A Dad Wants Weekend Mornings Off From His Baby Even Though It’s Literally His Wife’s Only Time To Sleep

When you’ve just brought home a newborn or your baby is going through a weird sleep regression, things get real fast. The exhaustion can hit you like a train. Sometimes, when sleep deprived, people just don’t think straight. For one dad who reached out in the “Am I The A—Hole?” Reddit thread, that has to be the case because there’s just no way this is how he actually feels.

Reddit user u/tireddad667 asked for his internet peers’ advice in the “Am I The Asshole” subreddit, wondering if he’s in the wrong for requesting a "morning off" from taking care of their baby on weekends. Now, at first glance, this seems pretty innocent, right? Well, let’s examine this further.

First, the original posted (OP) claims that he and his wife are both “living [their] dream life,” as he works full-time, and she is a stay-at-home mom who works half time. He supports her monetarily while she is left to do pretty much everything else regarding the house and kid. He sees this trade off as an even split. Red flag!

“My wife and I have a 6-month-old baby girl. She's mostly a stay-at-home mom. She works two half days a week, and her sister watches the baby. I work full-time and go to school one day a week,” he wrote.

“We've always had an arrangement where she takes care of the household duties (cooking, cleaning, and now baby care) while I happily support her monetarily. Honestly, we are both living our dream life, and my wife does an absolutely spectacular job taking care of me and our little one.”

He then goes on to explain that when it comes to the weekends, they share responsibilities — making such each parent gets some time during the day to do something to unwind and refuel themselves. However, their baby girl has recently been going through some weird sleeping patterns resulting in a snag in their routine.

His wife is up every two hours with the six-month-old, breastfeed and tending to her needs, while he sleeps the night away. He seems to have no issue with this saying that the situation makes sense due to his wife’s sleeping habits.

“... our girl has hit a bit of a sleep regression, waking up every two hours — since my wife breastfeeds, she's always taken care of the baby full-time overnight. She's a light sleeper and unfortunately has insomnia, whereas I am a deep sleeper and wouldn't wake up for baby cries anyways,” he wrote.

Ah, the “deep sleeper” excuse that is as old as the stars!

This is where things get complicated for the OP. His wife has expressed to him that she is exhausted and would love to be able to sleep in until 7 a.m. on the weekend. How dare she try to “sleep in” until 7 a.m.?

“Recently, my wife has been asking me to wake up with the baby both days on the weekends so she can get an extra hour of sleep. The baby wakes up around 7 a.m., so I'd get the baby dressed and take over for that hour,” he explained.

However, this doesn’t work for the OP, who claims that he is also exhausted from the week and would like to sleep or play video games during that “extra hour” in the morning instead of giving his obviously stretched-too-thin wife.

“But sometimes, I want to be the one that gets to sleep in an extra hour. I brought this up to her, and she says while she's happy to let me nap during the day, she really needs that hour because she can't nap like I can,” he wrote.

“We got into an argument about it, and she said I'm being very insensitive when I know that she is very exhausted and can't nap during the day, and struggles going back to sleep every time the baby wakes up. But, I'm exhausted, too. Work wears me out, school days are long, and I sometimes want the hour in the morning. I don't want to spend my time off napping; I want to play video games and chill out.”

Anyone else need to take a few deep breaths before reading further?

He then asks Reddit users to give their opinion on whether or not he’s being the a—hole in this scenario, and well, they had some thoughts. First, some users empathized with the OP, noting that kids going through sleep regressions is hard on the whole family. However, he needs to pick up the slack, support his wife, and put the video games to the side for a bit.

“I was so close to giving a N A H because new babies and sleep is hard, but then we got to "video games"..... Nope! YTA OP! You can't have both nights and mornings. And your video game time might have to just suffer for a while....” one user wrote back.

Another echoed, “YTA, if she's taking all the night duty because you don't wake up, then you get the morning duty when you do wake up so she can catch up on her lost sleep in the night. You want a morning off, give her a night off.”

One mom chimed in, noting that while this dad might think their workloads are evenly split, she bets that they are most definitely not. “Moms don’t get free time haha — even when my husband has the baby, I am most likely pumping, trying to get stuff done around the house, showering, or running a quick errand. We don’t get to just do what we want and chill. His wife is asking for ONE hour on the weekends. Ugh,” she wrote.

Read the entire thread here.