Do You Hear What I Hear?
Little Miss & Daddy- 2 Days Old
Not that I watch daytime television…seriously I don’t…we’re perpetually programmed onto Cbeebies from 9am-Whenever…but yesterday there was an interesting topic on the programme “The Wright Stuff” on Channel 5. The topic was “Does your partner hear the baby crying at night?”. Discuss!
I have asked this question in my head a number of times and out loud once or twice. We have struggled with sleeping since Little Miss was 4 months old and went into her own room and into her own cot from the Moses basket. It’s obviously more ME struggling as I COULD use all the sleep techniques in the world to allow her to sleep and settle better but I am a melty heart kind of Mummy who can’t bear to hear her baby crying. Little Miss is a bit better now but she readily wakes throughout the night, calling for Mummy. I lumber out of bed, shuffle into her room, tap on the night light, rummage around her bed for the dummy which has been lost and plug her back in. 9 times out of 10, she immediately re-settles with a gentle stroke on her tummy or back and back I shuffle. 9 times out of 10, this first waking occurs approximately 18 minutes after her Daddy and I go to bed. Sweet.
In 18 months of parenting, I can count the number of times my hubby has gotten up to her on one hand. I had decided, early on in this parenting game, that I didn’t mind “taking one for the team” as my husband had to work in the morning and I didn’t. I still subscribe to this theory but there are times, when I have gotten up for the fourth time in the night and am shuffling back to bed, that I’m more than a bit cheesed off. I usually settle into our bed with a mighty “HARUMPH” which is intended to communicate my frustration…sometimes he notices, usually he doesn’t. Now, I’m not whinging about my husband, really, because we have talked about this several times and his honest reply is “I just don’t hear her!”. So that’s my question…WHY DON’T DADDIES HEAR THEIR CHILDREN CRYING??
Maybe this is different for the Daddies who stay at home with their children? Are they the ones with ultra-sonic hearing as opposed to the Mummies? In these glorious 18 months of parenting, I have not had ONE uninterrupted night’s sleep. Some nights we’re lucky- only 1 waking and only a semi-ridiculous o’clock rising from Little Miss. Generally it’s more like 2-3 wakings in the night which require my attention. Yes, I know, I can hear you…just let her CRY IT OUT! Well, I can’t…and thus have created my own mini personal hell. I have learned to survive on only maybe 5 hours of sleep in total each night (that’s a good night). I don’t remember what it’s like to sleep through…will I ever again?? My husband, in fairness, is very good when Little Miss wakes in pain or poorly (nasty teeth!!). He has always supported me and helped to get medicine down Little Miss when we needed to or held her while I ran around getting supplies. In the early days, he would doze next to me while I fed Little Miss her bottles in our bed but soon I stopped that as I knew he needed the sleep in order to function at work the next day. I love my hubby dearly and think he’s an amazing father but I would, just for one week maybe, like to switch ears with him so I could catch up on 18 months of sleep deprivation. I know if would look a bit funny but I have a feeling that I would be a much brighter person on a wee bit more sleep.
So, how does it work in your household? Is your partner helpful with night-time wakings? Do you flop down in the bed with a mighty HARUMPH when returning to bed? Do you remember what it’s like to have an uninterrupted night of sleep? Would you like to come to my house and be my night nanny?
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Mr Scruff would get up if I shook him hard enough, but I have found that his patience with Little Miss P is far less sympathetic than mine. He seems to get frustrated when she doesn’t settle after a matter of minutes, so I end up getting up anyway to calm him down as well as her. He does win a mountain of brownie points in the mornings though as he gets her bottle ready and does the first nappy change to allow me an extra half hour kip. Thanks Mr Scruff, ’tis appreciated.
I can totally relate to that one! Hubby doesn’t have the same patience that I do in the night but he does get up with her in the morning and I get about 30 min to “rest” while he gets ready for work and tries to keep Little Miss’ hands out of the bath water.
Thanks for coming to comment! 
