apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

sad but true.

Unbelievable timing -- am reading this as I gulp down some more coffee because at 1:30 this a.m. I woke my husband up to go check on our 13 m/o, he (and baby) went promptly back to sleep, then I was up for 2 hours!

Wait Wait Don't Tell Me had a cute one-liner about this...something like the only way to wake up a new dad is to attach the crying baby to a car alarm.

Yes, sad but true.

Does this mean my husband and I have switched genders because this is the opposite at my house.

This is totally reversed in my house. My husband has always been the one waking up with our daughter. Now that she's big enough to wander into our room at night, she doesn't even bother coming over to my side of the bed.

A buzzing fly? More likely to be woken by a buzzing fly than a baby crying...something is wrong with men.

Not at my house! It's my husband who hears every whimper and cry—or at least is more likely to hear them before me.

When our son was a newborn, my husband would sometimes wake me up because I had still not. Now, although the waking at night from baby is very rare, sometimes neither of us wakes up instantly. We both sleep rather deeply. And we all sleep in the same room.

So NOT true in our house!!

When they were babies, my husband would wake up and bring them to me for feeds.

And last night, our 6 year old woke up during the night due to a nightmare, whined for my husband, who tucked the 6 year old back in bed, and was followed by the 3 year old. I didn't see or hear anything, and when I woke up, was surprised to find myself along in bed, and everyone else in the 6 year old's bed.

After both my kids were no longer needing to nurse at night, I bought earplugs and fully handed over the nighttime reins to my husband. Because yup, I'd wake up first at the slightest peep, and even if my husband was taking care of them, I couldn't get back to sleep for ages.

My husband adapted pretty quickly and trained himself to wake up promptly. Knowing that he was solely on deck probably helped. And it's not like he needs to get up very much, anyway. Once the kiddos realized that dad was coming instead of mom, they decided to sleep through the night pretty consistently.

My husband woke up with our four year old last night while I only woke up after I realized he'd left the bed. This is so not true for us!!

This is definitely the opposite in our house, too. Sometimes (pretty seldom, though) the husband has to tell me the baby's crying (I tend to incorporate it into my dreams). I happily get up during the night with the baby, because if he gets up, he will lay awake staring at the ceiling for the rest of the night. I am usually back asleep as soon as my head touches the pillow.

my hubby sleeps strait threw it! never knows i even left the bed. were due for our second soon and he keeps thinking life will be the same as it is now. he dosent even remember the twenty min naps every few hrs round the clock. i got for the first few months. although he is the main bread winner and i rarely make him tend to the baby.

Like TammyE, I think there is maybe some evolution but more habituation - my husband wasn't 'on duty' at night for ages, and often had no idea what was going on at night in the morning. Now we rotate 'turns', he wakes up because he's in charge, although I have to admit it's still several cries longer than me. When we're over at a friend's house with babies sleeping somewhere, all the moms will hear a cry first and the guys go on chatting away. On the other hand, when we first brought her home he didn't sleep for three weeks straight because he was unable to tell when she was or wasn't OK so he just stayed awake holding her to be 100% sure. So maybe it's On or Off with the guys. Interesting subject!

Also a fascinating book on the subject, although I abhor the title... "Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps"
<I>(I can read maps thank you very much)</I>

The book delves into numerous studies explaining the workings of the Male brain, and the Female brain.
There are also considerations for the male-trained female and the female-trained male.

I'm an insanely sound sleeper. I am a male-trained female.
After Nebraska spring thunderstorms when I was a kid, I would wake up in my brother's bed in the basement - my parents had put me there so I wouldn't be scared of the thunder and lightening. I never heard a thing!!

As an adult, I slept in a bedroom that would qualify as a sun room in most homes - all windows. One night, there was a 3 alarm fire at a house at the end of the block... started by a lightening strike, three fire trucks responded and were there for hours.... and didn't know until I watched I watched the noon news!!

I am glad to see so many others have the same experience of dad waking up for babies.

This was my experience as well, especially early on when mom was so exhausted and sore she could barely sit up.

Go dads! :) *yawn*

-Allen

My husband is dead to the world when he falls asleep. He has slept through tornado sirens, fire alarms, barking dogs and yes---a crying baby. And that crying baby---now grown up---sleeps just like his father.

