wwyd? angry with dh

[chi_mama]

dh stays home with our son. I work a 13 hour shift Fri and again Sat. Sat night is poker night. Dh really looks forward to Sat night, it keeps him sane.

The problem, every Sat ds takes a very long late nap... like 2-5:30 or 6:00 (usually he does 90 minute before lunch). I don't know why he tends toward this on Sat but it's very consistent. The problem is then he is up until 11:00 or midnight. Every week!!! and I am completely fried by Sat night. I'm tired, grumpy, I've been on my feet for 2 days straight. Half the time I have another shift Sunday and I really need sleep.

I don't want to ask dh to give up poker night but when I ask him to prevent the late naps he completely blows me off or gets angry at me b/c he thinks I'm not making ds a priority. I understand he's w/ ds all week but the timimg couldn't be worse.

How would you handle this? What do you do when you and your partner both feel like it isn't "your turn"?

[~pi]

mama.

Since you asked WWYD, I would have a calm conversation with DH and lay out the issues:

- It is important for DH to have poker night. You support that.

- Your DH is home with DS all week, and presumably enjoys having a longer break on Saturdays.

- Your work schedule means that you need some rest on Saturday evenings.

- DS seems to want to take a long afternoon nap on Saturdays rather than his usual, shorter morning nap.

- You love spending time with DS, but find it difficult to engage with him when he is up very late. He is tired, you are tired -- it isn't a good situation.

Given those constraints, would it be a reasonable compromise for your DH to try limiting DS' Saturday naps to two hours? (I.e. Wake him up after two hours, even if he falls asleep until later than usual.)

[alicia622]

You could also ask DH if he knows why your son takes his nap so much later on Sat. My initial thought is Saturday's routine is much different than the rest of the week. DH is home w/ our boy M-F and DS typically naps for 1.5 hours in the early afternoon. I recently started trying to get into a similar routine on the weekends so he keeps the same napping schedule.

I would think as long as you can present it that you want him to still have poker night, you will be able to figure out how to make it work out just fine.