My husband generally doesn’t hear them as much as I do – yet on the occasions where I’m ill/not there, then he completely does. Even when I’m exhausted, and it would take all four children thundering into our room (at once, and jumping on the bed simultaneously) to wake me, then he does hear them before me, and leaps off to deal himself – it’s not that he’s unwilling, he simply doesn’t hear them as quickly as I do. He likens it to being ‘on duty’ – if he knows it’s down to him, he doesn’t sleep so well or deeply, as he’s half-alert waiting for a siren. When he knows I’m there he can (and does!) switch off.
I think this may be the age old issue of we mummas not being able to clock out, and take ourselves off duty for a while?
Thanks Laura…yes, I agree…if they know we’re there, they are going to sleep like babies aren’t they? Perhaps we need to go away for overnights more often?? Thanks for coming to visit…I LOVE your site and am coveting it very much!
I think leaving ‘all’ the night-time responses to mum is pushing it, even for us guys who are in work in the morn. Surely you can get your own back on the weekend? Though to be fair I suppose it depends which one is the deepest sleeper, unfortunately this is not me! My wife has often been the one on the receiving end of the ‘HARUMPH’, or worse still, ‘I need to switch the light on’ – now that one is nasty : )
Hi David…I don’t really get mine back on the weekend but I usually get a better lie-in on Sat or Sun as penance! Congrats on your magnificent hearing!
MadDad never heard either of the boys between the hours of midnight and 4 am. I was so tuned in to them though. But saying that he slept in with both Mini and MaxiMad every Friday night, so that I got one full nights sleep and a lie in and he still lets me have the lie in now.
When I was in hospital the boys slept with him in the bed, so he knew if they needed something.
Seriously, and I mean this with the best will in the world – WHY are you still getting up every night??
Teaching a child to sleep through the night doesn’t necessarily mean letting them cry it out – I really recommend the Baby Whisperer for an alternative approach to controlled crying, which worked for us within a week of using it when flea was 6 months, but there’s also a version for kids over 12 months.
I don’t know the science behind it but I do remember reading in some NCT literature that women have a hormonal response to babies crying that men don’t have, and that’s why women tend to wake faster when a baby cries and are more alert if they wake in the night than men, although I don’t know whether this was lmited to during breastfeeding or was present in all women.
This is going to be the ultimate LIb-Dem answer but… it varies! Some nights my radar seems to be more sensitive (and I try to make it so, given that Sarah has to get up for work at seven in the morning) at other times Sarah seems to be out of bed and wandering to Charlie’s room before I’ve even registered him crying. Mind you, most of the time it does seem to be her that wakes up first. I think Sally’s point – that it might be a hormonal response – seems valid. After all, for over a year Sarah was tuned in for the night-time feeds. Maybe it’s a hard habit to break?
We operate a shift system. I am a better morning person and DH is a night owl. He handles anything before 2am and I take the early mornings. It works great for us and plays to our natural strengths. I also thinks that it helps that we have always been very explicit that this is what we are going to do. There is nothing more frustrating for both parties when the expectations that aren’t met, weren’t articulated in the first place. If one of us needs to ‘swap shifts’ we are very clear about it before hand.
That’s such a mature way to handle it! Wowie! I don’t know which shift I would take?? Thanks so much for sharing…what valuable advice for parents!
Thanks Tim…very interesting to have the stay-at-home-Dad perspective! You have a great partnership, obviously.
I know…I need to heed the advice of the lovely Baby Whisperer! I’ll work on that as a 2010 resolution. I’m a numpty, eh?
I think my hubby would have to do that with Little Miss as well. Sally is shaming me into a better method on the whole though…Maybe 2010 will be our breakthrough year. Thanks for commenting Mrs…you’re full of helpful advice!
Back in the days of breastfeeding the husband would quite often have to wake me to get the job done. Once we’d switched to bottles it was much more of a joint effort but still I’ve never been very good at getting up in the night.
Since night feeds have been abandoned and the boy’s been in a proper bed, I seem to have had a knack of picking the side of the bed furthest from the door – still it doesn’t help when the boy bypasses his father and heads straight for me. Luckily, after five years, he’s starting to understand the sleep-mumbled words ‘go and wake daddy up’.
HA!!! How great…a Mummy who doesn’t hear…good on you!
well i have done all the night feeds and night waking for all my four.
