Hello all, I am a new father and I’m navigating how to be a good dad while managing my BiP1. I feel like I’m a pretty involved dad, and I step-up as much as I can. However, one of the areas I have to be really careful with is my sleep; if I don’t manage it well, I can spiral into an episode. This all came to a boiling point (but has been building up) this weekend since her parents have visited.

My daughter is 4 months old. For about the first two months she’s been home, I would sleep with her in the nursery every night, to do her first feeding, and then her mother would take over for the last shift. Each shift was about equally split between us. Since she started sleeping in 7-9 hour stretches (around 2.5 months), only one of us would sleep in the nursery for entire stretch. Since I have bipolar disorder, we agreed to split it five her, two me. 

We sleep on a mattress in the nursery that’s a part of a sofa bed in the guest room. When my in-laws visit, my wife expects me to sleep on the ground, and give up the mattress for them. This really made me angry since the last time this happened I didn’t get any sleep, and more recently, my sleep has been really screwed up; our daughter is going through a sleep regression and I’ve been having sleep issues.

I feel like this is part of a larger issue where I feel like she prioritizes them over me when they’re here. For example, we had them over for Christmas, and while they were drinking and having a good time, I was cooking prime rib for 8 hours and doing the whole holiday spread, all the while I was sleeping in the nursery, on the hardwood floor and watching the baby. They’re super loud in the early morning and at night when they visit. This weekend, she wanted to take our daughter with her family to a plant nursery with her family, without even asking/inviting me.

This all lead to a huge fight where I told my wife how I felt; I got pretty angry with her and tears were shed. I don’t know if I’m heading towards an episode; I feel irritable and angry when her parents are over. But what pisses me off is that my wife thinks I can’t control myself when I’m in a “mood state.” Im pretty sure I’m not. Am I the asshole for lashing out? I feel bad but I’m seething about the little stuff her parents do when they’re over.