Although it can be an exciting time, there are also lots of challenges that can come with being a new parent. On Reddit, one woman shared that her milk supply is low and she pumps every two to three hours. Her husband is also involved, and together they agreed that they would wake up for the first feeding session during the night. At this time, he feeds the baby with a bottle and she pumps breast milk. When the baby's hungry, the woman wakes her husband up so he can be part of the process — but he also has insomnia, so he gets angry when she wakes him up.
The woman explains that her husband asks to be woken up, but still gets mad when it happens.
Her husband asked her to wake him up (which she says she does gently), but still, "He'll jerk, complain loudly that he just fell asleep minutes ago, slap the bed with his fist or open hand in anger, then stomp off to tend to the baby." After some time, he'll calm down, but it still leaves the woman feeling awful and guilty.
She talked to her husband about how she feels.
The woman told her husband that because he gets so angry, she's scared to wake him up. He said that his angry reaction is a "reflex" that he can't prevent, and she just has to deal with it. She described a time when her husband asked her to wake him up for the next feeding session and said, "Can you just ignore my being mad for the first 15 seconds after you wake me up? I've done a good job here, and I feel like I'm owed that. I need you to be a big girl."
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The woman admits that she doesn't want to be the person who is responsible for dealing with his outbursts. "I feel resentful of the fact that the burden is on me to 'get over' his outbursts," she wrote in her post. "However, I do also recognize that his bursts are short lived, and that he IS waking up to help me during an otherwise difficult time where both of us aren't getting sleep."
She says he is otherwise supportive.
Although her husband has sleep problems and gets angry when she wakes him up, the woman says he is great during the rest of the day.
She asked the Reddit community if she should just accept that his sleep problems might impact his mood, or if he's the problem in this situation.
Redditors empathized with the husband's insomnia and sleeping difficulties.
Many Redditors commented saying they also deal with sleep problems, and they are admittedly not the best versions of themselves when someone wakes them up. While many of them could empathize with being "grumpy" after waking up, they still think it's the husband's problem that he should be held accountable for.
"I also get irrationally angry when I am woken up by someone (I have to use an alarm) and it lasts longer than 15 seconds," one person responded. "However, that doesn't absolve me from apologizing for an outburst."
They are less forgiving when it comes to the way the husband explained his behavior.
Although many confirmed that sleep problems are very real, they still didn't like the way the husband spoke to his wife. A lot of Redditors found the husband's comment about being a "big girl" particularly offensive. One Redditor admitted that when they saw the title, they expected to side with the husband because they, too, suffer from insomnia. Once the Redditor saw what the husband said, they changed their mind.
Another Redditor with insomnia agreed. "If he thinks you should be a big girl, maybe he should be a big boy and not act like a [expletive] teenager being woken up for school," that Redditor wrote. "Man, if my husband told me to be a big girl he'd be sleeping somewhere else."
Some think the husband is being childish.
Some Reddit users pointed out that the husband asked his wife to be a "big girl" without trying to learn to regulate his own emotions.
"How about 'being a big boy' and learning some minimal level of self control?" one person suggested. "Anger management issues are not an immutable trait, they can be worked on."
"The audacity to tell her she 'needs to be a big girl' when he’s throwing a temper tantrum over being woken up to feed his child after she just gave birth is 100% a no for me," another person wrote.
The husband could at least apologize, some point out.
Even if the husband truly "can't control" his anger when someone wakes him up, he could at least apologize instead of telling his wife to just deal with it, some pointed out.
"This is the hardest time as new parents, and both of you have personal challenges adding to the difficulty!" one Redditor wrote. "Both of you are exhausted and it's expected that patience will be thin and emotions will be more difficult to control." However, the same Redditor also added that the way the husband spoke to her when she expressed her feelings about it was not acceptable. "He should simply apologize each time to you if it really is involuntary. Tell him that your response to his outbursts are involuntary as well."
The woman is struggling (and tired), too.
Some Redditors pointed out that the baby that the woman and her husband are waking up to feed is their baby, not just her baby. That means taking care of the baby is his responsibility too, and some Redditors don't think he deserves a gold star just for taking care of his own child sometimes.
"He thinks he's amazing for having gotten up to feed his own baby, she says he's amazing for helping her look after the baby," one person pointed out. "Is this not his own child? Also he is acting like it's the end of the world that he's getting woken up after he just goes to sleep once a night like she's not pumping every 2-3 hours."
It all sounds like a lot for the woman to deal with.
Yes, having insomnia and a newborn baby sounds difficult. But as one Redditor wrote: "He's also laid the responsibility for getting him up on her as well, asking her to wake him up. So in the middle of the night OP has to get up for the baby, wake up hubby and pump and deal with the temper tantrum after having explained to him that she doesn't need him to get up at those times."
Also, one Redditor pointed out: "He's not 'waking up to help you'. He's waking up to be a parent to his child."
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
