Finding Balance: Wellness for the Everyday Struggle: Don't Tell Me You're Tired

Now I don't want to speak just to the people in "traditional" man/woman relationships and roles, but I think this will apply to basically any two-parent household. Nearly any.

In any household with a young baby, there will be middle of the night (MOTN) wakeups. As I've discovered and discussed at great lengths, some babies are really bad at sleeping overnight, but some are better than others. What this really amounts to though, is someone has to get up with them. Everyone has there own plan and system, but from all the parents I've talked to....and I'm part of SO MANY ONLINE MOMS GROUPS...it's almost always an unequal divide, regardless of how it works.

For our household, it's generally (not exclusively, but almost always) me who gets up with the baby. I did give up my Legan overnight duties at about 28 weeks pregnant with Jade, but he gets up much less often and is much better at putting himself back to sleep afterwards. Jade is up somewhere between 1 & 5 times per night lately, because colds are evil. When she's healthy, it's usually only 2. And when she's healthy, it's frequently up just to feed, and then right back down.

But you see, if one of the parents is breastfeeding baby, then generally that parent is the one getting up, because it's always more fun to get up with a baby than get up to attach yourself to a mindless breast-sucking machine. And there are other factors, like a parent that has a long drive in the morning and isn't good at driving on little/no sleep. Or a higher pressure job. Or a parent that is better at waking a d getting back to sleep. Each family makes their own decisions, but again, the MOTN wakeups are generally unequal.

The important point here is that the parent getting more sleep....should NEVER EVER EVER try to tell the less sleeping parent how tired they are. Ever. Because it's insulting. It feels like the parent with more sleep is basically putting themselves over the other one.

I am the parent who gets less sleep, and it's so demoralizing to here my partner (or honestly any other parent who I know is the "more sleep getting" parent) telling me how they're tired. Because I get less sleep, and I average about ~4 broken up hours of sleep per night most weeks. And so to hear from someone who averages 6.5-7 hours per night, even broken, just feels insulting to here. Like it doesn't matter how much I struggle and feel like the life is all being sucked out of me (sometimes more literally than others depending upon how there's so much nursing going on), because someone else had a rough night or two. It's so hard to here about how hard it is to live on 5.5/6 hours of sleep from someone else when that would describe probably a top 5 night in my last 9 months. Honestly, a top 5 night. And you're telling me that that makes you miserable? LOL!!!!! And kindly screw off. Because it makes me feel like I'm a freaking magician compared to you. Or maybe more like someone who works twice as hard as you and gets half as much credit.

So yeah, I know that you're tired and that you sometimes "help out" by taking the baby who's been up for hours already, but seriously, go complain to someone else about how tired you are. ANYONE ELSE. Just not me, because I can't handle it, I can't listen to someone doing so much better than me in this aspect, so it's infuriating.

Poor people don't want to hear about how rich people can't afford silly luxury items like European vacations when the poor person is draining out their savings just to try to keep a crappy car going so they can get to their job that has no PTO. It just hurts and is frustrating and makes you want to shake them to make them realize how hurtful they're being. It's a privilege thing. You have the privilege of sleeping much more, so stop going on about how rough your sleep is.

Because your partner wants to NOT WANT to scream and cry and yell. Because they're already tired and cranky and if you're wanting to complain that means you're probably being cranky too, and they just aren't well rested enough to be kind and rational. So stop trying to ask them to be MORE than rational and kind, stop asking them to carry YOUR weight in this too. Just leave them be. Give them a hug and some dessert and their drink of choice.

So go vent to someone else, anyone else, because I know you're tired, and that's OK, but you gotta complain to someone else who is on your level, not someone much below you on the sleep hierarchy.

So...please don't tell me you're tired. Because I passed tired months ago.

She's just starting to get up on hands and knees!!! Go big girl go!!

And really starting to actually eat real food. She loves fruit.

Also, this is how I spend some of my spare time. Doing quick and only acceptable repairs on stuff, because putting in the time and effort for full repairs is just too much. This was supposed to be a continuous piece...but there was a hole.