repeat.
tireddad667 OP responded:
My wife works hard, no doubt. I try to help by making my own lunches when she says she's too overwhelmed, and I do help with chores if she ever needs it.
I promise I do appreciate what she does. I take over to give her time for herself on the weekends and when I come home from work.
This is one of those rare instances where a person reached out to the internet for advice, thinking people would be on their side. Although they get compassion and support, people weren't on OP's side. The great thing is it sounds like OP listened. Here's hoping he can uses this advice to make things better at home. Good luck OP!