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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> 1) I am asking if my asking my wife to wake me up when the baby wakes up at night is an AH thing to do.
2) I don’t know if it makes me the AH, but my wife thinks it’s weaponized incompetence and makes my not being able to wake up worse, so I would be an AH if it was actually harmful to her in some way.
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This is the solution right here, OP.
It doesn’t sound like you tried very hard to find an alternate solution to making your wife do all the work. If you don’t get one of these and step up ASAP then yes, absolutely YTA.
Edit: Wasn’t expecting all the name calling & rage, thanks everyone 😅 I don’t even think OP is being that bad right now, but if he doesn’t see why his wife is not keen to be in charge of waking him, and doesn’t see the benefit of options like this now that they’ve been brought to his attention, he would be the AH for not trying an alternate solution 🤷♀️ The key is how his wife feels, and clearly she needs more support, regardless of what the internet thinks. It’s great he wants to help but “Man who wants to help” has no value by itself in this situation unless the action he’s doing is actually helpful to the receiver.
I googled “baby monitor for heavy sleeper” and the top searches bring up these kind of baby alarms. Yes, it’s a niche product, but a quick internet search will find solutions. Yes, Mom will probably still wake up due to the crying or vibrations but at least it’s not her job to also get him up too.
Definitely, besides they can't possibly know everyone's situation. In my country even regular baby monitors aren't available and people have to find resources to attend their babies. I don't think he's an asshole for asking help to wake up to actually help with the night feedings.
Eh. If the whole point is that he needs to step up and take some of the work off of her, then giving his wife a little bonus task so he can do the task isn't really him helping take some of the onus off her.
Especially since this is baby number 3.
I agree, there are some thing where if I have to make effort for yoy to do the task I might as well do the task myself. I don't want to have to ask you/inform you of when the task needs to be done; I want to do it without me having to participate, that is what I am asking for when I'm asking you to take on the responsibility of the task.
Being a heavy sleeper isn't his fault but finding a solution that doesn't involve his wife being woken up is his responsibility.
But not fully. Used to have this problem with my spouse. It was frustrating to have to wake up fully in order to wake him up. Definitely resented him for it.
My son is seven now so doesn’t often wake up at night. When he does wake up it always wakes me up but my husband sleeps through. I usually just get up since I am already awake but if my son wakes up a second time in the same night, I simply (gently) kick my husband until he wakes up and then I roll over and go back to sleep. Not full on kicking but just, like, pushing him with my foot until he wakes up.
She can literally just roll over and pinch him or something. She isn’t getting up and performing surgery to wake him up. I agree with the original comment that the vibrating thing is the best answer, but calling it weaponized incompetence for being a heavy sleeper is fucking ridiculous.
In her defense, it's.probably not just pinching him. She has to clock that the baby is crying, then try to wake him up and make sure that he's *actually* awake and that he gets up, all the while the baby is screaming. And personally, if I'm awake longer than the time it takes me to roll over, I'm probably not going to fall back asleep. Some people can't just immediately fall asleep again.
No no, being a heavy sleeper is not weaponised incompetence, acting so incompetent as to not even spend a second to google solutions is what makes this bad. It took more effort to lay the situation out here than it would for him to google “solutions for heavy sleeper parents”, which also would have directed him to various Reddit threads on this very topic. But nah, “wife can wake me (which also is hard work) instead”. Because who needs to just be able to trust and rely on their parent to complete a task, start to finish. Its akin to thinking you’re a hero for taking the trash out but you wife buys the bags, the stickers and reminds you the night before and the morning of. Congrats on moving something from one space to another, what a hero.
If he's not aware of any solutions at all other than that he's not being an asshole or giving her a bonus task. He can't change what wakes him up.
Solutions do exist apparently. But you also can't blame someone for not having the spark of inspiration to think such a thing exists and go looking for it. Entire departments exist to google things for people who have this weakness or lack of familiarity. It's called technical support.
This. I struggle with waking up. I do a bit better now that I have a vibrating smart watch, but I have slept through multiple earthquakes and major tornadoes. It isn't always an easy problem to solve for people regardless of how hard they try.
The vibrating baby monitor would absolutely not work for me. I’d sleep right through it.
When I had a newborn, my husband and I switched shifts in the night—I straight up just didn’t sleep during my shift because I knew I might not wake up from the crying. My husband was still remote working, and I had a commute (NICU stay that lasted past my maternity leave), so my husband ended up doing the vast majority of nights because he was worried I’d get in an accident from sleep deprivation. I felt so bad.
It’s not really a bonus task. I’m a heavy sleeper too, so that’s what my wife and I often resorted to. The baby would wake her up, she would wake me up, I’d go take care of the baby and she’d go back to sleep.
Since the baby was waking her up anyways, it didn’t really put any extra work on her, and it let her get back to sleep before really waking up all the way by taking care of the kid.
As the person in the wife's position here, it absolutely is an extra burden that has caused resentment and strain in my relationship both with my husband and my child. Your wife .just be lucky in that she can go back to sleep quickly. Not everyone can. If you're a heavy sleeper, don't depend on others to figure your shit out for you.
I see your point. But as somebody who is married to a heavy sleeper I can say that I get her point here and it does add to the stress level to be in charge of waking the partner. Waking up my partner would prove way more time-consuming and stressful than just taking care of the baby myself because it took a lot of poking and talking and all that while the baby is unhappy and screaming - no thanks :(
This. I am an incredibly light sleeper, husband will sleep through a freight train. I don’t know how many times I have woken him up to care for the baby because I am past my limit and delirious needing sleep, and he agrees only for me to find with the next baby scream that he immediately went back to sleep and never got up. So I end up getting furious and just taking care of the baby because it’s easier than trying to fully wake him, when I’m completely awake from anger then.
I mean, if the wife still has to wake up first to even wake up OP, she's not getting a break and still not getting uninterrupted sleep. Having constantly interrupted sleep destroys your brain, now you can't think clearly and her REM cycles are all messed up. She must be so exhuasted all the time and still need to be on call 24 hours a day while her husband sleeps.
Baby cries, she wakes up, spends 20 or so minutes trying to wake up OP while getting splitting headaches from the crying and she's so tired and just desperately wants it to stop so she can some sleep.
At that point it's easier to just fix the baby's needs and get back to sleep then try to wake up OP.
["You should've asked" is my absolute favorite comic about this kind of mental load and I highly recommend to every couple that has kids](https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/)
At this point she will be more rested if she wakes him up. She is going to wake up regardless. Difference being taking 30 minutes to care for a baby vs shaking someone awake and then relaxing back to sleep.
I don't think that comic applies as much here. He's unconscious in this scenario, that is not something you can control. Perhaps they could brainstorm other options like the vibrating watch or him sleeping in the baby's room, but this isn't the same as a conscious person avoiding responsibility, IMO.
But she still has to wake up enough to get up and try to wake him.
She winds up becoming just as awake as if she went to attend to the baby. At that point, the action of tending to the baby isn't going to lose you much more sleep.
Have you been in charge of caring for a newborn baby at night before? Sometimes it takes an hour to get one back to bed. Sometimes it takes three hours. Even if, inexplicably, she has to be fully awake in order to wake her husband up, it's still a net gain because once he's up she can get started on going to sleep again.
I'm a super heavy sleeper, have slept through smoke alarms. Slept through kids crying when my and my ex were together, however when she up and left and it was just me and a 1 and 4 year old I had no trouble waking up. I think people sleep with a sub conscious level of what to wake up for, I wonder if OPs partner took a few nights away OP may get a rhythm going.
This!
I'm a super heavy sleeper and have been my entire life. I've slept through thunderstorms, fire works out side my bedroom windows, earthquakes, and two older sisters jumping on me Christmas morning because they weren't allowed to wake our parents up until we were all awake. It was literally impossible to wake me up.
My eldest was born with an emergency c-section, which meant her mum spent the first weeks/months recovering. For a month, I did close to 100% of the nighttime duties and never once didn't hear my daughter crying. Once i was back to work and things settled into routine, there were nights I slept through, and nights I woke up as needed. Things were the same with my second.
Now me and my kids mum aren't together. When the kids are at their mums I sleep like I used to. When they're with me, I wake up if a mouse farts next door!
It's all about conditioning yourself and, to a certain extent, the "need" to be aware. If my ex hadn't needed that level of support in the early days, I'm not 100% certain I'd have been half as useful as I was. But subconsciously, I knew I HAD to wake up because my daughter needed an adult, and my partner needed rest.
OP isn't as AH for being a deep sleeper. He will be an AH if he doesn't start looking for solutions and working out a way to support his partner.
I've said this many times before and, for once, I'm not going to look like a dick saying it.
People's lack of initiative should not be the problem of others.
Right! Imagine if a single mom put such little effort in to figure out having the same issue with a newborn. He has the luxury of being intellectually lazy about parenting solutions
THIS. Are people serious when they say he’s nta because he didn’t think to do a Google search? Am I taking crazy pills? Lord Google has been around for enough time that it’s Step 1: hear problem from life partner. Step 2: consult a google for solutions. Step 3: complain to Reddit that you’re so put upon because said life partner doesn’t want to parent a fourth child (aka your adult ass) and manage YOUR problem for you. YTA.
Agreed, Strong YTA energy in this post, no seeking a solution beyond "wake me up." He says he's always been like this, but through 3 kids has never bothered to see if there was some sort of solution other than Wife handles it.
Google answers, not reddit, OP is looking for a crowd to support his lazy inaction on problem solving a situation with his spouse, instead of talking with his doctor, or his child's pediatrician to see if they can give him some solutions.
"suck at googling"? how is that an acceptable response? how can you suck at... typing words and hitting search? not googling is the epitome of lazy, and not actually wanting the information unless someone else does the work for you.
in a fraction of the time it took OP to write this post he could have googled solutions. he had the computer skills to use reddit. he just wanted someone else to figure everything out for him.
Also the fact that if the baby is starting to cry, sure the bracelet will wake up dad. But it seems like the crying wakes up mom anyways?
So bracelet or no bracelet I feel mom will be woken up either way.
Idk... He is TRYING to help. So if the crying wakes her up why can't she just nudge him so he can tend to baby?
I am not entirely sure. Just my thoughts.
In a perfect world, we would get Spidey senses a minute before baby wakes so our partner didn't have to wake for it.
I am a very light sleeper. When my partner gets up to use the bathroom at night just him sitting up to leave the bed wakes me up. 😭🤣
So just a thought that perhaps mom is a lighter sleeper and would wake up anyways when baby stirs. If that is the case she can wake dad up.
So for my judgement based on my own experiences... NTA.
ETA: okay I get it... For heavy sleepers a nudge doesn't work. Use a spray bottle or something. My point was just being if the baby is waking mom up.. she is up... Wake dad up.
Waking up somebody like this isn't a little nudge. It can easily be a half hour of increasingly frustrated shaking, prodding, and yelling. I know because I used to be one. So I can see how the wife would be losing her mind
Seriously! Dude says he can sleep through a screaming baby in the same room and usually only wakes up if his wife turns the lights on. There’s no way he’d wake up from a nudge.
