The other day, Mr. D came to the realization that he needs to start getting to bed at a decent hour, and I was all… “Well DUH! I’ve only been telling you that for years!” “Okay.”
Life with a new baby has been tough, specifically the lack of sleep and time to get anything else accomplished. (Post on that topic to come later this week.)
Throw in the fact that we’re both “night owls” to begin with and the words “respectable” and “bedtime” not longer go together.
This how it works at our house: We split the nighttime routine and get the kids in their beds at a reasonable hour.
Whatever happens after that happens… night pirates, scary monsters, teeth sprouting, a plague of questions about the universe…
Regardless, it’s pretty late by the time Mr. D and I get around to dinner, clean up, and actually talking to each other. Add to that an hour or two to decompress in front of the TV or our computers and by the time we get to bed, it’s even later still. Too late.
Mr. D is a light sleeper. He wakes up to the slightest sounds, but can easily drift back to sleep. I, on the other hand, am the total opposite. I’m a heavy sleeper and oblivious even my kids’ cries.
(Someone once told me that this shows a lack of maternal instinct. I no longer speak to that person.)
I takes a lot to rouse me, but once I’m up, I’m up for the rest of the day… and a total bear. So, we naturally fell into the pattern of Mr. D being the one to wake up with the kids at night. Multiple times.
It’s easier for him to get up right away, deal with them, then get back into sleep. Even though it renders him a total zombie the next day, he still continues to do it because he’s stubborn awesome.
For months, I’ve told him that it doesn’t matter. “Just wake me up and let me deal with the kids.”
Putting aside the “my job is just as valid as his” mantra of the SAHM, I’m not the one who has to look presentable and make it on the train on time, then sit through meetings all day. If I sleep in or don’t get a shower that next day, maybe we miss a park date. Maybe the kids watch a little more TV. It sucks, but it’s not the same. I can stand to lose the sleep.
“No, no. Honey. You NEED your sleep,” he says, which I think is his way of saying that he can’t stand having a bitchy wife. *snort* (My words, not his)
But no more! He needs his sleep, he insists, and vows to start going to bed earlier. As he’s telling me this over the phone, I start getting more and more infuriated.
“Why are you telling ME this?” I asked. “You’re a grown-up. Make yourself go to bed.”
In case you can’t tell, this proclamation is just the latest installment of ongoing debate. Also, I’ve heard it before.
Lately, our kids have been great about bedtime and sleeping through the night (*knock on wood*), but check again with us next week. So barring any random craziness from them, there’s not much else keeping him up at night aside from his own free will.
It’s not as if I’m poking him in the middle of the night, insisting that he stay up and talk to me or keep me company while I watch “The Real Housewives of (fill in the blank)“… er, “Nightline”.
If anything, I’m usually urging him to go to bed as he nods off in front of the screen, all the while insisting that he’s just concentrating really, really hard on a line of code. Right.
Mr. D is a fantastic and considerate husband and father. (See above.) I couldn’t have asked for a better partner in life, but…
Oh yes, I’m about to complain about a man who willingly gets up in the middle of the night to deal with small children. Brace yourself.
Some days, I feel as if I have three kids to manage– the two I birthed and the one I married.
I mean, why am I the only one who seems to be aware that there’s preschool tomorrow morning and knows when it’s trash day?! Am I now supposed to set a timer at 10:55 and say, “Five minutes to bedtime, Sweetie. Make sure you pick up your socks and pack your netbook for tomorrow. You don’t want to miss the train, do you? That would be vewy, vewy bad.”
Like most wives, I handle a majority of the domestic duties around here. I don’t mind scheduling dentist appointments, planning meals, and making sure, Costco forbid, we never run out of toilet paper. But I draw the line at having to enforce a bedtime FOR MY SPOUSE!
Tell me how it works at your house.
Is enforcing bedtime, like sending my mother-in-law a birthday card and keeping the magic of Christmas alive, yet another domestic duty that for some irrational reason is my responsibility? Is this something every wife does and I just suck?
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Ha! I definitely do NOT enforce a bedtime for my hubs. If I know he’s especially tired or jet lagged (ie. last week getting home from a trip to South Africa) I will tell him he probably needs to hit the hay early…but we are also both night owls so it’s hard for us to get to bed at a normal hour. (Except last week when I was sick and was in bed every night by 9pm! That NEVER happens.)
I also don’t send cards to my Mother-in-law. Oops. Is that my job too?
