Since the baby was born (17 months old now, not our first) I’ve been spending most nights with him. ALL the nights during maternity leave, and then when I went back to work we switched to 5 nights with me, 2 nights with dad bc of his early morning work schedule. (We’ve had separate bedrooms for years, finally decided to split recently, still living together for now.)

Stbx (42m) has been home from work with an injury for few weeks— nothing debilitating, a muscle sprain. After daylight savings last month, the toddler was sleeping like shit and I (36f) was suffering. Stbx was getting to sleep uninterrupted, sleep in until 7 or so most mornings, and then wasn’t even going to work— meanwhile I’m losing sleep and still need to show up to work each day.

So one morning a couple weeks ago I wake up at a ridiculous hour with the toddler, and finally it all clicks into place for me and I’m seeing red I’m so livid that stbx hasn’t offered to take on more nights with the toddler during his time off from work. I bring the toddler to stbx’s room around 4am and calmly tell him: I need some sleep, it’s your turn with the toddler.

He’s been bitching and moaning ever since about how I “dumped” the baby on him at 4am and “what kind of mother does that?” But he also agreed to go from the 5/2 night schedule to alternating 2 nights each from now on so that it’s fair.

We recently started working with a coparenting counselor and he was silly enough to whine about it to her. Hah! It was so gratifying to hear the counselor tell him that a parent asking a coparent for support so that they could catch up on sleep is completely normal and not a shortcoming, and that expecting an equal sleep schedule at this point makes perfect sense. 🙌