I don’t know if it’s the same in other households but way back in the beginning of this whole parenting thing we agreed that I would be the main bearer of the night shift in our house.

And I’m really fine with it. Kaine gets up early to go to work through the week and my job is to satisfy the whims of our precious little one (who is now not so little at 16 months!).

However, that doesn’t mean I’m not driven crazy from time to time with the night antics that occur in our house.

With a child that has only slept through the night a handful of times, I am up at least once if not more every night. And there are definitely some things that Kaine does through the night that irritates me to no end.

Here’s a few irritating things dad’s do throughout the night. Or maybe it’s just my husband…

1. Sleeps. Yup, there is nothing more irritating than waking up for the third time in as many hours to feed or soothe a bub while husband sleeps soundly and blissfully unaware.

2. The passive-aggressive rollover. This manoeuvre is designed to let you know you’ve disturbed his sleep but he’s not actually willing to wake and offer help. There’s just a very loud sigh from his side of the bed followed by an angry rollover and tug on the doona.

3. States the bloody obvious. When the teething toddler is screaming blue murder in the middle of the night and no amount of pats on the bottom or cuddles can fix it, Mum begins to administer pain relief (which could only be made easier by putting the child in a straight jacket) when dad comes out in his undies, rubbing his eyes and says “why don’t you just give him some nurofen already”? If looks could kill….

4. Pretends to be asleep even when it’s the weekend. It wouldn’t be too much to expect that dad might handle the early morning bottle on a weekend right? Wrong! I’ll get up again shall I??? Oh, do you want me to get him he says knowing that you’re already half way out of the bed.

5. Complains about being tired. Um, excuse me? You don’t know the meaning of the word!

Like I said… It might be just my husband who does these things. But geez, on a really bad night I do admit to wanting to stab him in the (shut) eye with a fork!

And god help me, if he comes out in his undies at 2am in the morning again, directing me to give Jesse nurofen after another terrible night of trying to settle him and get him back to sleep, I may be driven to cut off what got us into this situation in the first place!

Okay, that could just be the sleep deprivation talking.

Or is it?

I love you, darling.