.-= Vanessa´s last blog ..Non stop talking =-.
Yikes! Bedtime is a tough one in our house. I kinda make my husband do it since he gets home so late, sometimes it’s all he sees of the kiddos.
That said, no you don’t have to be responsible for your husband’s bedtime;)
.-= Nap Warden´s last blog ..Mommy Gets an A+ =-.
It is not your job to be his mother. My husband sucks about bedtime too. He’s a night owl who would never even think of going to bed earlier. I do need to wake him in the morning though. I get him up when I’m getting Phoebe up. I wish he would consider an earlier bedtime, but lately he falls asleep on the couch watching tv and then comes to bed when he wakes up in the middle of the night. I’m not about to start telling him it’s time to go to bed. I’ll say I am and sometimes he comes too.
But yeah, I even work in the corporate world too and I’m still in charge of what’s for dinner, cleaning the house and making all appointments. Sometimes I have him make his own, if we don’t all go too (like the dentist we all go in together), because I don’t know what his travel schedule is like.
Hang in there. Be supportive if he wants to try, but tell him if you tell him when to go to bed, it’s like taking away his “man-card”.
.-= Heather´s last blog ..Still Not Better =-.
My hubby definitely does bedtime with at least one of two kids. In just the two hours after we get home, they wear me out!
And, we are both guilty of staying up late, and both telling each other to go to bed!
.-= Krystyn´s last blog ..Ecomom Review and Giveaway =-.
Putting your man to bed at a “decent” hour is not your job.
He is pretty awesome for getting up with your kiddos all night though. That’s amazing.
Good god are we married to the same person? Peter stays up till allllllllllll hours of the night. He doesn’t ask for a bedtime, and wouldn’t go if I told him. It’s been an issue our entire relationship. I would argue with him that I didn’t move in with him to go to bed alone every night. Now we sleep in separate rooms because little miss doesn’t sleep alone well…so we’ll trade sleeping next to her (and the other sleeps in the “master br”).
Peter is an amazing dad, most of the time, and will do just about anything for Alexa. I too stay at home, but I need sleep or I cannot function. Lately, if she wakes in the early morning hours, I call him in to trade…tag team if you will 🙂
But no, my dear, it is NOT your job to get your husband to bed. Nor is it your job to remember ever single other thing in the world for the family…but I have to do that, so I guess we all take on jobs that aren’t really ours, HA! About the MIL cards, yeah…I so don’t do that…but I don’t like mine 😛 I do have to remind him to call her (or any other family member) for holidays and birthdays. The best is when I have to remind him to get addresses for me of HIS friends and family members for cards, invitations, etc. ARGH! A lot of the time I end up emailing people I have never met for their contact info (or enlisting his sister…which is a whole ‘nother clusterfuck for me). Fun times!
.-= Amber´s last blog ..Baby Names =-.
Heck, no, I don’t do any bedtime enforcing with my spouse. Even if he wasn’t already more “grown-up” than I am when it comes to getting sleep and didn’t require two less hours of sleep than I do I still wouldn’t do it. Also, he’s responsible for remembering his mother’s birthday and the like. And I don’t let myself feel bad about it one bit.
.-= kenandbelly´s last blog ..What I’m doing (since it’s becoming obvious I’m not writing much here) =-.
What is it w/ men!? My husband will constantly complain to me about how he’s tired and needs to go to bed early and then when he’s snoozing on the couch and I say, “honey, why don’t you go get in bed,” he’s all, “no, I’m ok.” ARGH! I’ve finally told him, if he choose to go to bed late then he forfeits the right to even mention being tired in my vicinity!
“Some days, I feel as if I have three kids to manage– the two I birthed and the one I married.”
YES. YES. YES. And yes.
I don’t understand why he tries to put me in the position to be his mother rather than his wife and partner. I have my hands more than full enough raising our real children, I don’t need to take care of his every need also.
It wasn’t like this before we had kids, I think that it’s his subconscious way to get attention from me.
And related to the bedtime thing…He falls asleep on the couch almost every night. I always shake him awake and tell him to come to bed. Sometimes he comes, sometimes he sleeps on the couch until he wakes up in the middle of the night to come to bed. In the morning, he always pouts that I didn’t make him come to bed. OH MY GOSH I WANT TO STRANGLE HIM.
.-= jennifer, playgroups are no place for children´s last blog ..The Blue Spatula =-.
Hah! This is exactly how it goes here, and we don’t even have kids yet! How much worse will it get when we do??
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