I know I am in the wrong, but I’m still conflicted about how my wife handled my mistake.
I (25m) take care of our year and half son first the night. I had volunteered willing when he was born to give my wife (31f) a break because she handles the day stuff.
She’s been getting frustrated with me this past month about not getting up and taking care of our son. He’s babbling from his crib and I’m sleeping through it half the time. So the other half she’s either waking me up or getting up to do it herself.
So this past night, I didn’t wake up. I’ve come to the conclusion I sleepwalked, because my wife was trying to wake me up and I was talking to her. I don’t remember. In that state, I had gotten up was reminded to change the diaper because I was bringing over son back to bed. Then put a diaper over his pants and wet diaper. My wife didn’t see me do that because her back was turned. Later, my son woke up again in our bed. My wife again is the one waking me up. She sees the diaper and gets rightfully pissed. Alright now here’s where I need advice. After getting his diaper corrected, I’m trying to put him back to sleep. My wife is looming over me on the other side of the bed with her arms crossed. I know I’m in the wrong but I know if we start talking the baby will wake back up. I tried whispering to her, but again my first words weren’t sorry so after a while, she grabs a pillow and blanket and leaves. Now, my son is fully awake. I get him a bottle and teething medicine and go to find her to apologize. Well she’s very pissed now tells me to go away. Then when I’m saying sorry, she begins insulting me. “You’ve been quiet quiting all month, you’re being…..,you just came back up here because you’re just trying to put him back to bed, you’re doing this on purpose so you don’t have to do it again, etc” I did say sorry about 5 times during her rant then being told I wasn’t actually sorry.
Now I’m sitting here with my son who fell back asleep. Wondering if any other husband or wives go through something like this and how they dealt with it.
3 comments
Chalk it up to sleep deprivation. My wife got incredibly cranky in the middle of night when the baby woke up.
Once the baby starts sleeping through the night, it will get better.
You would have the strange experience if things were super smooth. Having a kid is really tough for a while. Trying to sleep with a baby gives way to a toddler that tries to injure itself if you look away for half a second. Life is going to dump some stress on the two of you for a bit.
You have to keep the communication going. When you have a moment where everything seems fine, make sure to never squander it on thinking about when things were stressful. Even if all you have is the opportunity to take your shirts off and lay skin to skin for 10 minutes, use that time for some much needed intimacy.
You two need to both take a deep breath and talk about it. Take everything you thought you knew about having a child and throw it out. Because it never goes the way a book or friends or parents tel you. Things happen. We do dumb things. When we’re tired, we sleep through cries. I left to take our child to day care one day while my wife sat on the couch with the baby I was supposed to be taking to day care. I got all the way there before I realized it. When we’re tired, we also make mountains out of molehills. You need to both take stock of things and work together on it
The first couple years suck. There’s no way around it. Toddler years are better, but they are still ultra dependent. Things will finally start to seem normal when they reach the school age years.
One thing my MIL said that always stuck with me: little kids little problems, big kids big problems. You’ll look back on these days when you’re dealing with things like smoking and sexuality and teenage depression and these things going on now will not even be a memory.