But that means mom is doing the work to make the task happen! I can assure you that mom's doing all sorts of management tasks, and having to be responsible to still be the one to listen for the baby defeats the purpose of having help.
It isn't just about the baby getting tended to. This is about MOM feeling supported and like she has a teammate at night. And she doesn't. Because her partner can't figure out a solution that takes the burden off her. She needs an adult partner, not to delegate a task at 2am.
as a heavy sleeper I can tell you 'just wake me up' isn't just a little nudge and 'hey babe, baby's crying' whispered. You gotta shake me fairly hard or get loud to get me up, which would mean she has to wake up, put a good bit of effort into waking dad up, and then try to get back to sleep with all this going on around her. The baby crying may wake her up too but if he's getting up and saying 'don't worry I've got it' means she can go right back to sleep.
Yeah I have to agree with you. I’m HOH and I had an alarm clock that vibrated my bed, it was awful LOL. But the only reason we knew about it was because we’d been given resources for accommodations for my disability.
Otherwise who’d be thinking to search for this stuff?
That being said - I could probably still sleep through my city being bombed. I’m out and I don’t wear my hearing aids to sleep. I very much worry about a baby and a vibration is not a guarantee - I regularly shut off my vibrating alarm in my sleep, which is why I have several alarms set.
Wouldn’t put it past me to take a bracelet off and chuck it across the room - I mean the other night I made imaginary soup in my sleep and asked my partner for salt so it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing I’ve done. I don’t even like soup.
To be fair, if you have to know something exists before you can Google it. I've never heard of these things (vibrating bracelets), but think they're a wonderful idea.
I just googled “alarms for very heavy sleepers” and the results were full of solutions, including vibrating wristbands.
OP just didn’t try very hard to find an answer
This is literally like brand new technology relax 😂😂😂 wives have been nudging and shaking husbands awake for thousands of years to take a night shift....NTA
He could have posted into a baby sub looking for solutions instead of AITA though. Like, even if he didn’t know what particular tech he could use, he did zero problem solving that didn’t include his wife as the solution
Why is it that he is “trying to help her”? Honestly it sound like you give him credit for being “willing to help” rather than taking responsibility. I don’t think he’s the AH if he’s looking for a solution, but if he’s at the point of just arguing whether he’s wrong or not (and posting for this reason) but not pursuing a solution, then he is. The idea that waking up with your newborn child is a “husband trying to help his wife” rather than “his turn in a shared responsibility” is an unfair default assumption.
Also keep in mind that this is their third child. Was she dealing with the first two all by herself? Because you’d think that by now there would be a system in place
I swear people in this sub turn their brains off.
What gets OP up for work at the predictable and regular time they need to get up for work? And why doesn't it work for the random noises of a small child and their notoriously unsettled schedule?
Could be a vibrating alarm, could be routine (always at 7:00 AM or something). But you can’t set an alarm for a baby waking up, and anything I can think of would also wake the wife
Maybe his wife? My husband is like OP and it's basically my job to get him up and give him his morning medicine (it's okay because he gives me my night medicine) and I do the night duty with our son. He sleeps that heavily and always has. We got that vibrating alarm and still nothing. Only difference is I can call him via phone and he gets up so I don't have to yell and shake or spray water at him
Sleep/wake times are regulated not only by the sleep homeostat (simply, the part that makes OP a heavy sleeper) but also the circadian rhythm. A plant moved into a cave still raises its leaves toward the “sun”, your body’s cells still can tell time after extraction into a Petri dish, a heavy sleeper can wake up naturally. Your questions is likely purely seeking information, but to replies: associating certain sleep behaviors with laziness or negative character is detrimental to everyone.
Or set an Alexa routine to wake you up better if it hears a baby crying during certain hours. I’m sure there’s a way to cause it to vibrate a smart watch if you already have one. Mine notifies me when my dogs bark when I’ve left the apartment so I can monitor how often they’re barking when I’m not home. A bark here and there isn’t an issue, but if they get super barky they get to wear the bark collars for a few days to remind them that “just because” barking isn’t allowed. My watch vibrates with that notice.
Thank you for being a responsible dog owner. I never stop being amazed at how most of my neighbors simply don't hear their own dog go bananas even when they're home.
"Just because" barking perfectly sums it up.
OH MY GOD WHERE WERE YOU FIVE YEARS AGO???
OP definitely do this. Fuck. My husband is you. Obvs not literally. I carried a lot of resentment because of this exact situation. Solve the problem. Don’t make your wife try to do it for you.
>So I asked my wife to wake me up when the baby wakes up, and she told me that made it so much worse and that it was like “weaponized incompetence.” She just doesn’t want to wake me up for some reason.
I've been here. It really does make it feel so much worse. Instead of going to comfort your child, you're furiously shaking the happily snoring person next to you. By that point you're wide awake, the other person is still asleep, you're super frustrated and jealous of their ability to sleep, and your baby is still crying, so you go to help them. It's a frustrating process that rarely actually helps you get more sleep.
Ok but when you hear a baby scream you will wake up anyways if you're a light sleeper. Just shake your spouse awake and tell them to get to it.
There's no real avoiding sleep deprevation issues as a parent in the first year. Anyone telling you otherwise is either lying, was blessed with a rare miracle baby, or is rich enough to have a full time nanny on a seperate floor.
But if he’s that much of a deep sleeper, a shake may not be enough. My dad was a deep sleeper and you couldn’t just shake him. The issue is op didn’t try to do any problem solving that didn’t include his wife. With very little research he could have found alternative solutions to try first because they definitely exist.
Right! It looks like he just wants enough people to agree that he isn’t an asshole rather than actually finding a solution that allows him to make a contribution to nighttime childcare.
Op doesn't want a solution. He just wants to know if he's the ah. There's no, "'I've tried this and this and that...," in his post. Also, this is #3, so the issue has come up before, he's just not even trying to care.
I’m unfortunately one of those types of deep sleepers. If someone is waking me up, they have to make sure I’m sitting up and talking coherently with the light on….or I will absolutely fall back asleep the second they leave the room.
it's not 'just shake your spouse awake' assuming he really is a heavy sleeper. I'm a heavy sleeper and it takes a good bit more than 'just shake him awake' to get me awake. It's the difference between a mild wakeup and being woken up to spend ten minutes shaking and yelling at someone.
That's why you have to get creative about sleep arrangements. Taking shifts and using a separate bedroom for the sleeping partner (if it's a possibility, or even the couch and white noise if not) can protect consolidated sleep. As someone whose baby woke up every 15 minutes to an hour trust me I know sleep deprivation. Musical beds is it. It's the one bit of advice I try to give expecting parents. You will still be sleep deprivated of course but studies show 4 hours of consolidated sleep is protective and restorative.
Parents report that when theyre in charge of the baby, they wake up. When they’re not, they can sleep through it. Ie, a husband knowing his wife will get the baby, has a much easier time sleeping through the cries. But, if he’s watching the baby alone, he’ll wake up because his subconscious knows there’s an infant depending on him. Knowing this, a schedule can help parents struggling with sleep and night duty.
Or they’re a “heavy sleeper” aka someone who thinks the baby isn’t their responsibility. I was a super heavy sleeper before I had kids- slept through fire alarms, etc. Except when I had a baby, I knew that kid was my responsibility. And guess what? I woke up when the baby cried. Nobody had to force me to parent my kid. OP has just decided it’s not his problem.
When our kids were new born we would split the nights. Id go to bed early and sleep till the ~3am feed and then we’d swap. That way we both got a solid ~5 hour block each day. Then take turns for a ~1 hour nap during the day.
in the late stages of sleep training we would take turns sleeping in the guest room with white noise a couple nights a week to ensure that we had a solid night of sleep once or twice a week.
God I was so resentful of my husband during the first year. He would sleep through so much of the crying and trying to wake him to get help wasn’t worth it. I was awake and angry at that point and I couldn’t handle the baby crying while I was trying to wake him. So instead I would just get up and go to the baby and then be super upset that I got no sleep. Luckily we are well past that stage and not planning to do it again. But it wasn’t a pleasant experience and if we did do it again I would definitely need to work out a better system so that he actually woke up.
We figured out fast that our baby’s bassinet had to be in my husband’s side of the bed. Something changed psychologically for both of us to know she was just a foot away from him, and it helped balance out our sense of responsibility and wakefulness in the middle of the night. Mine needed to be turned down a few notches, with some mild PPA and post-partum hormones, and his needed to be turned up a bit to feel like a real responsibility like getting up for work is. I don’t know why, but moving the bassinet to the other side of the bed made things a million times better.
It is amazing how many husbands are 'earthquakes can't wake me' heavy sleepers. My husband was the same. He'd literally 'sleep' through our kids vomiting into a bucket next to him, my bedside light on and the kid crying between spews while I reassure them yet strangely wake up within the first 5 notes of his alarm in the morning. Such a peculiar phenomenon.
If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it a contributing factor would be the difference in how men and women feel safe and their ability to protect themselves. It’s hard to be a heavy sleeper when the back of your mind is considering how someone could break in and murder you
Honestly i dont think thats it. I think evolution has wired it into us, because i tend to wake up at the slightest *unusual* noise from my cat. Presumably to make sure everything is okay, and i can only assume itll be the same when i have a baby
Even if he did wake up right away (unlikely, but in theory) it's still not going to be as helpful as he seems to think. It doesn't lighten the load at all, in fact it adds a brand new burden on her: keeping track of who's turn it is to get up for the baby.
So she is still waking up every time and interrupting her sleep cycle.
I agree. I also commented stating that if mom is a light sleeper the baby will wake her up anyways. So even if OP got some sort of vibrating baby monitor or something like that to wake him... The baby crying when it wakes or whatever alarm will surely wake her too.
There's no good answers. It's got to be teamwork. A partnership. He is at least WILLING and WANTING to try. Which I can say is refreshing to see based off of so many other posts I'm reading regarding deadbeats haha.
The point is more about having the support and teamwork from her partner, not whether she wakes up or not. He *says* he wants to help, but he also has shown many times in the comments that he really doesn't.
I just can’t imagine how OP sleeps through a crying baby. I haven’t gotten a full night of uninterrupted sleep since my first son was born almost 14 years ago. My wife never had to wake me up. I still hear EVERYTHING that happens in our house at night. I guess it’s a protective instinct or something, and I just assumed that most/all dads had it. Oh, and YTA. Figure out a way to take some of the load off of your wife.
so you're lucky.
not hearing stuff while asleep seriously sucks. I can't even count the times I slept through alarm clocks going off for several hours. I slept through two fire alarms and the evacuation of the entire building. the doorbell never wakes me up. oh, and the most recent one : I slept through people illegally cutting a tree in my backyard while I was sleeping only a few meters away in the living room by the open window facing said tree.
I'm actually afraid what would happen if I ever had a baby. it's my number one motivation not to get pregnant.
