When my daughter was born, my wife and I would take turns caring for her through the night. She pumped breast milk so I had access to food as needed on my nights, and she could breastfeed directly on her nights.
It soon became clear that our daughter preferred direct breastfeeding to the bottle, but I was much better at calming her and getting her back to sleep. The result was that I ended up covering my wife’s nights more frequently because she was otherwise at home with the baby all day while I was at work and felt like she needed the break. I was also “used” to sleep deprivation from the past years when I was working full-time while also going to college full-time, and she would stay home and watch TV, read, or paint.
I was constantly exhausted for the first 6 months, until she was mostly able to sleep through most nights. I would regularly apologize to my coworkers for my reduced cognitive ability because I didn’t get any sleep the previous night or two, and my boss would express how he didn’t understand how I was still vertical. Thankfully they were all very understanding and accommodating, and I was at least still able to get most of my work done to our standard of quality, albeit much more slowly than usual.
I didn’t have time, opportunity, or energy to even consider the prospect of intimacy at that time, so I absolutely sympathize with new mothers with absentee partners that have normal levels of energy and libido.
The number one way (more effective than medication) to increase a woman’s libido is an extra hour of sleep. It’s truly no wonder that getting negative hours of sleep for a literal year at least kills libido.
I’m pregnant and the insomnia is killing me. 4 or 5 hours a night, usually. And the poor sleep will only continue when the child is born. Everyone’s talking about how men need to help more with chores and all that’s true and good that you need division of labor, but even if you’re good at division, the sleep loss with children is inevitable.
Y’all get 5 hrs of sleep a night every night??
Crazy
I dont think that is true tbh dads nowadays take care of babies as much as moms even after doing job and everything
If you’re ‘doing a job and everything’ then there’s an entire workday’s difference to begin with…
Are you implying that the workday doesn’t count for anything? Someone’s gotta bring home the bacon.
When I was in the office, I’d be there for 8 hours, then get home and take over, then also work at night with the baby monitor on. My ex-wife only really had to take care of the baby that 8 hours a day, I handled most of the other 16. Of course she complained that I wasn’t doing anything. So after that I started working from home for my main job as well. After that she only really had to take care of the kids (one mine, one not) for the 3-4 hours a day that I got to sleep.
No. I’m saying that the working partner has a significant gap purely because they are working, so it’s pretty spurious to claim you"re “caring equally”.
Personally I actually cared significantly more on top of being the one who had to work a full-time job and side gigs, but my ex is a unique kind of piece of shit and I’m not trying to insinuate that this is a common experience.
But your original comment sounded like something my ex would say when she still allowed me to go to the office. “Oh you get to take a break for 8 hours.” No I don’t, that’s still work, it’s still very taxing mentally. If you work for 8 hours and then come home to take care of the children for the rest of the evening so your partner can have a break, there’s only one person actually getting a real break. Of course if you come home and drop yourself onto the couch and expect dinner to happen, then it changes who the person getting a break is, but IMO that’s not as common among young families these days, compared to a few decades ago.
You’re srill ascribing your ex a bit here i think. I know what employment is like, i’ve been treadmilling the rat race for nearly 40 years. Why do you feel the need to explain how mentally taxing it can be to another grown adult?
I never said work was a break, or intimated as such - simply stated that a work shift would remove the working partner from childcare for the period of the work day.
I dont think that is true tbh dads nowadays take care of babies as much as moms even after doing job and everything
If you’re ‘doing a job and everything’ then there’s an entire workday’s difference to begin with…
In the context of this thread, you’re very clearly saying that the mom is always doing more because the workday is a vacation for the dad.
If that’s not what you meant, maybe rephrase your comment, because that’s what it reads like and judging by the 10 downvotes (none of which was me), I’m not the only one seeing it that way.
Because ultimately the meme was about moms not getting a break, and if the dad works all day and then goes and takes over the responsibilities at home for the rest of the day, then the mom is the only one ACTUALLY getting a break on any given weekday. And that’s what most, though not all, young fathers seem to be doing these days. Maybe not in your corner of the world or when you were young, but as far as I can see, that’s how it is these days.
Again, you’re adding the definition of “vacation” to the work day.
I never did that. That’s something you’re inventing when I point out a work days hole in childcare.
(Also i’ve personally been using gender neutral language. Op referred to working dads, but my points extend to any variant of the dynamic across any partnerships where one works ad the other doesn’t)
Downvotes on a thread like this mean nothing, btw - they’re absolute nip to the redpilled trolls.
An issue with post-interstate USA is the ability to move away from family for education and work, also fragmented the extended family. Managing life, everything and a under-6 month old infant takes way more than two people. (Day care in many areas will accept an infant at 6 weeks, which while huge, is also problematic.)
I expect the only solution is get rich and help your kids with the grand kids. (UBI!)
None of this is an excuse to fuck off and not help. It is pathetic when men say “and I never changed a diaper”. Hardly a parent at all at that point.
This is a severely under-discussed consequence of modern culture distancing family “connections”.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s only about 4 people on my side of the extended family I actually miss, and 3 on my wife’s side. That’s being generous. But not having that reliable help if you don’t have an absolutely amazing social group makes raising a kid through early childhood an absolute slog.
We don’t have kids but between the 2 of us we have 1 parent that could get here the same day if needed. 2 who we could see if willing to spend a fortune on the train to very remote areas and a full days travel. 1 who we don’t know what country they are in or even if they are still alive.
So any extra childcare would be entirely reliant on 1 person. We could move to change that to a different person but that hardly helps, there is no location that would be close to any 2 of our parents.
My brother-in-law is like that. Has the kids on the weekends (yup) and refers to it as “babysitting”… his own children. I know he must see all that I do for mine. It makes me nauseous, but I try not to get involved.
