New Dad Slammed For Refusing To Sleep On The Couch After His Snoring Wakes His Fiancée And Baby
He says he's too tired for their uncomfortable sofa and it's causing major drama with his fiancée.
GrooveZ / Shutterstock As anyone who's been through it will tell you, one of the biggest struggles of new parenthood is getting even a reasonable modicum of sleep.
But for one new dad online, his wife's inability to get any sleep isn't because of the baby, it's because of his snoring. And his refusal to do anything about it has brought them to the brink.
The dad refused to sleep on the couch after his wife complained about his snoring.
Sleep deprivation is not just something to endure after having a new baby. It's a legitimate problem that can impact everything from parents' mental health to a mother's ability to produce adequate milk if she's nursing.
Suffice it to say, this dad didn't seem to get the importance of sleep memo, even though he admitted his fiancée Jen "gets far less sleep than I do" due to having to nurse their baby.
The dad admitted that staying up late working on his 'start-up' video game makes him so tired he loudly snores, keeping his fiancée awake.
"I'm kind of an independent start-up video game developer," the dad wrote in his post. But his salary didn't come close to paying the bills, so he also worked a 9 to 5. "After getting home, having dinner with my fiancé and looking after the baby for a while, I jump on and work on the game," he said.
This meant pulling many all-nighters trying to make his video game goals happen. "For the past 2-3 nights I have been up til 1-2am working on the game and I have been ultra tired," he wrote.
And that created a problem: "I snore like a maniac when I'm tired," which he said was "super embarrassing because I truly sound like a Mack truck." It also kept his fiancée awake all night long.
His fiancée stopped speaking to him because he wouldn't sleep on the couch so she could get some rest.
The situation came to a head after a particularly difficult day with the baby. Fussy after getting her two-month shots, the baby took forever to get to sleep. Once she finally did, here came the dad snoring his head off after working on his video game.
"My fiancée immediately asked me to sleep on the couch so I wouldn't wake the baby with my snoring," he wrote. "I said no. I was so tired and the couch was not comfortable at all. I had to work early. I wanted to sleep."
Jen didn't put up a fight. Instead, she simply gathered up the baby and left the room. "I woke up this morning to the baby in the crib in the nursery and my fiancée asleep on the floor with no pillows/blankets. She still won't talk to me," the dad wrote.
Sleep deprivation is a serious problem for new moms, and people had very little sympathy for this dad refusing to sleep on the couch.
From cognitive impairment to issues with motor skills, sleep deprivation can have all kinds of dangerous effects on the body and brain that can be a danger to babies too.
Cognitive impairment can mean parents can't respond adequately to a baby's requests. Balance issues can result in the baby being dropped. The list goes on and on.
It also affects mood, which in turn heightens moms' risks of postpartum depression and anxiety and impacts the parents' relationship. New parents have been shown to fight more often. One study found that 90% of parents reported relationship discord during their kids' first two years, which was partly attributed to sleep deprivation.
So unsurprisingly, people weren't feeling particularly charitable towards this new dad, especially moms. "A close friend of mine dropped her baby in the bathtub because she was nodding off from being sleep deprived," one commenter wrote.
"The sound of her newborn three-week-old baby smacking the baby tub woke her up," the Redditor continued. "She had a partner who did not help her with the baby and thought she was 'being dramatic' about saying she’s so tired."
One mom had an equally sobering tale. "By the third night of no more than two hours' sleep, if that, I did accidentally drop our baby," she wrote. "By the fourth night I was hallucinating."
She went on to give the dad some pointed advice. "You have some serious apologizing to do," she said, adding, "Your game might need to wait so you can step up and help your fiancée."
As much as the sacrifice is difficult, it really is that simple. He isn't just a bystander in this scenario. He's the dad, and even though he can't exactly help while his wife nurses, he can make this exhausting time a lot easier for her and the baby.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.