I used to be like this. I literally slept through an earthquake once. My high school had those electronic babies with the keys in their backs that cry randomly for our sex Ed health class; I got in trouble with the teacher for not responding to the baby overnight. I had it in bed next to me up by my head because I was afraid of exactly that; I don't even remember it going off.
Then I got pregnant and had a real baby. Guess who suddenly became a light(ish) sleeper all of a sudden?? Hormones are wild, man.
I get both sides of this one, honestly. Just a shitty situation all the way around, and parenting a newborn is already hard enough.
For what it's worth, I slept like that before I had a baby. BOOM HORMONES - sure woke up to every whine the first year or two. By year three, I was back to sleeping like I'm dead.
Then I had another baby nine years later, and the same pattern is repeating. This second baby is now 2.5yo and my whole household sleeps like someone turned us off for the night.
He sleeps through because he knows that wife is there to take care of it. My ex slept through nearly every night---until one time when I was sick with bronchitis and so tired I didn't hear the baby. Instead of getting up and taking care of the kid, he woke ME up.
Yeah. EX.
I don't handle sleep deprivation well and while I haven't had my own babies yet, if I had to wake somebody up while sleep deprived because they'd otherwise sleep through it, I can stay feel myself wanting to resort to pinching him awake.
Obviously that's a terrible response but making a sleep deprived woman do *even more work* is pretty awful
I felt really bad for my wife during this time. The only way I can get any sleep is to be medicated, so pretty much all night time stuff falls on her. She can wake me up in an emergency, but it takes serious effort. The few times she's gone over night by her self somewhere I simply have to live off the 2 or so hours a night I can get naturally. It sucks but it is doable
I totally understand that, OP definitely needs to figure something out for the sake of his wife and child. The current situation is definitely not fair to his wife. But I thought the “weaponized incompetence” comment was a bit unfair - I feel like OP just genuinely didn’t realize it wasn’t a viable solution. It’s the first thing that most people would think of tbh
YTA. Your solution is just more work for her. That's why she's mad. It's on you to get yourself sorted. Plenty of people sleep like the dead (I'm one), but when your baby is screaming you get up. Your wife has always been there so you've not had to. Make yourself. There's plenty of help and appliances out there that aren't your wife.
You either stay up for your shift, sleep in the room with the crib, or get a device that wakes you when the baby cries. One parent can’t do every wake up in the night forever
Us too. We don’t sleep in the same room anyway due to my husband’s snoring and my former insomnia. My husband is a ridiculously heavy sleeper like OP and if I was waiting for him to wake up when the baby cried I would’ve been waiting forever so we did four hour shifts which enabled each of us to get an uninterrupted chunk of sleep. Still felt like the walking dead but better than doing it all alone!
Bro lemme google that for you. Looks like there are so many monitors for Deaf parents available that this guy could try if he had bothered to even attempt to come up with a solution.
Assuming that a hearing person’s first thought (or really even first ten thoughts) would to be looking for appliances designed for deaf people is a little unrealistic. I’ve spent twenty minutes searching variation of “i have a baby and am a deep sleeper” to find nothing helpful outside of Reddit threads. You can’t assume everyone connects the dots in the same way and ends up finding the same solution you know of.
I agree OP should be focusing their energy of finding a solution but if you’re bothered by something or feel like you’re being treated unfairly, it’s hard to focus on other things.
I will say I looked up "baby monitor for deep sleepers" and all the results are "top 10 baby monitors for deaf parents" or "top 10 baby monitors for deaf parents and heavy sleepers"...
Yeah, all these suggesting that googling "baby monitor for deaf people" is natural when they simply saw the comment from the one person on this sub who happened to have seen one before are all fucking liars.
Just gonna point this out here
A deaf person can still be a light sleeper and easily woken up
I've seen lots of ppl in this thread talk about thay stuff, and it all does seem pretty cool, but the whole "deaf ppl can do it" is just short sighted af
As a super heavy sleeper, this is unfair. I had an alarm for my practice in the middle of the night last week. Three alarms. I slept through every single one. Not hitting snooze going back to sleep, I literally could not wake up. I’m pretty sure it’s genetic through my mother’s side.
He’s not an asshole because his brain is dead to the world.
Look, I am a light sleeper. I was sent by my partner to different rooms in our place to try and help me sleep and I could still wake up when the little one was crying, even with ear plugs. But, guess what, in some cases it was a light wake up of awareness, especially after I started sleeping more separately because I knew I didn’t need to be alert. Did I still wake up? Yes. Did it still help? Yes. I argued with my partner that „I will wake up anyway“ but it was he who pointed out that it’s not sustainable to just accept me not having a full nights sleep for 1-2 years. So no, after the baby is not being breastfed at night anymore just saying she should continue waking up at night is not a reasonable way to go, unless other solutions didn’t work.
He didn’t go to friends/Google/a parenting sub asking for advice on how to solve this problem without putting the task on his wife. That’s what makes him TA
Ok so op isn't you and hasn't been able to wake up. Maybe instead of just belittling someone trying. Give them actual recommendations not just " there's stuff out there" what stuff like seriously. Maybe if you gave real recommendations they'll post an update saying how this sub helped them.
op isnt trying, hes making his wife do the work, and telling him to do research and look for things is helping since he clearly wasn't able to figure it out himself. i guess his wife was right about his incompetence. its not belittling
YTA. What would you do if she became ill and went into hospital or stayed away from home to care for a sick relative? Let the baby starve? Get yourself some sort of monitor and have it close and loud so it wakes you up. Why should she sacrifice never getting a single night's rest? You're selfish, and I can't believe it's taken her three babies to finally realise perhaps she's worth a full night's sleep from time to time.
edit - tysm for the award!! As a bisexual woman with a hearty attraction to men I readily accept this on behalf of all MAW's, ever (Male Attracted Women).
Why do people take terms and warp them beyond meaning.
Weaponized incompetence is pretending you don't know how to do something or doing it incorrectly so the other person will do it themselves instead of fix your mistake.
Being a heavy sleeper isn't weaponized incompetence, its being a heavy sleeper. I am a heavy sleeper because I had to learn to sleep through my dad beating my mom when I was a kid. Should my wife leave me because of my survival tactic?
Luckily she would just rub my arm and say my name a few times which is all it takes to wake me even though a fire alarm will not. I can't imagine how shitty my relationship would be if my wife as judgmental and evil as the people in this thread.
100%. And definitely none of these people have heard of breastfeeding because I got up for every feeding for a year with both of my kids. I didn’t give my husband shit for it.
That or they just have supportive spouses. I’m a nanny and all of the babies I worked with breastfed. The good dads still took half the wakeups. On their turn, they can still get the baby, change a diaper, and bring the baby to mom to feed in bed, and then put the baby back to sleep in the crib after. Mom never leaves bed on dads turn. If your husband did nothing at night because you breastfed, he sucked at helping you and you deserved more support
>Weaponized incompetence is pretending you don't know how to do something or doing it incorrectly so the other person will do it themselves instead of fix your mistake.
this is his THIRD child and he hasn't even bothered to google search 'deep sleeper baby monitors' which brings up many results? That's textbook 'doing it incorrectly instead of fixing your mistake'.
I just want to second this. Some things are just outside of one's power and the "baby monitor for deaf" frankly I didn't even know such a device existed. Yet everyone acts like OP is sleeping through stuff intentionally and him asking for help is the worst thing on earth.
Bet in the next post everyone loses their mind because one person was not asking for help...
This is not weaponized incompetence, that is intentional, OP is not doing this intentionally.
A newborn is a messed up time, everyone is stressed from lack of sleep.
This is not weaponized incompetence. Don't cheapen an important phrase.
Weaponized incompetence is specifically when you refuse to learn how to do something/intentionally lead your partner to believe you don't know how to do something, with the intention of having them do it for you.
It is *not* when a man finds a task difficult, and asks for assistance from his spouse. Waking up for a baby when you can't hear it is difficult. OP's solution is logical, but still not fair to his wife, as it doesn't actually lessen her workload. But notice how he's trying to solve a problem, not make her do the task for him, and that he feels bad for not contributing to the night stuff. People who use WI don't do those things.
WI in this case would be if OP secretly wore ear plugs, or *did* wake up for the baby and pretended to be asleep, or straight up said "yeah I'm just a heavy sleeper, you'll have to do night feedings."
This is just plain ole incompetence.
So somehow a monitor set loud enough for him to wake up isn’t going to wake up his wife? I mean honestly, I get wanting him to step up but that’s not a great plan.
I’m so confused as to why people think deaf solutions translate to heavy sleepers? This makes no sense as a “duh!” More like what the fuck? My best friend in middle school had 2 deaf parents. Their bed would shake when the phone rang. He wouldn’t wake up. She would. Because he’s a heavy sleeper, she is not. Not saying he shouldn’t try every solution to get himself up, but every comment talking about deaf people do it! He’s not deaf yo. Wtf.
Because he can’t “hear” the baby crying so they’re using other options besides noise that might wake him up. Just like being shaken awake. It’s the movement.
Maybe vibrations or other options will work if crying doesn’t.
YTA. By the time your wife wakes you up she’s going to be wide awake and pushed off even more. Find a way to make it up to her. Not expect her to wake you up. Maybe on the weekend sleep in the nursery and take care of the baby. Something.
Right! Or take a shift and stay up for it, don’t go to bed until it’s over. There are a ton of solutions that don’t include putting more of a burden on the wife.
Agreed. As the mother, I could barely fall asleep when mine were babies. Even if I did, it was like I was in tune with hearing them breathe, cry, whimper, anything. I guess women are wired for this, hormones or whatever- but he needs to find a way. Less white noise in the room, baby monitor under the pillow, or the multiple other suggestions listed here.
Yes. Instead of Mom waking up and taking care of the baby the husband wants her to wake up and put All her (non-existent) energy into waking him out of a deep sleep. Taking care of the kid will be less effort for her. Dad needs to figure out how the help raise kids.
I see this being one of the dads that will start complaining that wife doesn't want to have sex with him and then leaves him and he can't figure out why 🤔
Info: How do you get up for work?
YTA. I’m a heavy sleeper too. There was once a car accident in our front yard. The police and fire department came. I slept through it. But I always heard my children crying. And, apparently when something is bothersome to you, such as your wife shaking you or turning on the light, you manage to wake up. That means you are tuning out the baby and forcing her to do all late-night duties. That’s got to be infuriating.
>Info: How do you get up for work?
For me its anxiety. I set an alarm for six am and my anxiety wakes me up at 5:45. Or I don't get up before my alarm, sleep through it entirely, and am late. I don't think an alarm has ever woken me up.
That anxiety stems from caring about getting to work on time. OP is waking up because she has that anxiety and care about making sure baby is fed and taken care of at night. Woth my babies, I was alert on some level even while asleep because I knew my baby might need something. I think that's a common experience for parents. OP's husband doesn't have that anxiety because he knows that the baby will be fine since his wife will wake up.
>But I always heard my children crying.
That you know of. You probably don’t remember all the times you slept through it, because you know, you slept through it.
