Monday, September 17, 2007

How?




HOW can my son's father lie asleep beside him and not wake up while he SCREAMS his head off? I don't get it? The child grunts in his sleep and I'm awake.


Is it because he knows I'm there and will come and look after him, and is therefore subconsciously comfortable not responding?


I just don't get it. Perhaps it's just the difference between light and heavy sleepers, but given that a baby's scream is comparable in decibel strength to a jack hammer, I really don't understand his ability to sleep through it.


It does make me feel better about my motherly reluctance to hand over care of the children. We get a lot of stick for that, us over-protective mothers. But for god's sake, how can fathers turn off this easily?

3 comments:

  1. I'm not in a family way but I do have super powers of not waking up. My record is having slept through 2 and half hours of phone alarm - at ten minute intervals. When people talk about the terrible storms last night and the thunder, I nod along but will never have heard it. I could have 5 kids screaming at me and not wake up.

    But on the other side, I can't go to sleep when the light's on.

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  2. I'm going to sound harsh here but you did ask Jo. He sleeps through it because you let him.

    He "sleeps" through it because he knows you'll get up and not him.

    He sleeps through because you don't poke him with a stick and tell him to get up!

    I'm a daddy who is also one of those normally gifted with the ability to sleep on a bed of nails but, because middle of the night feeds are my responsibility, I'm up and off looking for a bottle when my little one wakes. Bleary eyed, badly co-ordinated, grumpy, but nonetheless up. There's no way I could sleep through it because I know a litle person needs me.

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  3. WEll there you go. the problem with 'because you let him' is if I don't let him, I still have to be in the eqation to hear the crying, go sharpen the stick, etc.

    No one pokes me, the crying is stick enough.

    It's not that I mind doing night feeds - he gets up at five thirty to go to work,that's worse, it's more the complete emotional dissociation from his children - he later missed his daughter having shrieking nightmare tantrums on the stairs too!

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