The part about waking up when the baby cries hit so hard. I had a super-attentive father, and one story I told at his memorial service was about a time when my husband was out of town and my father came to help with the then-toddler. One night my kid woke up, and I had the monitor right next to me, but by the time I heard the noises and rolled over and turned on the screen, my father was already in there, soothing him. His room and the guest room are right next to each other, but my father heard him and responded before the monitor two feet from me woke me up. And my father wore hearing aids! More recently, our kid has woken up a few times in the night, and his door makes noise when opened so we have a chance to know he's coming to find us (we have not fixed that because it is useful in that way), and I think two out of three times lately my husband has beaten me to it -- which isn't necessarily typical over the whole time we've been parenting together, but is a good thing right now.
I feel like one thing about the kind of brain changes is that by the time our baby was born, I had been on constant alert paying attention to him inside me for so long. Because I'd had two miscarriages, I was always super sensitive to was he moving etc, and I literally would lie awake at night waiting to be sure I was feeling him move before I'd relax enough to sleep. The first night in the hospital I remember waiting to feel if he was moving and then realizing no, he's in that bassinet over there now. And not that my husband cared less, but he didn't have that physical experience of alertness until after the baby was born, so I just started out way ahead of him on that kind of habitual attentiveness.
I also have an n=1 for the crying baby thing! For various reasons my child 1) had bottles at night, 2) didn't fully night wean until 13 months, and 3) my husband did ALL night feedings from 6 months to 13 months. When we've gone through subsequent periods of night waking, it is almost always (like 98% of the time) that my husband hears him first. We both sleep deeply, but it's my husband's brain that rouses at the noise, not mine.
The part about waking up when the baby cries hit so hard. I had a super-attentive father, and one story I told at his memorial service was about a time when my husband was out of town and my father came to help with the then-toddler. One night my kid woke up, and I had the monitor right next to me, but by the time I heard the noises and rolled over and turned on the screen, my father was already in there, soothing him. His room and the guest room are right next to each other, but my father heard him and responded before the monitor two feet from me woke me up. And my father wore hearing aids! More recently, our kid has woken up a few times in the night, and his door makes noise when opened so we have a chance to know he's coming to find us (we have not fixed that because it is useful in that way), and I think two out of three times lately my husband has beaten me to it -- which isn't necessarily typical over the whole time we've been parenting together, but is a good thing right now.
I feel like one thing about the kind of brain changes is that by the time our baby was born, I had been on constant alert paying attention to him inside me for so long. Because I'd had two miscarriages, I was always super sensitive to was he moving etc, and I literally would lie awake at night waiting to be sure I was feeling him move before I'd relax enough to sleep. The first night in the hospital I remember waiting to feel if he was moving and then realizing no, he's in that bassinet over there now. And not that my husband cared less, but he didn't have that physical experience of alertness until after the baby was born, so I just started out way ahead of him on that kind of habitual attentiveness.
I also have an n=1 for the crying baby thing! For various reasons my child 1) had bottles at night, 2) didn't fully night wean until 13 months, and 3) my husband did ALL night feedings from 6 months to 13 months. When we've gone through subsequent periods of night waking, it is almost always (like 98% of the time) that my husband hears him first. We both sleep deeply, but it's my husband's brain that rouses at the noise, not mine.