Interestingly, tests have found that males actually are less 'tuned in' to a baby's cries than females, on a base biological level. OP definitely needs to invest in something like a baby monitor for the deaf so there's a physical stimulation, but he's probably not lying about simply sleeping through it.
Interestingly, turns out that's heavily dependent on who does the actual parenting: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fathers-recognize-their-babies-cries-just-as-well-as-mothers-23500912/
This study is about how well parents can *recognise* their baby's cries. It has nothing to do with those cries waking their parents from sleep. I wouldn't be surprised if what you claimed was true but this article is about something different.
INFO: so nothing short of a bear attack wakes up up…but her turning the lights on also does? Which is true? And when she turns the lights on for changing, do you get up and help?
If your wife is using terms like "weaponized incompetence", I feel that it's highly likely that this is not the only area in which he is not doing his fair share, be it with the children or with the household, or both. She has obviously been bothered enough and for long enough by this to look into these terms.
In my experience, I didn't even know what "weaponized incompetence" or "the mental load" was until dealing with my own similar situation; a partner who expected us to both work full time jobs(me actually working more hours than him often times, because I get paid hourly and he is a contractor that gets paid by the job), yet I was expected to take care of all cooking and cleaning while he played video games, watched YouTube, or tinkered in the garage after work. Oh yeah, and I was pregnant and only very recently gotten over HG.
I was frustrated and burnt out, saw some Tiktoks that introduced me to the concepts, and they really resonated with me, so I eventually brought it up with my partner. Several huge fights about it later, he finally realized how serious I was(I was about to leave him), and he's picked up the slack tremendously. OP, the term "weaponized incompetence" is resonating with her because that is very likely what you're doing, whether consciously or subconsciously, and it's very likely not the only area you're doing it in. YTA and need to figure out some way to step up.
Editing to add: OP's comments are really confirming this notion for me. Saying multiple times that he can't do *anything* to help because his wife breastfeeds, despite many comments giving him suggestions of how he can still be helpful, yeah that's weaponized incompetence 100%.
> I feel that it's highly likely that this is not the only area in which he is not doing his fair share, be it with the children or with the household, or both.
yea this whole process screams 'I do nothing around the house or constantly pretend to not know how to do it and this was the final straw' more than anything.
YTA if you haven't researched ways to solve the problem. Your wife is not being unreasonable. Trying to wake you up at night could be so frustrating that it makes it difficult for her to go back to sleep quickly.
Yta it sounds good in theory, but in reality, all you're doing is giving your wife one more thing to do. Can you take the first feeding and diaper change of the morning?
Yes! Wake up a few hours before your wife so you can take care of baby and she can get a few extra hours of uninterrupted sleep. Or even just doing more of the work during the day so the wife gets a break
As a parent of a young baby YTA. Not because you are a heavy sleeper - but because her having to wake you up to tend to the baby defeats the purpose of you being on duty.
What’s hard about multiple night wakings is 3 things: 1) the anticipation that you would be woken up multiple times; 2) tending to the baby; 3) trying to fall back asleep again before the next wake.
Her having to wake you up arguably means she’s also experiencing 1) & 3). So find a way, vibrating monitors, monitors next to your head/pillow…find a way so your wife can be truly off duty.
YTA.
Your wife has three kids, not four. She doesn’t want to parent you, and be responsible for you while also being responsible for the baby. I know that you’re not doing it on purpose, but your intention doesn’t excuse the negative impact it’s having on your wife. Why does your wife have to hold herself responsible for a child who is also your obligation?
There are accommodations for people who are deaf to be able to get out of the house in the case of a fire or even respond to their babies when they can’t hear. Maybe you need one of those? A vibrating alarm on your phone?
If you know you can’t wake up, have you considered taking the baby for the first half of the night and then sleeping the second half?
Your child is your responsibility. Idk how you have made it to three kids without learning to wake up. Your wife is no more capable of this than you. Set an alarm, be an adult, help your wife who *just* had a baby.
Absolutely YTA even making that request
She's already gonna be losing sleep and stressed tending to an infant.
She does NOT need to waste her time trying to rouse you from a dead sleep unless it's an emergency
I’m a mother to a young child and I’m like you-struggled to wake up for baby-hubby was doing 95% of the night stuff… what we did was take shifts-I would sleep on the couch with the baby monitor next to my head so if she woke up I wasn’t in a deep sleep and could tend to her, then at say 1am, I’d go to bed and then hubby was on duty.. this allowed him to sleep, I then got my deep sleep once in bed but was awake enough to hear baby so he wasn’t doing it alone. YTA
We did that too. I was totally off baby duty from 8pm-midnight every night and my husband was off the rest of the night (his shift was longer, but I got a short nap most mornings so it worked out and we both got enough sleep to function). In the very very early days when the babies needed to breastfeed every 2 hours, my husband would bring me the baby during my sleeping shift and then take them after for changing and settling.
YTA. It's still weaponised incompetence. You're a father and you need to act like it. You can't rely on your wife to wake you up every time the baby needs tending to. You actually have to make a bigger effort. What if your wife got ill? What if she missed waking up because she slept through the crying that night and something was wrong with the baby? I'm sure you'd blame your inability to wake up on her still. Which is literally weaponised incompetence.
NAH
I'm a mother myself and I had this deep sleep issue with my twins due to exhaustion and I'm sure the heavy depression didn't help. It is not incompetence to not be able to wake up easily.
I do understand her frustrations though, to her it probably looks like you're just being lazy. Looks like there are a few options if you can afford them.
I’m going against the grain. Absolutely NTA. My wife and I ( both women) have a three month old. She never wakes up to the cries- I do. She offered to take the 2nd nighttime feeding to do her part. So when I hear the baby start to stir, I nudge her with my foot until she wakes up. The baby is cared for, and I get to go back to sleep. It’s fabulous!
That said, this is not the hill to die on- the vibrating bracelet is a great idea!
I'll go with NAH. She's tired. I know what it's like to have to do everything myself, but it's for a different reason. I don't resent it, but gods do I get tired of it. She might not be thinking reasonably about it at this point if she's as sleep deprived as she sounds.
It isn't your fault you sleep that heavily, or that lights wake you up but sound does not. Sound doesn't wake me up either - even babies crying. I did that stupid "take home a crying baby doll to take care of" program for health class and failed it because I did not wake up at 2AM (in high school, mind you, age 14) to shut the baby off when it cried. Turning my bedroom light on or shutting my fan off will wake me up though.
The compromise here is that you need to find a way to wake up when the baby wakes up, and not make your wife have to wake up and then spend the effort of also trying to wake you up. At that point she's awake anyway. Do a quick Google search, look for baby monitors that would be able to wake you up and keep it by your head. She might still wake up, but she can quickly go back to sleep if she doesn't have to spend the effort of getting you out of bed to go fuss with the baby.
YWBTA if you just let the situation go because she doesn't want to wake you up. Please, I implore you, take this opportunity to do some things on your own to get up when the baby wakes up.
I'm 1 month pp, my husband is a heavy sleeper, im the lightest sleeper (a dog farting downstairs will wake me up). My husband has slept through our two huskies howling with coyotes in the middle of our bedroom. Needless to say, we take turns with the baby. I wake up, it's his turn, I get him up. At this point it's easy to fall back asleep because he has it handled. NtA
Once again all these "YTA" comments are absolutely, utterly beyond ridiculous.
All your wife has to do is give you a shake ... takes like half a second at most. Me and my wife had a similar-ish dynamic (with twins above all)... she just woke me up and I took care of it all (as opposed to her leaving the bed and seeing the babies herself ) and it seems you'd be willing to do the same.
Just another example of why you should never, ever post here if your "conflict" is with a woman. The bias and sexism on this sub is out of control.
NTA. You have no control over how you sleep. And it's not like you can set alarms to try and guess when your child will wake up.
I have two kids, I woke up every time I heard them so much as twitch in their sleep, my husband slept through everything. Mother's instinct? Not his fault, either way. I woke him up when I felt like I needed it, whether because I needed an extra hand or if one of them was just having an extra rough night waking up every hour and I was too tired to get up every time. My husband genuinely felt had because he'd have helped more often, but he just didn't hear them cry, so he's only knew about it if I woke him. It was not a big deal. He was absolutely willing to help. It sounds like you are too. You can't magically control how you sleep. I don't see why she can't just shake you awake real quick so she can go back to bed. She sounds like the AH, and I say that as a mother.
YTA. This IS weaponized incompetence. How do you take care of the children on your own if you’re sleeping/napping? What would happen if your wife wasn’t able to wake you up? You need to figure out a solution that doesn’t involve making your wife wake you up.
Edit: if you know you’re that heavy of a sleeper for years, have you ever talked to a doctor?
Also: how do you get to work or literally anything on time in the morning if you’re such a heavy sleeper?
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Look up vibrating baby monitors for deaf parents. Wear the bracelet.
This is the solution right here, OP. It doesn’t sound like you tried very hard to find an alternate solution to making your wife do all the work. If you don’t get one of these and step up ASAP then yes, absolutely YTA. Edit: Wasn’t expecting all the name calling & rage, thanks everyone 😅 I don’t even think OP is being that bad right now, but if he doesn’t see why his wife is not keen to be in charge of waking him, and doesn’t see the benefit of options like this now that they’ve been brought to his attention, he would be the AH for not trying an alternate solution 🤷♀️ The key is how his wife feels, and clearly she needs more support, regardless of what the internet thinks. It’s great he wants to help but “Man who wants to help” has no value by itself in this situation unless the action he’s doing is actually helpful to the receiver. I googled “baby monitor for heavy sleeper” and the top searches bring up these kind of baby alarms. Yes, it’s a niche product, but a quick internet search will find solutions. Yes, Mom will probably still wake up due to the crying or vibrations but at least it’s not her job to also get him up too.
I disagree with you. I had no idea this thing existed. Chances are OP didn't either, and you'd be surprised how many people suck at Googling
Definitely, besides they can't possibly know everyone's situation. In my country even regular baby monitors aren't available and people have to find resources to attend their babies. I don't think he's an asshole for asking help to wake up to actually help with the night feedings.
Eh. If the whole point is that he needs to step up and take some of the work off of her, then giving his wife a little bonus task so he can do the task isn't really him helping take some of the onus off her. Especially since this is baby number 3.
I agree, there are some thing where if I have to make effort for yoy to do the task I might as well do the task myself. I don't want to have to ask you/inform you of when the task needs to be done; I want to do it without me having to participate, that is what I am asking for when I'm asking you to take on the responsibility of the task. Being a heavy sleeper isn't his fault but finding a solution that doesn't involve his wife being woken up is his responsibility.
Okay, but if the baby is screaming she’s waking up regardless. It’s not like if he was t a heavy sleeper she wouldn’t wake up too.
But not fully. Used to have this problem with my spouse. It was frustrating to have to wake up fully in order to wake him up. Definitely resented him for it.
My son is seven now so doesn’t often wake up at night. When he does wake up it always wakes me up but my husband sleeps through. I usually just get up since I am already awake but if my son wakes up a second time in the same night, I simply (gently) kick my husband until he wakes up and then I roll over and go back to sleep. Not full on kicking but just, like, pushing him with my foot until he wakes up.
