SAHM/WOHD Issue
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| Thu, 07-13-2006 - 4:35pm |
My husband came home the other day with this story:
His coworker, J and J's wife, K just had a set of twins born via in-vitro after 17 years of marriage and infertility. Anyway, the end of the pregnancy was difficult and K was on bedrest and the babies were born (I think) 6 weeks early - one of them had to stay in the hospital for 2 weeks after birth. OK - that's the background.
K got a lot of attention during pregnancy - not being able to move around on her own. Now the babies are 4 months old, but although she is a SAHM, she expects (yes, expects) J to leave work every day at 4. That's the normal time, but at times they are required to work overtime if something has broken and needs to be fixed before the next shift comes in. According to my husband, J comes home every night and fixes dinner, washes bottles, takes care of the babies, and then gets up with them in the middle of the night. The only time K is bothered with them is during the day when she's home alone. (I know, this account is how J related it to my husband, so the story is probably more one-sided than the situation really is.) And K may have post-partum depression and that can explain needing J so much....
K's mom and sister both lives within a halfmile of her and can come to help with the babies, but she expects J to leave work everyday at 4 to do it. She also calls a lot during the day. Anyway, the other day something had broken and J needed to stay past 4, but he tried to leave - my husband's and J's boss told J that he needed to decide what is more important - him taking care of those babies or him working to provide for those babies? Sounds to me like J's job is starting to be in jeopardy and he makes pretty good money for the area of the country we live in. Replacing that income would be very hard.
Just wanted to see what y'all thought about this.

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***YOu have said over and over that the wife in the op was wrong for expecting help from her husband and that he needs to get his sleep in order to save his job.***
No I haven't.
*** Why is having 4 little ones an acceptable reason to make my husband lose sleep but having preemie twins not?***
I don't know since I didn't say that. I said my issue is that she is a wreck. If she can't help herself by not calling him all day, and demanding him to come home at 4pm when his shift is over and being angry if he has to work late then she needs to go back to work, or get some help.
***That is where I am going with all this. You can't sit there and judge her needs when they are so vastly different than your own.***
I didn't. You might want to go back and read what I said. If her DH is having such a hard time with it, and she is miserable, what is the answer? Divorce? Him get fired? How do they fix it?
***So why does it mean it is controlling or lazy as you have stated? What qualifies you to make such a judgment about someone else's life and marriage?***
Trust me I have heard the arguments and the battles between those two. She is a pill and now he is rebelling like a 2 yr old by not doing other things. They will be divorced in 3 yrs.
***Like I said, I watch and anticipate how I can help. It's not about being psychic, not at all. It's really not even that hard.***
Different families different ways of doing things.
***Didn't you use those as an example of how he helps around the house? How he helps you because you need it?***
Well since you said that my wording was confusing you I tried to explain it another way. So now you take issue with this. How else can I explain it to you?
Um no. I put the emphasis on FEMALE because I see no reason why my gender matters. What are you talking about?
And yes, I was asking this particular poster why she thinks my gender matters. Unless you're into mind reading, I doubt you can explain why whe posted what she did.
She hasn't told us how much - just that it's "all day" which could mean:
All times of the day (she's called at different times)
All the time (your definition of every hour)
Many times but only reached him a certain percentage of the time.
etc. etc.
It's much more unsafe to sleep in such a building. If we had a gas leak, I'm much more likely to notice other staggaring around if my eyes are open. We had one in our lab not too long ago that displaced enough oxygen to set off the alarms. Anyone asleep in that lab could have suffocated. Fortunately, no one was asleep in the lab and the people in the lab noticed something was wrong before the alarms went off so the lab was empty by the time it did. By the time the alarm sounds, you may not have much time to get out. If you wake up disoriented from lack of oxygen, will you actually make it out the door? I don't know about you, but I'm not my most alert when I first wake up. It takes me a minute to get my bearing. You might not have a minute in such a situation.
I can think of many such scenarios where sleeping in the lab would be unsafe besides the obvious who is watching the testing while you're sleeping one.
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