What Do Women Dream Of? A Better Night’s Sleep
Lee Bowman at the Nashua Telegraph writes an interesting piece on Stay-At-Home Moms and their lack of sleep. Is it an issue for you? Do you find parenting get’s in the way of your slumber? And what about Stay-At-Home Dads? Do the kids naturally gravitate to Mom when they have a nightmare?
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19 responses so far ↓
A.L. Hatch // Mar 18, 2007 at 1:51 pm
HA! You must have read my mind. The Poo woke up at 1:30 AM this morning and “slept” with us the rest of the night.
It was one of the worst nights of sleep I’ve had in awhile.
Annie // Mar 18, 2007 at 2:31 pm
Definitely an issue…Christina is teething, so she’s been up a lot…
And I’m the one who soothes the kids out of nightmares and comforts them when they’re sick.
mcewen // Mar 18, 2007 at 3:11 pm
That’s an interesting report. Did you notice that not only did men have 8 hours sleep but they also managed a nap during the day. If you link that with the report last week about day time naps / stress reduction and health, it looks like we should all be having more naps and more sleep if we want to have the chance of being grandparents!
Cheers
Barb // Mar 18, 2007 at 4:00 pm
I am the one who does ALL nighttime parenting in our home. We co-sleep, and I believe that makes things easier in our home. But if somebody wakes up with a bloody nose or growing pains (often occurrences in our house), I’m the one who takes care of it. This includes nighttime potty-training.
Even if I weren’t the one who was doing the parenting, I would still be awake and wondering how things are going, so it’s probably best this way.
My only problem with it is when I’ve been awake in the middle of the night for four nights in a row and my husband has had four full nights of sleep (and yes, naps during the day - he can fall asleep anywhere at the drop of a hat :lol:) and DH *complains* of being tired!!!
Stu Mark // Mar 18, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Amy,
Total bummer! It’s a shame science hasn’t found a way for us to compensate for lost sleep. Maybe one day. :-\
Stu Mark // Mar 18, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Annie,
Do you feel ok about being the go-to parent in those situations, or do you take issue with the lack of balance? When my kids were in the nightmare/can’t sleep stage, I did my best to keep it 50/50 with my wife, even if the kids complained that they wanted their mommy. I don’t know that it was the right thing, to deprive them of their mommy when they wanted her, which is why this article struck a chord with me.
Stu Mark // Mar 18, 2007 at 8:18 pm
mcewen,
Yeah, more naps for everyone, on me!
Seriously, we need to scale back our economy to take serious sleep into account. Otherwise we will continue to suffer.
Stu Mark // Mar 18, 2007 at 8:21 pm
Barb,
Obviously you know your marriage (and kids) best, but it seems unfair that you have to carry so much weight. I feel like men (in general) have a tendency to avoid interrupting their sleep, out of selfishness. Just because the kid gestated inside you doesn’t mean that you’re the sole support mechanism after the birth.
But that’s just my opinion, and I’m just some guy, not an authority on anything.
Barb // Mar 18, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Stu,
Yep, I feel my husband is very selfish with his sleep. Since he works outside of the home, it’s difficult for me to argue with him. He continues to have the view that being a stay at home mom is easy and is not work, even though he did it for 4 days with my oldest son when I was in the hospital with my second child, and didn’t do a thing around the house except make a mess. However, no matter what I do to convince him, he will never see what I do as being equal to what he does. And *I* even think I do a lot more!!!
So, if I’m picking my battles, I guess, and I’m choosing to avoid this one.
Stu Mark // Mar 18, 2007 at 9:24 pm
Well, I don’t want to tell you not to avoid it, as I understand that you can’t fight all the battles you encounter, but as a house-wife, I get it, it’s a *ton* of work, from early morning to well after the kids have finally sacked out. It’s a *load* of work. But what can you do, there are cement-heads out there, and sometimes we marry them.
Barb // Mar 18, 2007 at 9:38 pm
Yep - I married a cement-head, who also has major “mom” issues. I hope I’m more like a chisel than a jack hammer, but so far feel that my affect on him has been only like a gentle rain. :lol
Annie // Mar 18, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Barb, I do sympathize with you quite a bit…
Stu, let me give you an example: Last night, I woke up to hear Christina screaming. Robert was in her room, trying to get her calm. I ask him if she wanted a bottle, if her diaper was wet, etc. His response, “she’s too tired for a bottle, her diaper’s okay. Of course, I’d rather be asleep.”