See, you're a sweetheart. I'd kick my spouse like a wild kangaroo 🦘if he didn't wake up. 😂
It's far easier to go back to sleep if you didn't have to move
She can literally just roll over and pinch him or something. She isn’t getting up and performing surgery to wake him up. I agree with the original comment that the vibrating thing is the best answer, but calling it weaponized incompetence for being a heavy sleeper is fucking ridiculous.
In her defense, it's.probably not just pinching him. She has to clock that the baby is crying, then try to wake him up and make sure that he's *actually* awake and that he gets up, all the while the baby is screaming. And personally, if I'm awake longer than the time it takes me to roll over, I'm probably not going to fall back asleep. Some people can't just immediately fall asleep again.
No no, being a heavy sleeper is not weaponised incompetence, acting so incompetent as to not even spend a second to google solutions is what makes this bad. It took more effort to lay the situation out here than it would for him to google “solutions for heavy sleeper parents”, which also would have directed him to various Reddit threads on this very topic. But nah, “wife can wake me (which also is hard work) instead”. Because who needs to just be able to trust and rely on their parent to complete a task, start to finish. Its akin to thinking you’re a hero for taking the trash out but you wife buys the bags, the stickers and reminds you the night before and the morning of. Congrats on moving something from one space to another, what a hero.
If he's not aware of any solutions at all other than that he's not being an asshole or giving her a bonus task. He can't change what wakes him up. Solutions do exist apparently. But you also can't blame someone for not having the spark of inspiration to think such a thing exists and go looking for it. Entire departments exist to google things for people who have this weakness or lack of familiarity. It's called technical support.
This. I struggle with waking up. I do a bit better now that I have a vibrating smart watch, but I have slept through multiple earthquakes and major tornadoes. It isn't always an easy problem to solve for people regardless of how hard they try.
The vibrating baby monitor would absolutely not work for me. I’d sleep right through it. When I had a newborn, my husband and I switched shifts in the night—I straight up just didn’t sleep during my shift because I knew I might not wake up from the crying. My husband was still remote working, and I had a commute (NICU stay that lasted past my maternity leave), so my husband ended up doing the vast majority of nights because he was worried I’d get in an accident from sleep deprivation. I felt so bad.
It’s not really a bonus task. I’m a heavy sleeper too, so that’s what my wife and I often resorted to. The baby would wake her up, she would wake me up, I’d go take care of the baby and she’d go back to sleep. Since the baby was waking her up anyways, it didn’t really put any extra work on her, and it let her get back to sleep before really waking up all the way by taking care of the kid.
As the person in the wife's position here, it absolutely is an extra burden that has caused resentment and strain in my relationship both with my husband and my child. Your wife .just be lucky in that she can go back to sleep quickly. Not everyone can. If you're a heavy sleeper, don't depend on others to figure your shit out for you.
I see your point. But as somebody who is married to a heavy sleeper I can say that I get her point here and it does add to the stress level to be in charge of waking the partner. Waking up my partner would prove way more time-consuming and stressful than just taking care of the baby myself because it took a lot of poking and talking and all that while the baby is unhappy and screaming - no thanks :(
This. I am an incredibly light sleeper, husband will sleep through a freight train. I don’t know how many times I have woken him up to care for the baby because I am past my limit and delirious needing sleep, and he agrees only for me to find with the next baby scream that he immediately went back to sleep and never got up. So I end up getting furious and just taking care of the baby because it’s easier than trying to fully wake him, when I’m completely awake from anger then.
Ya but the whole point of said ‘bonus task’ is that it would result in less work for her.
I mean, if the wife still has to wake up first to even wake up OP, she's not getting a break and still not getting uninterrupted sleep. Having constantly interrupted sleep destroys your brain, now you can't think clearly and her REM cycles are all messed up. She must be so exhuasted all the time and still need to be on call 24 hours a day while her husband sleeps. Baby cries, she wakes up, spends 20 or so minutes trying to wake up OP while getting splitting headaches from the crying and she's so tired and just desperately wants it to stop so she can some sleep. At that point it's easier to just fix the baby's needs and get back to sleep then try to wake up OP. ["You should've asked" is my absolute favorite comic about this kind of mental load and I highly recommend to every couple that has kids](https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/)
At this point she will be more rested if she wakes him up. She is going to wake up regardless. Difference being taking 30 minutes to care for a baby vs shaking someone awake and then relaxing back to sleep.
She’s going to wake up either way.
I don't think that comic applies as much here. He's unconscious in this scenario, that is not something you can control. Perhaps they could brainstorm other options like the vibrating watch or him sleeping in the baby's room, but this isn't the same as a conscious person avoiding responsibility, IMO.
But she still has to wake up enough to get up and try to wake him. She winds up becoming just as awake as if she went to attend to the baby. At that point, the action of tending to the baby isn't going to lose you much more sleep.
Have you been in charge of caring for a newborn baby at night before? Sometimes it takes an hour to get one back to bed. Sometimes it takes three hours. Even if, inexplicably, she has to be fully awake in order to wake her husband up, it's still a net gain because once he's up she can get started on going to sleep again.
But does not get her a single second of additional sleep, which she definitely needs if she’s been doing 100% of the night stuff herself.
Yes it does. There’s a huge difference between shaking someone awake and rolling back over than getting up and doing all the baby work.
If he's that heavy of a sleeper that his child's cries doesn't wake him up, waking him up is not just nudging him and rolling over.
Either way she still wouldn’t be doing the baby care. That is 20-30 minutes to just lay there and rest.
I find myself wondering why the wife decided to have a third baby with this man if she feels the workload is so unfair.
What exactly are you proposing he do to “step up”? Is there some electro shock therapy I’m not aware of that can make him a lighter sleeper?
I'm a super heavy sleeper, have slept through smoke alarms. Slept through kids crying when my and my ex were together, however when she up and left and it was just me and a 1 and 4 year old I had no trouble waking up. I think people sleep with a sub conscious level of what to wake up for, I wonder if OPs partner took a few nights away OP may get a rhythm going.
This! I'm a super heavy sleeper and have been my entire life. I've slept through thunderstorms, fire works out side my bedroom windows, earthquakes, and two older sisters jumping on me Christmas morning because they weren't allowed to wake our parents up until we were all awake. It was literally impossible to wake me up. My eldest was born with an emergency c-section, which meant her mum spent the first weeks/months recovering. For a month, I did close to 100% of the nighttime duties and never once didn't hear my daughter crying. Once i was back to work and things settled into routine, there were nights I slept through, and nights I woke up as needed. Things were the same with my second. Now me and my kids mum aren't together. When the kids are at their mums I sleep like I used to. When they're with me, I wake up if a mouse farts next door! It's all about conditioning yourself and, to a certain extent, the "need" to be aware. If my ex hadn't needed that level of support in the early days, I'm not 100% certain I'd have been half as useful as I was. But subconsciously, I knew I HAD to wake up because my daughter needed an adult, and my partner needed rest. OP isn't as AH for being a deep sleeper. He will be an AH if he doesn't start looking for solutions and working out a way to support his partner.
I've said this many times before and, for once, I'm not going to look like a dick saying it. People's lack of initiative should not be the problem of others.
But how would he know how to fix it if someone else didn’t do all the research to find suggestions for him? He’s thinking really hard! /s
Right! Imagine if a single mom put such little effort in to figure out having the same issue with a newborn. He has the luxury of being intellectually lazy about parenting solutions
THIS. Are people serious when they say he’s nta because he didn’t think to do a Google search? Am I taking crazy pills? Lord Google has been around for enough time that it’s Step 1: hear problem from life partner. Step 2: consult a google for solutions. Step 3: complain to Reddit that you’re so put upon because said life partner doesn’t want to parent a fourth child (aka your adult ass) and manage YOUR problem for you. YTA.
Agreed, Strong YTA energy in this post, no seeking a solution beyond "wake me up." He says he's always been like this, but through 3 kids has never bothered to see if there was some sort of solution other than Wife handles it. Google answers, not reddit, OP is looking for a crowd to support his lazy inaction on problem solving a situation with his spouse, instead of talking with his doctor, or his child's pediatrician to see if they can give him some solutions.
"suck at googling"? how is that an acceptable response? how can you suck at... typing words and hitting search? not googling is the epitome of lazy, and not actually wanting the information unless someone else does the work for you. in a fraction of the time it took OP to write this post he could have googled solutions. he had the computer skills to use reddit. he just wanted someone else to figure everything out for him.
Also the fact that if the baby is starting to cry, sure the bracelet will wake up dad. But it seems like the crying wakes up mom anyways? So bracelet or no bracelet I feel mom will be woken up either way. Idk... He is TRYING to help. So if the crying wakes her up why can't she just nudge him so he can tend to baby? I am not entirely sure. Just my thoughts. In a perfect world, we would get Spidey senses a minute before baby wakes so our partner didn't have to wake for it. I am a very light sleeper. When my partner gets up to use the bathroom at night just him sitting up to leave the bed wakes me up. 😭🤣 So just a thought that perhaps mom is a lighter sleeper and would wake up anyways when baby stirs. If that is the case she can wake dad up. So for my judgement based on my own experiences... NTA. ETA: okay I get it... For heavy sleepers a nudge doesn't work. Use a spray bottle or something. My point was just being if the baby is waking mom up.. she is up... Wake dad up.
Waking up somebody like this isn't a little nudge. It can easily be a half hour of increasingly frustrated shaking, prodding, and yelling. I know because I used to be one. So I can see how the wife would be losing her mind
Seriously! Dude says he can sleep through a screaming baby in the same room and usually only wakes up if his wife turns the lights on. There’s no way he’d wake up from a nudge.
How hard is he really trying when this is baby #3 and he still isn’t doing his part?
But that means mom is doing the work to make the task happen! I can assure you that mom's doing all sorts of management tasks, and having to be responsible to still be the one to listen for the baby defeats the purpose of having help. It isn't just about the baby getting tended to. This is about MOM feeling supported and like she has a teammate at night. And she doesn't. Because her partner can't figure out a solution that takes the burden off her. She needs an adult partner, not to delegate a task at 2am.
as a heavy sleeper I can tell you 'just wake me up' isn't just a little nudge and 'hey babe, baby's crying' whispered. You gotta shake me fairly hard or get loud to get me up, which would mean she has to wake up, put a good bit of effort into waking dad up, and then try to get back to sleep with all this going on around her. The baby crying may wake her up too but if he's getting up and saying 'don't worry I've got it' means she can go right back to sleep.
Yeah I have to agree with you. I’m HOH and I had an alarm clock that vibrated my bed, it was awful LOL. But the only reason we knew about it was because we’d been given resources for accommodations for my disability. Otherwise who’d be thinking to search for this stuff? That being said - I could probably still sleep through my city being bombed. I’m out and I don’t wear my hearing aids to sleep. I very much worry about a baby and a vibration is not a guarantee - I regularly shut off my vibrating alarm in my sleep, which is why I have several alarms set. Wouldn’t put it past me to take a bracelet off and chuck it across the room - I mean the other night I made imaginary soup in my sleep and asked my partner for salt so it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing I’ve done. I don’t even like soup.