Hubby is no good at getting up in the night AT ALL!! he needs his sleep and cannot function and becomes a total grumpy arse which i can live without. I don’t need him and 4kids driving me crazy.
I am a total control freak when it comes to their night time routine but i guess it pays off because they all sleep through (when they’re not ill obviously) I’ve had no choice sometimes because he works at night so i have to just learn to manage. But when he’s off from work he never hears the kids and he expects me to deal with it (grrrr) but when i’m at work he hears them so i guess it is a selective hearing thing.
i will be doing all the night feeds with number 5 but i hope he will get up in the morning with the other four so i can get some rest. this was the arrangement last time whne evie was born but it never happened so i was up all night with her then full day with the kids. hmmm i need to reign this man in lol xx
I only hear in one ear. My hearing went when I was pregnant with L, and has proved surprisingly useful….
B: “is that a baby crying?”
Me: “I can’t hear anything (rolling onto hearing side so only deaf ear is out of covers) why don’t you go and check”.
Deafness has its advantages…. Shame he didn’t grow breasts too…
HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!! You crack me up! Yes, deafness definitely has its advantages!
Yes, well, we all have our crosses to bear, don’t we?? But you’re SuperMummy and I admire the hell out of you. Perhaps you can come to our house and teach Little Miss how to sleep through?? I don’t have money but I can make you a nice meal.
At the beginning Mr C would never hear and if he was kindly doing a night feed to give me a break I used to have to wake up to wake him up
he really can sleep through anything!
Occasionally he will wake me up to tell me the baby is awake (thanks!). Actually he did it this week and I wearily went downstairs to make the bottle after asking him nicely to change the baby’s nappy. I came back to find them both FAST ASLEEP! Great.
Usually though I do most of it because I see it as my responsibility and he has to get up and go to work everyday and I get to stay home. At the weekends he will usually do a night feed to give me a break or get up early with Piran so I can keep sleeping and wake up naturally (which makes ALL the difference, I don’t need more sleep per se, I just need to wake up when I am ready, not when someone shouts at me from the cot!)
I really don’t remember what waking up naturally is! One day I hope to experience it. Thanks for stopping by…happy sleeping!
See, now you’ve got me thinking about it, and I’m annoyed – because in 16 months my partner has never gotten up in the night!! At first it was fine, because I wasn’t working, but now I’m back writing, AND caring for our little girl, yet I’m still stuck on permanent night duty – even on the weekends. To be fair though, she rarely wakes before 7.30am, and a part of me does prefer to comfort her myself, so that I know she’s OK. Plus I seem to have this subconscious maternal reaction now, whereby I automatically leap out of bed, and get halfway into her room before I even really wake up. The other night my partner coughed, and I reacted like an Olympic sprinter off the blocks. I was in the hallway before I even woke up and realised it was a false alarm!!! Weird.
I can totally relate to the “Olympic Sprinter” experience. My Little Miss coughs or mumbles and I’m there in a flash. 2012…here we come!
Thanks for commenting! 
How funny – great minds think alike. I have a very similar post this week, and I wasn’t copying, honest
http://tinyurl.com/yennnfv
I’m jealous that you have so many great comments to yours though!
Thanks Lorraine….I’ll be to you soon to comment!
I’m late on this, but had to comment…
When the kids were babies, Chris would have to be forced out of the bed in a vicious manor to get up to the kids. I know sometimes he pretended he couldn’t hear them.
However in the past few months, Chris has been the one getting up to Isabel. I don’t know how it started, but it did. Now that I have got used to Chris getting up to her when she cries, I genuinely don’t hear her. Sometimes I wake when Chris gets up to her. Sometimes I don’t wake at all. And rarely I’m the first to wake.
It’s as though, when they were babies, I knew it was my job to get up to them, so I listen out for them, hear them crying, I wake, I react. Now I know it’s Chris’s job, I have no reason to listen out, as I know that he’ll be there before me.
Now when Chris works away, I obviously manage to get up ok. So my reactions are a little slower than they once were, but I have no problems waking and seeing to her, because I know that for that night, it’s my job, and noone else will be waking to see to her.
So I appreciate that some men don’t hear baby crying (at least not immediately, anyway!).
Once again, you’ve got a really lovely man there! Thanks for sharing!