Sleep and the Gender Gap

Thank you all for wishing my family well. Fortunately, it seemed to be an isolated case! Everyone has been fine since the night of cherries (newcomers, welcome! See previous post for the gory details).

As I mentioned, there was actually a study done that showed that men do indeed sleep through the cries of babies. Research done by Mindlab, at the University of Sussex, determined that a baby's cry doesn't even rank in the top ten of things that wake men from their slumber!

A cricket is more likely to wake a man than his screaming newborn! The participants were random, not necessarily fathers, though it didn't seem to make a difference whether they had children or not. Mothers and non-mothers alike were awakened by the cries of a baby.

If there are any inventors reading this, I would like to commission you to create a device that will convert baby screams to cricket chirps through the baby monitor. Wouldn't that be awesome?! So, baby cries, but Papa hears crickets chirping at his bedside. Mommy feigns sleep and upon waking, Papa hears the child crying. Seeing his sleeping wife, the loving husband goes and quiets his precious child.

The more likely scenario, sadly for us mommies who work around the clock, is that when the chirping sound wakes our husbands and they finally do hear the baby crying, they will simply give us a shake and say, "The baby is crying!" Then, like they do, they will just roll over and fall right back to sleep.