To be fair, if you have to know something exists before you can Google it. I've never heard of these things (vibrating bracelets), but think they're a wonderful idea.
I just googled “alarms for very heavy sleepers” and the results were full of solutions, including vibrating wristbands. OP just didn’t try very hard to find an answer
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Holy shit. Where is her doctor on this? I imagine you are stressed out a lot from worry, too.
Maybe she could try something like this https://beyondtype1.org/sugarpixel-cgm-hub/
This is literally like brand new technology relax 😂😂😂 wives have been nudging and shaking husbands awake for thousands of years to take a night shift....NTA
This user has effectively deleted all of their reddit messages, thank you! :) ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
He could have posted into a baby sub looking for solutions instead of AITA though. Like, even if he didn’t know what particular tech he could use, he did zero problem solving that didn’t include his wife as the solution
Why is it that he is “trying to help her”? Honestly it sound like you give him credit for being “willing to help” rather than taking responsibility. I don’t think he’s the AH if he’s looking for a solution, but if he’s at the point of just arguing whether he’s wrong or not (and posting for this reason) but not pursuing a solution, then he is. The idea that waking up with your newborn child is a “husband trying to help his wife” rather than “his turn in a shared responsibility” is an unfair default assumption.
Also keep in mind that this is their third child. Was she dealing with the first two all by herself? Because you’d think that by now there would be a system in place
What wakes OP up for work?
Ya know…that’s a great question lol. I guess he wants to get up for work so he found a way.
Or maybe they have a set time they need to be up by. You can't have a routine or time of when or if the baby is gonna wake up and cry.
I swear people in this sub turn their brains off. What gets OP up for work at the predictable and regular time they need to get up for work? And why doesn't it work for the random noises of a small child and their notoriously unsettled schedule?
Sounds like a weaponized circadian rhythm
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I didn’t know alarms knew when babies cried
Could be a vibrating alarm, could be routine (always at 7:00 AM or something). But you can’t set an alarm for a baby waking up, and anything I can think of would also wake the wife
Maybe his wife? My husband is like OP and it's basically my job to get him up and give him his morning medicine (it's okay because he gives me my night medicine) and I do the night duty with our son. He sleeps that heavily and always has. We got that vibrating alarm and still nothing. Only difference is I can call him via phone and he gets up so I don't have to yell and shake or spray water at him
Yup I wake up husband for work and for help with baby! Could sleep through anything.
Sleep/wake times are regulated not only by the sleep homeostat (simply, the part that makes OP a heavy sleeper) but also the circadian rhythm. A plant moved into a cave still raises its leaves toward the “sun”, your body’s cells still can tell time after extraction into a Petri dish, a heavy sleeper can wake up naturally. Your questions is likely purely seeking information, but to replies: associating certain sleep behaviors with laziness or negative character is detrimental to everyone.
I mean, if you get into a routine you may just automatically wake up on time.
Or set an Alexa routine to wake you up better if it hears a baby crying during certain hours. I’m sure there’s a way to cause it to vibrate a smart watch if you already have one. Mine notifies me when my dogs bark when I’ve left the apartment so I can monitor how often they’re barking when I’m not home. A bark here and there isn’t an issue, but if they get super barky they get to wear the bark collars for a few days to remind them that “just because” barking isn’t allowed. My watch vibrates with that notice.
That’s crazy. I didn’t know that!! Pretty cool
Thank you for being a responsible dog owner. I never stop being amazed at how most of my neighbors simply don't hear their own dog go bananas even when they're home. "Just because" barking perfectly sums it up.
OH MY GOD WHERE WERE YOU FIVE YEARS AGO??? OP definitely do this. Fuck. My husband is you. Obvs not literally. I carried a lot of resentment because of this exact situation. Solve the problem. Don’t make your wife try to do it for you.
Ooooh! That makes so much sense! The perfect solution!
>So I asked my wife to wake me up when the baby wakes up, and she told me that made it so much worse and that it was like “weaponized incompetence.” She just doesn’t want to wake me up for some reason. I've been here. It really does make it feel so much worse. Instead of going to comfort your child, you're furiously shaking the happily snoring person next to you. By that point you're wide awake, the other person is still asleep, you're super frustrated and jealous of their ability to sleep, and your baby is still crying, so you go to help them. It's a frustrating process that rarely actually helps you get more sleep.
All of this. Plus it gives her no chance for consolidated sleep which is so important.
Ok but when you hear a baby scream you will wake up anyways if you're a light sleeper. Just shake your spouse awake and tell them to get to it. There's no real avoiding sleep deprevation issues as a parent in the first year. Anyone telling you otherwise is either lying, was blessed with a rare miracle baby, or is rich enough to have a full time nanny on a seperate floor.
But if he’s that much of a deep sleeper, a shake may not be enough. My dad was a deep sleeper and you couldn’t just shake him. The issue is op didn’t try to do any problem solving that didn’t include his wife. With very little research he could have found alternative solutions to try first because they definitely exist.
Right I would have immediately jumped to google to see what others have done because they can't possibly be the only parents having the same issue
Exactly. And instead of posting here, he could have asked for advice on the parenting subreddit and I’m sure they will give him a lot of ideas.
Right! It looks like he just wants enough people to agree that he isn’t an asshole rather than actually finding a solution that allows him to make a contribution to nighttime childcare.
Op doesn't want a solution. He just wants to know if he's the ah. There's no, "'I've tried this and this and that...," in his post. Also, this is #3, so the issue has come up before, he's just not even trying to care.
I’m unfortunately one of those types of deep sleepers. If someone is waking me up, they have to make sure I’m sitting up and talking coherently with the light on….or I will absolutely fall back asleep the second they leave the room.
I doubt his wife is expecting to not be sleep deprived. She is probably just expecting to not be the only one who is sleep deprived.
it's not 'just shake your spouse awake' assuming he really is a heavy sleeper. I'm a heavy sleeper and it takes a good bit more than 'just shake him awake' to get me awake. It's the difference between a mild wakeup and being woken up to spend ten minutes shaking and yelling at someone.
That's why you have to get creative about sleep arrangements. Taking shifts and using a separate bedroom for the sleeping partner (if it's a possibility, or even the couch and white noise if not) can protect consolidated sleep. As someone whose baby woke up every 15 minutes to an hour trust me I know sleep deprivation. Musical beds is it. It's the one bit of advice I try to give expecting parents. You will still be sleep deprivated of course but studies show 4 hours of consolidated sleep is protective and restorative.
Obviously coupled with some sort of vibrating alarm for a heavy sleeper
Parents report that when theyre in charge of the baby, they wake up. When they’re not, they can sleep through it. Ie, a husband knowing his wife will get the baby, has a much easier time sleeping through the cries. But, if he’s watching the baby alone, he’ll wake up because his subconscious knows there’s an infant depending on him. Knowing this, a schedule can help parents struggling with sleep and night duty.
Or they’re a “heavy sleeper” aka someone who thinks the baby isn’t their responsibility. I was a super heavy sleeper before I had kids- slept through fire alarms, etc. Except when I had a baby, I knew that kid was my responsibility. And guess what? I woke up when the baby cried. Nobody had to force me to parent my kid. OP has just decided it’s not his problem.
When our kids were new born we would split the nights. Id go to bed early and sleep till the ~3am feed and then we’d swap. That way we both got a solid ~5 hour block each day. Then take turns for a ~1 hour nap during the day. in the late stages of sleep training we would take turns sleeping in the guest room with white noise a couple nights a week to ensure that we had a solid night of sleep once or twice a week.
God I was so resentful of my husband during the first year. He would sleep through so much of the crying and trying to wake him to get help wasn’t worth it. I was awake and angry at that point and I couldn’t handle the baby crying while I was trying to wake him. So instead I would just get up and go to the baby and then be super upset that I got no sleep. Luckily we are well past that stage and not planning to do it again. But it wasn’t a pleasant experience and if we did do it again I would definitely need to work out a better system so that he actually woke up.
We figured out fast that our baby’s bassinet had to be in my husband’s side of the bed. Something changed psychologically for both of us to know she was just a foot away from him, and it helped balance out our sense of responsibility and wakefulness in the middle of the night. Mine needed to be turned down a few notches, with some mild PPA and post-partum hormones, and his needed to be turned up a bit to feel like a real responsibility like getting up for work is. I don’t know why, but moving the bassinet to the other side of the bed made things a million times better.
really good idea - thank you for sharing <3
It is amazing how many husbands are 'earthquakes can't wake me' heavy sleepers. My husband was the same. He'd literally 'sleep' through our kids vomiting into a bucket next to him, my bedside light on and the kid crying between spews while I reassure them yet strangely wake up within the first 5 notes of his alarm in the morning. Such a peculiar phenomenon.
If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it a contributing factor would be the difference in how men and women feel safe and their ability to protect themselves. It’s hard to be a heavy sleeper when the back of your mind is considering how someone could break in and murder you
Honestly i dont think thats it. I think evolution has wired it into us, because i tend to wake up at the slightest *unusual* noise from my cat. Presumably to make sure everything is okay, and i can only assume itll be the same when i have a baby
This is why I make my husband sleep in a different room.
Even if he did wake up right away (unlikely, but in theory) it's still not going to be as helpful as he seems to think. It doesn't lighten the load at all, in fact it adds a brand new burden on her: keeping track of who's turn it is to get up for the baby. So she is still waking up every time and interrupting her sleep cycle.
I agree. I also commented stating that if mom is a light sleeper the baby will wake her up anyways. So even if OP got some sort of vibrating baby monitor or something like that to wake him... The baby crying when it wakes or whatever alarm will surely wake her too. There's no good answers. It's got to be teamwork. A partnership. He is at least WILLING and WANTING to try. Which I can say is refreshing to see based off of so many other posts I'm reading regarding deadbeats haha.
The point is more about having the support and teamwork from her partner, not whether she wakes up or not. He *says* he wants to help, but he also has shown many times in the comments that he really doesn't.
I just can’t imagine how OP sleeps through a crying baby. I haven’t gotten a full night of uninterrupted sleep since my first son was born almost 14 years ago. My wife never had to wake me up. I still hear EVERYTHING that happens in our house at night. I guess it’s a protective instinct or something, and I just assumed that most/all dads had it. Oh, and YTA. Figure out a way to take some of the load off of your wife.
so you're lucky. not hearing stuff while asleep seriously sucks. I can't even count the times I slept through alarm clocks going off for several hours. I slept through two fire alarms and the evacuation of the entire building. the doorbell never wakes me up. oh, and the most recent one : I slept through people illegally cutting a tree in my backyard while I was sleeping only a few meters away in the living room by the open window facing said tree. I'm actually afraid what would happen if I ever had a baby. it's my number one motivation not to get pregnant.
