Many times in a marriage when you start to have children, spouses struggle with sharing equal responsibilities. While some couples navigate parenting well, others struggle with finding time between parenting, their marriages, and time for themselves, too.
When parents are also working, it can make things challenging.
When two parents are working, it becomes difficult to manage the time between their work responsibilities and their parenting ones, especially when working from home.
Due to COVID-19, many parents are working from home together.
While the pandemic is still ongoing, many parents are both still working from home and managing their parenting responsibilities, too.
Recently, one mom wrote into Reddit seeking advice about her work and parenting situation.
“My husband (38) and I (34 f) have been married for 5 years. We have a 4-year-old daughter and a 3-month-old son. Our son has a health condition and needs to be fed every 40 to 80 minutes,” she wrote.
The mom shared she works in IT and makes her own schedule, but her husband works from 7 am until 3 pm.
“I get up every hour at night to feed our son so my husband can sleep. I drop our daughter off at [kindergarten] in the morning and then work and look after our son,” she said.
To cope, the mom takes a nap during the day.
“My husband looks after the kids and cooks tea while I’m asleep and at 7 we all eat. After that we take turns reading stories to our daughter as a bedtime ritual. She’s usually down for the night at 8.
“Then my husband and I have “us time” [from] 8 to roughly 9:30 which is when he goes to sleep,” she added.
The mom is the one who is up all night with her son, not her husband.
“After that it’s only me looking after our son so my husband can sleep through the night. I usually do some more work and go to sleep at around midnight but obviously very interrupted sleep since I have to get up every hour,” she wrote.
Recently, her husband has been complaining about her naps during the day.
“He doesn’t think I should sleep in the afternoon because during that time childcare is on him completely. He wants some time to relax when he gets home,” she added.
The mom points out that their son will hopefully outgrow his condition.
“Our son will most likely outgrow his condition and should be able to live a normal toddler life by the time he is 18 months. I can’t possibly not sleep for another year and 3 months though,” she pointed out.
The mom said she just needs a few hours of rest to herself for now.
Struggling to understand why her husband was so unhappy, she turned to Reddit for advice. She asked if she was wrong for wanting to take that three-hour nap during the day.
Many said the husband is not seeing the bigger picture.
“It definitely seems to him you’re just napping and he’s carrying the load.
“He’s mistaken.
“First do this. Draw out a 24hr timetable. Show the uninterrupted sleep comparisons. So he can visualize it.
“If that does not work, tell him you will wake him, tonight, every hour at night time so he can comprehend the sheer agony of interrupted sleep — which isn’t true sleep.
“Then do it. And don’t give him a [3-hour] nap. Because it’ll be his punishment for doubting you.
“Because you’re clearly pulling your weight,” one person said.
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Some said they should “switch places.”
“Offer him to swap the shifts: you get your night sleep, and he can nap if he comes home from work. Let’s see how he likes that,” one person wrote.
Others couldn’t even believe it.
“You’re waking up EVERY HOUR through the night?? You need at least 3 hours uninterrupted sleep for your body to function. You only gave birth three months ago! Your husband is being selfish,” another person wrote.
One person had a suggestion.
“Do you have a smartwatch or fitbit or something to track your sleep? Show him data to show that overnight, how little actual sleep you are getting. Show the full day total of real sleep to show how much you need that nap to function,” one person advised.
Others said this dad needs to “check himself.”
“Your husband, with you, decided to have children. As an adult, he should know that having children reduces his ‘me time’ a lot. You don’t have ‘me time’. You work and sleep and take care of the children. You ALLOW him his uninterrupted sleep at night, but for him, allowing you 3 hours [of] uninterrupted sleep is impossible. I think he needs to check himself a bit,” one person added.
Do you think this mom is asking too much? Who’s in the wrong here?
