exactly what I was afraid of... (follow-up to night duty post)

kak808

Last weekend I posted that I was concerned about letting my husband take baby night duty. I was going to sleep in the guest room and he'd bring her to me to eat, but otherwise, I'd get to sleep and he'd deal with putting her back down, changing diapers, etc. I was scared that he wouldn't wake up if she cried.  Last weekend went fine, but basically she slept a lot and I was instinctively waking up every few hours, so I always fed her before she started crying.

Fast forward to last night. I told my husband I was unsustainably exhausted and really needed to sleep. He was fine with this so I slept in the guest room. I woke up a little after 1 because I heard LO screaming. I assumed my husband was trying to calm her down as opposed to just bringing her to me to feed. However, she's been eating like crazy, so I knew this was screaming that only a feeding would fix, so after a minute or two I went in to get her from him. I walked into the bedroom and she's in the PnP screaming her little head off and he's dead asleep in bed about 2 feet away!  I don't know how long she was crying, but I felt terrible!  I was down the hall through 2 doors and I woke up, so I worry that it could have been for a little while. He told me to go back to the guest room after feeding her and I was like 'hell no' and spent the rest of the night in the bedroom, since I didn't want that to happen again. And he was SO out of it that I don't think he could have really done anything for her anyway. Now what?  Can I never leave him on night duty? Ugh. I know it wasn't intentional on his part, so I'm trying really hard to not be mad...but WTF.

MissDemeanor

This must be so frustrating! I just got out of bed with LO. He was fussing like crazy and my boyfriend was in bed next to us, just snoring away. It's hard not to feel resentful.

Maybe you can have him take LO today while you nap instead? I know it's not the same, but you have to take what you can get. Maybe even have him leave the house for a walk or something?

shellbell3845

I'm sorry it didn't turn out well. I think the outcome would be the same if we tried this at our house. My solution? I have no qualms about waking DH up when I need him, especially on a weekend night.

kak808

I asked my husband about it when he came home from work and he basically doesn't think it's that big of a deal and assumes she'd just started crying and that he would have woken up eventually...hmmm.  To be fair, he was super good in the beginning when she was first born, but I think he's just really tired now after going back to work. He says I should just sleep with the door to the guest room open as a back-up.  I guess that works?  Meh.

versed

greenbunny79 said:

Not that this is an excuse, but I did read once about a study that showed that mens brains were much less sensitive to hearing the cries of babies than women's. I can't remember the details, but I believe that parts of their brain did not "light up" on scans in response to crying the way women's did, and they thought this was why men do not wake up to the cries. My solution is to stay in the room and smack my husband awake and tell him it's his turn to get up

@greenbunny79 - this is true: men are biologically programmed to wake up to low-pitch sounds (i.e. predators) whereas women are programmed to wake up to high-pitch sounds (i.e. baby cries). 

I have to wake DH up every time DS1 wakes up, but he gets up and does his job once I get him moving!