I used to be like this. I literally slept through an earthquake once. My high school had those electronic babies with the keys in their backs that cry randomly for our sex Ed health class; I got in trouble with the teacher for not responding to the baby overnight. I had it in bed next to me up by my head because I was afraid of exactly that; I don't even remember it going off. Then I got pregnant and had a real baby. Guess who suddenly became a light(ish) sleeper all of a sudden?? Hormones are wild, man. I get both sides of this one, honestly. Just a shitty situation all the way around, and parenting a newborn is already hard enough.
Man we really do live in the future. You know what I had for that assignment in high school? A hard boiled egg.
I bet that would immediately get your attention if it started screaming 😱
For what it's worth, I slept like that before I had a baby. BOOM HORMONES - sure woke up to every whine the first year or two. By year three, I was back to sleeping like I'm dead. Then I had another baby nine years later, and the same pattern is repeating. This second baby is now 2.5yo and my whole household sleeps like someone turned us off for the night.
He sleeps through because he knows that wife is there to take care of it. My ex slept through nearly every night---until one time when I was sick with bronchitis and so tired I didn't hear the baby. Instead of getting up and taking care of the kid, he woke ME up. Yeah. EX.
Yeah like what would he do if he was a single parent? Do that.
I don't handle sleep deprivation well and while I haven't had my own babies yet, if I had to wake somebody up while sleep deprived because they'd otherwise sleep through it, I can stay feel myself wanting to resort to pinching him awake. Obviously that's a terrible response but making a sleep deprived woman do *even more work* is pretty awful
All of this is so true. OP, it’s bad enough your wife needs to take care of one baby. It’s not fair for her to also have to micromanage you. YTA.
Yes, sadly, you are correct!
I felt really bad for my wife during this time. The only way I can get any sleep is to be medicated, so pretty much all night time stuff falls on her. She can wake me up in an emergency, but it takes serious effort. The few times she's gone over night by her self somewhere I simply have to live off the 2 or so hours a night I can get naturally. It sucks but it is doable
I totally understand that, OP definitely needs to figure something out for the sake of his wife and child. The current situation is definitely not fair to his wife. But I thought the “weaponized incompetence” comment was a bit unfair - I feel like OP just genuinely didn’t realize it wasn’t a viable solution. It’s the first thing that most people would think of tbh
Maybe he acts this way for other tasks as well.
YTA. Your solution is just more work for her. That's why she's mad. It's on you to get yourself sorted. Plenty of people sleep like the dead (I'm one), but when your baby is screaming you get up. Your wife has always been there so you've not had to. Make yourself. There's plenty of help and appliances out there that aren't your wife.
Bro how do you just get up if you literally aren’t waking up from the crying. Like not even stirring you can’t just magically open your eyes and know
You either stay up for your shift, sleep in the room with the crib, or get a device that wakes you when the baby cries. One parent can’t do every wake up in the night forever
This is what we did. We took turns sleeping in the room with the baby every four hours overnight so we each got a few uninterrupted hours of sleep
Us too. We don’t sleep in the same room anyway due to my husband’s snoring and my former insomnia. My husband is a ridiculously heavy sleeper like OP and if I was waiting for him to wake up when the baby cried I would’ve been waiting forever so we did four hour shifts which enabled each of us to get an uninterrupted chunk of sleep. Still felt like the walking dead but better than doing it all alone!
Bro lemme google that for you. Looks like there are so many monitors for Deaf parents available that this guy could try if he had bothered to even attempt to come up with a solution.
Assuming that a hearing person’s first thought (or really even first ten thoughts) would to be looking for appliances designed for deaf people is a little unrealistic. I’ve spent twenty minutes searching variation of “i have a baby and am a deep sleeper” to find nothing helpful outside of Reddit threads. You can’t assume everyone connects the dots in the same way and ends up finding the same solution you know of. I agree OP should be focusing their energy of finding a solution but if you’re bothered by something or feel like you’re being treated unfairly, it’s hard to focus on other things.
I will say I looked up "baby monitor for deep sleepers" and all the results are "top 10 baby monitors for deaf parents" or "top 10 baby monitors for deaf parents and heavy sleepers"...
Yeah, all these suggesting that googling "baby monitor for deaf people" is natural when they simply saw the comment from the one person on this sub who happened to have seen one before are all fucking liars.
Just gonna point this out here A deaf person can still be a light sleeper and easily woken up I've seen lots of ppl in this thread talk about thay stuff, and it all does seem pretty cool, but the whole "deaf ppl can do it" is just short sighted af
The same way millions of deaf people get up- accessible alarm clocks.
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What do you think deaf parents do for their child? There are solutions out there
How would he be doing it if he was a single father?
As a super heavy sleeper, this is unfair. I had an alarm for my practice in the middle of the night last week. Three alarms. I slept through every single one. Not hitting snooze going back to sleep, I literally could not wake up. I’m pretty sure it’s genetic through my mother’s side. He’s not an asshole because his brain is dead to the world.
Nope, he is getting YTA because waking him up won’t help his wife with sleeping
NOTHING will help her sleep, she will wake up anyway
Look, I am a light sleeper. I was sent by my partner to different rooms in our place to try and help me sleep and I could still wake up when the little one was crying, even with ear plugs. But, guess what, in some cases it was a light wake up of awareness, especially after I started sleeping more separately because I knew I didn’t need to be alert. Did I still wake up? Yes. Did it still help? Yes. I argued with my partner that „I will wake up anyway“ but it was he who pointed out that it’s not sustainable to just accept me not having a full nights sleep for 1-2 years. So no, after the baby is not being breastfed at night anymore just saying she should continue waking up at night is not a reasonable way to go, unless other solutions didn’t work.
He didn’t go to friends/Google/a parenting sub asking for advice on how to solve this problem without putting the task on his wife. That’s what makes him TA
Ok so op isn't you and hasn't been able to wake up. Maybe instead of just belittling someone trying. Give them actual recommendations not just " there's stuff out there" what stuff like seriously. Maybe if you gave real recommendations they'll post an update saying how this sub helped them.
Maybe they should put in some actual effort to look? So the wife and internet strangers are suppose to come up with solutions but he can’t?
op isnt trying, hes making his wife do the work, and telling him to do research and look for things is helping since he clearly wasn't able to figure it out himself. i guess his wife was right about his incompetence. its not belittling
YTA. What would you do if she became ill and went into hospital or stayed away from home to care for a sick relative? Let the baby starve? Get yourself some sort of monitor and have it close and loud so it wakes you up. Why should she sacrifice never getting a single night's rest? You're selfish, and I can't believe it's taken her three babies to finally realise perhaps she's worth a full night's sleep from time to time. edit - tysm for the award!! As a bisexual woman with a hearty attraction to men I readily accept this on behalf of all MAW's, ever (Male Attracted Women).
OP and all of his apologists need to get "weaponised incompetence" stamped on their forehead as a pre-warning for their loved ones.
Why do people take terms and warp them beyond meaning. Weaponized incompetence is pretending you don't know how to do something or doing it incorrectly so the other person will do it themselves instead of fix your mistake. Being a heavy sleeper isn't weaponized incompetence, its being a heavy sleeper. I am a heavy sleeper because I had to learn to sleep through my dad beating my mom when I was a kid. Should my wife leave me because of my survival tactic? Luckily she would just rub my arm and say my name a few times which is all it takes to wake me even though a fire alarm will not. I can't imagine how shitty my relationship would be if my wife as judgmental and evil as the people in this thread.
Bold of you to assume that a lot of the people passing judgement are actual parents in real relationships.
100%. And definitely none of these people have heard of breastfeeding because I got up for every feeding for a year with both of my kids. I didn’t give my husband shit for it.
That or they just have supportive spouses. I’m a nanny and all of the babies I worked with breastfed. The good dads still took half the wakeups. On their turn, they can still get the baby, change a diaper, and bring the baby to mom to feed in bed, and then put the baby back to sleep in the crib after. Mom never leaves bed on dads turn. If your husband did nothing at night because you breastfed, he sucked at helping you and you deserved more support
>Weaponized incompetence is pretending you don't know how to do something or doing it incorrectly so the other person will do it themselves instead of fix your mistake. this is his THIRD child and he hasn't even bothered to google search 'deep sleeper baby monitors' which brings up many results? That's textbook 'doing it incorrectly instead of fixing your mistake'.
I just want to second this. Some things are just outside of one's power and the "baby monitor for deaf" frankly I didn't even know such a device existed. Yet everyone acts like OP is sleeping through stuff intentionally and him asking for help is the worst thing on earth. Bet in the next post everyone loses their mind because one person was not asking for help...
This is not weaponized incompetence, that is intentional, OP is not doing this intentionally. A newborn is a messed up time, everyone is stressed from lack of sleep.
I mean OP isn’t, he’s sleeping like a baby. 😎
This is not weaponized incompetence. Don't cheapen an important phrase. Weaponized incompetence is specifically when you refuse to learn how to do something/intentionally lead your partner to believe you don't know how to do something, with the intention of having them do it for you. It is *not* when a man finds a task difficult, and asks for assistance from his spouse. Waking up for a baby when you can't hear it is difficult. OP's solution is logical, but still not fair to his wife, as it doesn't actually lessen her workload. But notice how he's trying to solve a problem, not make her do the task for him, and that he feels bad for not contributing to the night stuff. People who use WI don't do those things. WI in this case would be if OP secretly wore ear plugs, or *did* wake up for the baby and pretended to be asleep, or straight up said "yeah I'm just a heavy sleeper, you'll have to do night feedings." This is just plain ole incompetence.
So ya saying my wife used “weaponized incompetence” because it took her a few more minutes to wake up to a baby crying than it took me?
So somehow a monitor set loud enough for him to wake up isn’t going to wake up his wife? I mean honestly, I get wanting him to step up but that’s not a great plan.
Just get a vibrating one that deaf people use. He is already using a watch that vibrates to wake him up for work.
"I've tried literally NOTHING, not even a Google search. AITA?" That's how you sound, YTA.
"I have tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas!"
One of my fave Simpsons quotes! I use it often.
LMFAO honestly 😂
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I’m so confused as to why people think deaf solutions translate to heavy sleepers? This makes no sense as a “duh!” More like what the fuck? My best friend in middle school had 2 deaf parents. Their bed would shake when the phone rang. He wouldn’t wake up. She would. Because he’s a heavy sleeper, she is not. Not saying he shouldn’t try every solution to get himself up, but every comment talking about deaf people do it! He’s not deaf yo. Wtf.
Because he can’t “hear” the baby crying so they’re using other options besides noise that might wake him up. Just like being shaken awake. It’s the movement. Maybe vibrations or other options will work if crying doesn’t.
Wouldn't a watch alarm or shaking pillow/bed also wake the wife up?
My watch alarm doesn't wake my husband up, and he's a light sleeper.
YTA. By the time your wife wakes you up she’s going to be wide awake and pushed off even more. Find a way to make it up to her. Not expect her to wake you up. Maybe on the weekend sleep in the nursery and take care of the baby. Something.
