Relationships are full of ups and downs, and in my experience, the year after having a baby is one of the hardest on even the healthiest of couples. Your lives have been upended, your identities have shifted, and you’re really freaking tired.
OP and his wife have just had their first baby 5 months ago, and their current point of contention is the one day of the week his wife works.
The baby often wakes and cries while she’s getting ready to leave, and since OP works late nights, he often doesn’t hear the him right away.
I [M28] live with my wife Macey [F28].
We have an infant son named Leo. Leo is our first and only child, and is 5 months old. Macey works part-time and I work full-time.
Macey works on Tuesdays but I don’t. Macey normally leaves the house at around 8:00AM to get to work on time, but I like to take the opportunity to sleep in when I can get it.
Whenever Macey gets ready for work, Leo will usually start crying in his crib even after he’s had his first feed of the day. This doesn’t wake me up unless he’s been crying for a little while because I’m a heavy sleeper.
I get off work at 4 – 5am on weekdays so I’m getting around 3 hours sleep when Macey goes to work. Macey only works one day a week, we don’t need her income and I make more money but she likes her job and I respect her choice to work.
I work 70 hours a week and do my fair share of housework and cooking when I’m home so I sleep like the deceased when I’m in bed.
His wife has started putting the baby in bed with him but not waking him to alert him to the infant’s presence.
For the past two Tuesdays, Macey has decided to take Leo out of his crib and put him in our bed with me right before she leaves for work, even though I’m sound asleep.
She doesn’t do anything to wake me up because she’s leaving for work, and Leo stops crying when she puts him in our bed.
OP knows this is dangerous and confronted her. She said she couldn’t just leave the baby to cry and insinuated OP is a bad father for not hearing the child’s cries or being aware of his presence in bed without having to be told.
Luckily nothing bad has happened yet but I know the risks of putting a baby in a normal bed with an adult sleeping in it. Leo crawls and I’m worried that he could fall out of the bed and hurt himself.
I talked to Macey about this and told her to just leave Leo in his crib when she’s getting ready for work.
Macey got annoyed and said that she can’t “just leave him to cry”, and said I’m a bad father for not noticing and waking up when Leo is in the bed, saying that if it was her, she’d notice and wake up.
OP snapped back, asking if she wants the baby to get hurt.
I got angry and told Macey that she’s being unreasonable and asked her what she thought would happen if Leo fell out of the bed. I asked her if she wanted Leo to get injured.
Now his wife has left with the baby and isn’t answering his calls, leaving him to wonder if perhaps there was a better way he could have handled things.
Macey got really mad and has gone to stay with her sister for a couple of days and took Leo with her, and hasn’t been answering my texts or calls. She still hasn’t come home.
I’ve never seen Macey this angry with me before so I’m wondering if I was the AH for how I approached this.
Reddit, as ever, has plenty of opinions on that!
The bottom line is that he knows he needs to be up at a certain time that day so that she can go to work, so he needs to set an alarm.
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The wife might be wrong, but so is OP – maybe even moreso.
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The sad truth is that many of us have been there (for years).
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Some people, though, are more sympathetic to OP.
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While others place more of the blame on OP’s wife.
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This is one of those tougher scenarios, and I think ESH (Everyone Sucks Here) is probably the right call.
What do you think? How would you vote? Sound off in the comments!