Christina was reaching for me, so Robert handed her to me and went back to bed (and sleep).
As far as empathy goes, my kids prefer me, but it does get wearing all day, every day, as well as nights too.
Mine is more than a cement-head. He’s a brick wall.
Stu Mark // Mar 18, 2007 at 10:20 pm
Annie,
See, I’m ok with handing the baby to mama, if mama is up and is what is needed. But then you stick around and keep mama company, standing at the ready, in case mama needs a wet-nap or a bottle or a sledge-hammer. Hell, I did that for my sister-in-law, just because I happened to be crashing at their place one night and I was up and the baby was up. Why *wouldn’t* you keep somebody company in a situation like that? And then there’s the whole, this is your kid too thing. It’s not like he’s the pool-cleaner or something, he’s the kid’s father!
Sorry, that just chaps my ass.
Barb // Mar 18, 2007 at 11:18 pm
That’s exactly how DH is… unless I explicitly ask for some specific help. Company? No way!!!
I’m glad there are dads like you, Stu. Teach your sons well!!!
mamaholler // Mar 19, 2007 at 1:01 am
Ha! Tonight as my daughter was falling asleep she asked where Daddy was. I said, “he’s getting ready to go to sleep.” She said, “All by himself? What if he gets scared?” I replied, “If he gets scared I’ll go in to help him just like I do when you get scared. That’s what mommy’s do.”
Here’s what I do, try to sleep in my own bed and run back and forth from bedroom to bedroom at least four times a night.
Sleep? I should’ve done it more four years ago.
Megin Hatch // Mar 19, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Wow- it’s interesting to see how different families deal with this issues.
We co-slept when each of the Punks were newborns. In the beginning when the babe needed to be changed before nursing, it was always Rob’s job to do diaper duty and rouse me enough to nurse. Once the pooping 600 times a day decreased and the baby could simply nurse it basically meant I needed to roll over and that was it. If it was more than that, and we were up for awhile, it was pretty much just me. It made sense that since I was nursing and needed to be up, Rob might as well get a decent night’s sleep. He was good about letting me grab some extra winks in the morning though.
Now that the kids are older, I think it’s about even. If it’s unbalanced it’s because my side of the bed is closest to the door, so if a little body climbs into bed with us in the middle of the night it’s usually on my side of the bed. It’s also just faster for me to respond if someone is crying.
I have to say, I am spoiled when it comes to sleep. I get to sleep in many weekend days. I have some sleep issues, so on the weekends Rob will often get up when the kids get up (630-730am) and let me crash until 8:30-9am.
I don’t necessarily agree with Stu that Dad should keep Mom company. I’d rather do it alone and know that my partner in crime was well rested so that he could help balance out my sleep deprivation induced crankiness, or let me take a cat nap if the situation permits.
Whatever works- this is just what works for us.
Barb // Mar 19, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Megin,
I agree with what you said last in your post… *if* it actually happens. That would always be my husband’s promise and then would rarely happen; usually only in the first few weeks after the baby was born.
And then there’s a strange - I think hormonal - thing with me where if I wasn’t asleep deep enough and would hear the baby cry, adrenalin or some other strange thing would happen to my body to make me jump up wide awake. It would keep running through my body for a while, making me unable to fall back asleep.
Fortunately it lessened with the second and even more with the third.
Stu Mark // Mar 19, 2007 at 10:48 pm
Megin,
You are right, I misspoke. I didn’t mean to give off the impression that it was an absolute. Sure, there are some spouses that maintain a very well-balanced relationship. I take no issue with that. It’s the un-balanced parenting teams that I’m speaking to.
My wife and I, we split the kid-handling pretty well. She’s incredibly cool during the moments when I say, “Listen, I’ve had a long day with the kids, can you deal with whatever it is that they are setting on fire?” I dig that about her. She never shrugs it off or attempts to shirk in any way. This is good.
Alicia Ricker // Mar 24, 2007 at 3:12 am
What is sleep? In April my daughter will be 4, and my son will be 18 months. I am still trying to get the 18 month old to stop nursing, so just letting him cry at night is so much fun because of course all I do is lay there awake. Then of course I eventually give in. But I don’t think I will ever get a good night sleep until the kids are grown and out of the house. Once they are in bed there is that long stretch of good sleep they get from about 8pm-2am but hey I am up til 11 or so trying to clean up the mess from the rest of the day. Oh well I guess it’s all worth it in the end. You never realize how lucky you were when you did get a full nights sleep until it’s too late.
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