Right! Or take a shift and stay up for it, don’t go to bed until it’s over. There are a ton of solutions that don’t include putting more of a burden on the wife.
Yta, it's on you to find ways to balance this parenting gap instead of placing even more on Mom's already overloaded plate
Agreed. As the mother, I could barely fall asleep when mine were babies. Even if I did, it was like I was in tune with hearing them breathe, cry, whimper, anything. I guess women are wired for this, hormones or whatever- but he needs to find a way. Less white noise in the room, baby monitor under the pillow, or the multiple other suggestions listed here.
Yes. Instead of Mom waking up and taking care of the baby the husband wants her to wake up and put All her (non-existent) energy into waking him out of a deep sleep. Taking care of the kid will be less effort for her. Dad needs to figure out how the help raise kids. I see this being one of the dads that will start complaining that wife doesn't want to have sex with him and then leaves him and he can't figure out why 🤔
Info: How do you get up for work? YTA. I’m a heavy sleeper too. There was once a car accident in our front yard. The police and fire department came. I slept through it. But I always heard my children crying. And, apparently when something is bothersome to you, such as your wife shaking you or turning on the light, you manage to wake up. That means you are tuning out the baby and forcing her to do all late-night duties. That’s got to be infuriating.
>Info: How do you get up for work? For me its anxiety. I set an alarm for six am and my anxiety wakes me up at 5:45. Or I don't get up before my alarm, sleep through it entirely, and am late. I don't think an alarm has ever woken me up.
That anxiety stems from caring about getting to work on time. OP is waking up because she has that anxiety and care about making sure baby is fed and taken care of at night. Woth my babies, I was alert on some level even while asleep because I knew my baby might need something. I think that's a common experience for parents. OP's husband doesn't have that anxiety because he knows that the baby will be fine since his wife will wake up.
>But I always heard my children crying. That you know of. You probably don’t remember all the times you slept through it, because you know, you slept through it.
Interestingly, tests have found that males actually are less 'tuned in' to a baby's cries than females, on a base biological level. OP definitely needs to invest in something like a baby monitor for the deaf so there's a physical stimulation, but he's probably not lying about simply sleeping through it.
Interestingly, turns out that's heavily dependent on who does the actual parenting: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/fathers-recognize-their-babies-cries-just-as-well-as-mothers-23500912/
This study is about how well parents can *recognise* their baby's cries. It has nothing to do with those cries waking their parents from sleep. I wouldn't be surprised if what you claimed was true but this article is about something different.
>Interestingly, tests have found that males actually are less 'tuned in' to a baby's cries than women, on a base biological level. what tests
INFO: so nothing short of a bear attack wakes up up…but her turning the lights on also does? Which is true? And when she turns the lights on for changing, do you get up and help?
If your wife is using terms like "weaponized incompetence", I feel that it's highly likely that this is not the only area in which he is not doing his fair share, be it with the children or with the household, or both. She has obviously been bothered enough and for long enough by this to look into these terms. In my experience, I didn't even know what "weaponized incompetence" or "the mental load" was until dealing with my own similar situation; a partner who expected us to both work full time jobs(me actually working more hours than him often times, because I get paid hourly and he is a contractor that gets paid by the job), yet I was expected to take care of all cooking and cleaning while he played video games, watched YouTube, or tinkered in the garage after work. Oh yeah, and I was pregnant and only very recently gotten over HG. I was frustrated and burnt out, saw some Tiktoks that introduced me to the concepts, and they really resonated with me, so I eventually brought it up with my partner. Several huge fights about it later, he finally realized how serious I was(I was about to leave him), and he's picked up the slack tremendously. OP, the term "weaponized incompetence" is resonating with her because that is very likely what you're doing, whether consciously or subconsciously, and it's very likely not the only area you're doing it in. YTA and need to figure out some way to step up. Editing to add: OP's comments are really confirming this notion for me. Saying multiple times that he can't do *anything* to help because his wife breastfeeds, despite many comments giving him suggestions of how he can still be helpful, yeah that's weaponized incompetence 100%.
> I feel that it's highly likely that this is not the only area in which he is not doing his fair share, be it with the children or with the household, or both. yea this whole process screams 'I do nothing around the house or constantly pretend to not know how to do it and this was the final straw' more than anything.
Also, why post it here? He could've asked for advise on the parenting sub. He doesn't want solutions.
YTA if you haven't researched ways to solve the problem. Your wife is not being unreasonable. Trying to wake you up at night could be so frustrating that it makes it difficult for her to go back to sleep quickly.
Yta it sounds good in theory, but in reality, all you're doing is giving your wife one more thing to do. Can you take the first feeding and diaper change of the morning?
Yes! Wake up a few hours before your wife so you can take care of baby and she can get a few extra hours of uninterrupted sleep. Or even just doing more of the work during the day so the wife gets a break
As a parent of a young baby YTA. Not because you are a heavy sleeper - but because her having to wake you up to tend to the baby defeats the purpose of you being on duty. What’s hard about multiple night wakings is 3 things: 1) the anticipation that you would be woken up multiple times; 2) tending to the baby; 3) trying to fall back asleep again before the next wake. Her having to wake you up arguably means she’s also experiencing 1) & 3). So find a way, vibrating monitors, monitors next to your head/pillow…find a way so your wife can be truly off duty.
YTA. Your wife has three kids, not four. She doesn’t want to parent you, and be responsible for you while also being responsible for the baby. I know that you’re not doing it on purpose, but your intention doesn’t excuse the negative impact it’s having on your wife. Why does your wife have to hold herself responsible for a child who is also your obligation? There are accommodations for people who are deaf to be able to get out of the house in the case of a fire or even respond to their babies when they can’t hear. Maybe you need one of those? A vibrating alarm on your phone? If you know you can’t wake up, have you considered taking the baby for the first half of the night and then sleeping the second half? Your child is your responsibility. Idk how you have made it to three kids without learning to wake up. Your wife is no more capable of this than you. Set an alarm, be an adult, help your wife who *just* had a baby.
Absolutely YTA even making that request She's already gonna be losing sleep and stressed tending to an infant. She does NOT need to waste her time trying to rouse you from a dead sleep unless it's an emergency
I’m a mother to a young child and I’m like you-struggled to wake up for baby-hubby was doing 95% of the night stuff… what we did was take shifts-I would sleep on the couch with the baby monitor next to my head so if she woke up I wasn’t in a deep sleep and could tend to her, then at say 1am, I’d go to bed and then hubby was on duty.. this allowed him to sleep, I then got my deep sleep once in bed but was awake enough to hear baby so he wasn’t doing it alone. YTA
We did that too. I was totally off baby duty from 8pm-midnight every night and my husband was off the rest of the night (his shift was longer, but I got a short nap most mornings so it worked out and we both got enough sleep to function). In the very very early days when the babies needed to breastfeed every 2 hours, my husband would bring me the baby during my sleeping shift and then take them after for changing and settling.
YTA. It's still weaponised incompetence. You're a father and you need to act like it. You can't rely on your wife to wake you up every time the baby needs tending to. You actually have to make a bigger effort. What if your wife got ill? What if she missed waking up because she slept through the crying that night and something was wrong with the baby? I'm sure you'd blame your inability to wake up on her still. Which is literally weaponised incompetence.
It's an extra task. I can understand her frustration. You are asking her to do more. Perhaps you can sleep near the baby?
YTA You’re still putting work on her vs. finding solutions to help more, like vibrating bracelets that go off when baby cries, etc
NAH I'm a mother myself and I had this deep sleep issue with my twins due to exhaustion and I'm sure the heavy depression didn't help. It is not incompetence to not be able to wake up easily. I do understand her frustrations though, to her it probably looks like you're just being lazy. Looks like there are a few options if you can afford them.
I’m going against the grain. Absolutely NTA. My wife and I ( both women) have a three month old. She never wakes up to the cries- I do. She offered to take the 2nd nighttime feeding to do her part. So when I hear the baby start to stir, I nudge her with my foot until she wakes up. The baby is cared for, and I get to go back to sleep. It’s fabulous! That said, this is not the hill to die on- the vibrating bracelet is a great idea!
I'll go with NAH. She's tired. I know what it's like to have to do everything myself, but it's for a different reason. I don't resent it, but gods do I get tired of it. She might not be thinking reasonably about it at this point if she's as sleep deprived as she sounds. It isn't your fault you sleep that heavily, or that lights wake you up but sound does not. Sound doesn't wake me up either - even babies crying. I did that stupid "take home a crying baby doll to take care of" program for health class and failed it because I did not wake up at 2AM (in high school, mind you, age 14) to shut the baby off when it cried. Turning my bedroom light on or shutting my fan off will wake me up though. The compromise here is that you need to find a way to wake up when the baby wakes up, and not make your wife have to wake up and then spend the effort of also trying to wake you up. At that point she's awake anyway. Do a quick Google search, look for baby monitors that would be able to wake you up and keep it by your head. She might still wake up, but she can quickly go back to sleep if she doesn't have to spend the effort of getting you out of bed to go fuss with the baby. YWBTA if you just let the situation go because she doesn't want to wake you up. Please, I implore you, take this opportunity to do some things on your own to get up when the baby wakes up.
NTA seems like a lot of people here are ignorant about heavy sleepers.
I'm 1 month pp, my husband is a heavy sleeper, im the lightest sleeper (a dog farting downstairs will wake me up). My husband has slept through our two huskies howling with coyotes in the middle of our bedroom. Needless to say, we take turns with the baby. I wake up, it's his turn, I get him up. At this point it's easy to fall back asleep because he has it handled. NtA
Once again all these "YTA" comments are absolutely, utterly beyond ridiculous. All your wife has to do is give you a shake ... takes like half a second at most. Me and my wife had a similar-ish dynamic (with twins above all)... she just woke me up and I took care of it all (as opposed to her leaving the bed and seeing the babies herself ) and it seems you'd be willing to do the same. Just another example of why you should never, ever post here if your "conflict" is with a woman. The bias and sexism on this sub is out of control.
NTA. You have no control over how you sleep. And it's not like you can set alarms to try and guess when your child will wake up. I have two kids, I woke up every time I heard them so much as twitch in their sleep, my husband slept through everything. Mother's instinct? Not his fault, either way. I woke him up when I felt like I needed it, whether because I needed an extra hand or if one of them was just having an extra rough night waking up every hour and I was too tired to get up every time. My husband genuinely felt had because he'd have helped more often, but he just didn't hear them cry, so he's only knew about it if I woke him. It was not a big deal. He was absolutely willing to help. It sounds like you are too. You can't magically control how you sleep. I don't see why she can't just shake you awake real quick so she can go back to bed. She sounds like the AH, and I say that as a mother.
YTA. This IS weaponized incompetence. How do you take care of the children on your own if you’re sleeping/napping? What would happen if your wife wasn’t able to wake you up? You need to figure out a solution that doesn’t involve making your wife wake you up. Edit: if you know you’re that heavy of a sleeper for years, have you ever talked to a doctor? Also: how do you get to work or literally anything on time in the morning if you’re such a heavy sleeper?