The only time I sleep well is when there is another adult in the house who I can trust to wake up if there is an emergency.

awesome. have to show this to my wife. i always wake up in the morning and have to ask "how many times was he up last night?" because i really don't know! now i have proof.

We both wake up, but because I nurse Jack back to sleep, I have a lovely hormone cocktail to help me get back to sleep right away. My poor husband does not :-)

That is exactly how I am SunnyBlue. My husband has slept through a huge downtown fire where the trucks were almost in our yard, my sons entire first 4 years, dogs barking, a tree falling not 6 ft from our bedroom window and the list goes on and on. But when one of our parents stay over for a visit I finally get some sleep, or I can sleep from 6am to noon when he gets up.

I'm not a mom, but I thought the man waking up to a buzzing fly part was interesting. My boyfriend had a party and many flies got into the house. He was so much more bothered by them than me. There were none on the third floor where we sleep, but he was up much earlier than usual, chasing flies.

This is also related to an acoustic phenomenon that is fascinating.The frequency of a child's cry is also a resonant frequency in the smaller female ear canal. Otherwise meaning, that cry is amplified by our ears! Our ears are built to hear our children scream.

I think with new babies sleep deprivation plays a role. When my son was born he was on a three hour feeding schedule and at times would take two or three hours to eat. Needless to say after a few weeks I had no sense of awake or asleep. I'd pretty much just lie there deep in a dream of my son crying only to be woken up by someone else telling me it was happening in real life. So that was a rough patch, but once that passed I would jolt awake if I thought he was rolling over in his sleep.

Is it just me, or are they giving men too much credit here with the "men hear things that would be a threat to the whole family"? Why can't they just say women have more sensitive hearing? I doubt buzzing flies are much of a threat to the whole family.

I'm the mom in one of those "father wakes up for sleeping baby, mother sleeps through everything" households.

This is very true in our household -- I wake up instantly when the baby cries, my husband takes much longer -- but he's a heavier sleeper generally and pretty much any noise will bother him less than me.

This should be tossed into the pile of "bogus research in quest of grant money."

My wife NEVER woke up for EITHER of my sons. I ONLY did ... and I was working heavy overtime at the time each was born.

She was breast feeding and, if she hadn't expressed enough before bedtime, I would take the child to her and prop the kid at her breast. He would suckle (two sons) and be back in bed before she woke up (if ever).

With all the attention given my first son (first grandchild for both sides of the family), nighttime feedings / diaper duty was 'my time' with my boys. Between the two mothers, four sisters and assorted female friends, I literally couldn't touch my sons during daylight hours until "the day" that I got butt-hole ugly and threw them out of my house in an angry tirade.

The Professor is a moron.

Bill, remember that these studies are done with people who've been pre-screened to make sure that they are way over on the male or female end of sex and gender. So no one who's slightly androgynous is included in these. They also didn't factor in that people can teach themselves to shift their neurological makeup a bit if they're determined; we all know people whose various senses are extremely tuned in (or tuned out) because it's necessary for a hobby or career interest.

So that being said, I also think it's kind of a load of crap that these kinds of studies get done and get published. What is it adding to humankind? An excuse for biological males who can't be bothered to teach themselves to respond to a crying baby, and a sense of one-upmanship for biological females who are tuned in? Doesn't seem productive to me. We all know male-male couples whose babies get fed and comforted appropriately by one or both parents, female-female couples where one parent does the majority of the baby care, and male-female couples where the baby care is divided evenly or in a male-heavy sort of way.

I'd much prefer that this research be focused on showing how people of any gender or sex can train themselves to hear a baby crying. That would actually add to society, unlike this study. And I didn't look at it too thoroughly, but I'm imagining that it's funded at least partially by tax dollars, thus the researchers are particularly obligated to do something helpful.

I'll never forget my husband telling people that our first daughter "sleeps through the night." My jaw hit the floor. That kid didn't sleep through the night until she was 4 years old. I told my husb that she didn't sleep through the night, he did. And still does now that we are on baby #3. I haven't had an uninterrupted night of sleep since the sixth month of my first pregnancy in 2003.