Yesterday morning I got a little bit irritated with my wife, Rachel. She had the utter cheek to ask me to get up early with our daughter when I was already awake, so she could have an extra hour of sleep in bed! Which of course, is actually a pretty reasonable thing to request. But unfortunately I’m not always a great husband, and sometimes I’m a bit of a dick.

Before I carry on, I made this for Rachel for Mother’s Day. So I’m not that bad really!

Unfortunately I’m Not Always a Great Husband

I mentioned the other day that Isabelle had started having more tantrums. Well that’s due, at least in part, to the fact she’s going through another leap. What this leap also means, like every other one before them, is that she’s a lot fussier, needier and generally sleeps worse than normal in the nights.

As Rachel is the one who feeds Isabelle in the night due to still breastfeeding, she’s obviously taken the brunt of this disrupted sleep. As you might imagine, when I’m then off work, she might want to have a little bit of extra sleep. Seems pretty reasonable when you put it like that. But I don’t always take it very well.

Getting Irritated for Absolutely No Reason

I’m not sure why it annoys me. But when Rachel asks for me to take Isabelle off downstairs, I get a little bit frustrated by it. Yesterday was hardly the first time I’ve been like it. I know it doesn’t really make any sense, but I can’t deny how I feel.

Of course I still do it. And I won’t go back upstairs and get Rachel, I will wait until she’s up. But it’s not like she comes down stairs and I’m the loving husband who’s happy his wife has caught up on her much needed sleep. Nope. Instead I’m just a bit of a dick. And I don’t feel like it’s fair.

I Know I’m Stupid – I’m Not Always a Good husband

Look, I absolutely know I’m in the wrong on this one. It’s not unreasonable for my wife to want to get some extra sleep when she does all the work in the night. I guess because I don’t really see what Isabelle is like I don’t see it as an issue. She’s not too bad, it’s not like she wakes up crying and needs to be changed, she just wakes a lot more frequently to feed. She does it quite quietly too, so in essence she just wakes Rachel. Hence why I probably don’t even notice.

But when Rachel asks me to get up with her while she lays in bed, I really don’t like it. When Rachel came downstairs I almost went out of my way to prove a point and be a bit of a dick. I’d sit on the laptop basically waiting for her to say something so I can snap back with “oh, so it’s alright for you to do something for a few hours, but I can’t go on here?” I could handle the situation very differently, but I don’t always pick the right option.

Yes, yes, I know. I chose to be a dick. Sometimes I just can’t help it. I’m fully aware that I’m being unreasonable and I just keep on going. We did argue a little bit about it. Nothing too over the top. But sometimes it’s good to have the odd argument. I’m pretty good at arguing because I never get loud or aggressive. I’ll throw in the odd witty remark and make elaborate points and I’ll also have an answer for pretty much everything. But it gets resolved in the end, and that’s what matters.

Maybe I have been a little too absorbed in the blog the last few weeks and it’s annoyed Rachel. There has been a lot going on though, so I’ve kinda had to be on here a bit more than usual. So maybe she just wanted a little bit of something for herself as I always get to do the blog in the night. It’s not really too much to ask now is it?

I Don’t Want to Portray Myself as a Perfect Husband

As this blog is written almost entirely by me, I’m fully in control of what goes out. I can cherry pick all the good moments if I wanted to, and essentially make myself look as good or bad as I want. I think it annoys Rachel sometimes when I apparently portray myself as being a faultless husband. Not that I think that I am.

Boob cake - I'm not that bad of a husband, am I? — Still made her a banging **boob cake though to celebrate a year of breastfeeding**! I can’t be *that* bad!

I clearly don’t hold back on showing how I can be a bad dad. When you’ve made national headlines with the title “I hated my daughter” I think I’ve certainly ticked the bad dad moments.

But I don’t think I’ve shown many bad husband moments. I have slagged Rachel off on a live stream because she didn’t change Isabelle’s nappy at 6am before doing a 12 hours shift. Again, I’m a dick.

I’m more than happy to show my bad side of any aspect of what I do. Perhaps I’ve just not talked about it much as I haven’t felt that it’s always relevant. This is a parenting blog after all, and I guess I wanted to focus on Isabelle. But the parents are a pretty big part of a parenting blog. So maybe I should talk about myself more often if I do something stupid.

To be honest, if I start talking about all the times I’ve been a shitty husband, maybe I’ll stop being a shitty husband. Maybe I’ll check myself a little more, realise I’m being a dick and do a bit more to stop acting like one.