… which is what Lauca calls him (ie. Mum’s baby is awake, quick, get Mum) and what their father has started calling him too, to make me laugh and groan in equal measures. Because he does get it.
I forgot how unequal parenting can be with an infant, and don’t get me started on ‘night parenting’ and how it reflects so clearly the way the ‘male sphere of work’ is valued over the ‘female sphere of work’.
(Also this from Lauca made me smile. The other evening having dinner with us she announced: It is nice with the baby asleep because now we can have some real family time. Still a little adjustment required, obviously).
What lovely children you have. Your wee lad is growing so fast! He looks very lively in that photo.
Regarding spheres of work – yes! Manifested in our house by me, five months pregnant with twins, working on my doctoral thesis which I desperately needed to get finished, accompanying his mother (who I don’t really like very much) to hospital one night, and staying there until 1am, because diddums had to lecture in the morning. That was not right.
Gorgeous children, and congratulations on baby boy!
My partner is a woman, but as the birth mother I was the stay-at-home parent and night-parenter – she was/is amazing in terms of how much mothering she does, even when working full-time – but as the breastfeeder obviously I had to be with our baby most of the time and getting up to him/waking up to roll over to feed him too. And I felt a strange sense of guilt, that I had to ‘protect’ her from the night-waking, as I valued her ‘outside house’ work over my own. I also felt that I should clean and tidy the house before she came home every day (got over that fairly quickly though… just ask her!). So it’s not just a male/female sphere thang (though maybe it is, as the outside working world is inherently ‘masculine’ deep in our psyche… perhaps that’s what you meant by ‘male sphere of work’).
Since he weaned she has taken a much more active role in night parenting and is actually at home with him full-time for a couple more months while I finish study. And I am enjoying that. Oh yeah. Oh, I have to ‘study’. yep, right through dinner and bath time, sorry. (but of course there’s an element of guilt too… sigh).
And Deborah, that indeed was not right. You go straight to heaven.
I did almost all of the night parenting when our son was a tiny baby, except the going for a walk in the middle of the night when he would stop screaming and breastfeeding wasn’t working because obviously that’s a ‘blue job’, as my partner’s family would say. He’s done most of the night and early morning parenting since the kid was night weaned, around six months, so after two years I’m totally winning. I argue that I spend all day with the kid, trying to do my stuff and look after the kid simultaenously, and I need to get enough sleep so that I can refrain from throwing him out a window. The Bloke is looking very tired. So I’ve organised for the kid to stay at my parents house so they can do the night parenting tonight. My Mum makes my Dad get up to grandchildren, on the grounds that he did very little night parenting of his own children.
Remembered last night about our pest guy who told me that when his kids were babies, his wife would do the days, he would come home from work and do the nights. Every night. Power to that woman! .
Oh my good so sweet. *swoon*
I did it all, three times, I had atrocious judgement when it came to choosing partners.
That said, my son was 11 when my last was born, and her dad left us. And though my son didnt get up in the night, he offered! ( and would often mind her for an hour in the morning before school while I slept.)
we are a different kind of family, I guess.
“I forgot how unequal parenting can be with an infant, and don’t get me started on ‘night parenting’ and how it reflects so clearly the way the ‘male sphere of work’ is valued over the ‘female sphere of work’.”
Isn’t that just so true 😦
Long term demand breastfeeding absolutely compounds the problem.
All the same, mum’s baby looks like he is thriving 😉
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