Who's Awake?

It will come as little shock that a recent study has confirmed that women are more likely to give up sleep to care for their children than men are. Are we surprised?

Now, before you guys (or my husband, who might be the only male who actually reads this blog) get all defensive, another study might hold the answer as to why. I was reading the Motherlode blog the other day when I stumbled on this fascinating study. According to the research results, the number one sound most likely to wake a sleeping woman is - a baby's cry. (And this holds true regardless of whether she actually has children.) The blog post continues to list the sounds most likely to wake a man - a car alarm, the howling wind, a buzzing fly... But a baby's cry? That sound doesn't even crack the top ten noises that wake men up.

This is fascinating to me.

So perhaps we women spend more sleepless hours caring for children because we're the ones that wake up! Now, granted, my dear husband has been known to wake me up out of a sound sleep to announce that the baby is crying, only to roll back over and bliss out again while I haul myself up the stairs. (His exact words that fateful night were, I believe, "Honey (and he may or may not have used this endearment), you have GOT to wake up!") So it proves that this man of mine does wake up to the sounds of a baby's cry.

And to be completely fair, Matt has done his share of night duty. Just the other night, I woke up only as he was getting back in bed at 3 a.m., a restless Violet nestled on his shoulder. I hadn't even heard him get up, much less noticed that she was crying.

Violet's new sleep-style - the butt in the air face-plant.

But on the whole, I've probably spent more nighttime hours with Violet than Matt has. Breastfeeding skews the balance, for sure. And the fact that I have more patience, especially in the middle of the night. And before I went back to work, I also had a great deal more sympathy for the fact that Matt had to be up and performing in front of other people, while I merely had to be up and and functioning for our child (who doesn't care if I've showered/brushed my teeth/have bags under my eyes the size of couch cushions). But now that I'm a working mom, and my alarm clock goes off a good hour before his, and I spend all day on my feet dealing with 200+ children that don't belong to me, and I have my own needy child to come home to, I'm much more likely to let Matt get up and check on Violet without feeling guilty about it.

What about you, moms? Does this study ring true in your house?