‘My husband woke me in the middle of the night, he wanted me to help clean up’

“I could understand if he was concerned that someone was ill or something … this was absolutely not the case.”

Alexandra Feiam

3 min read

April 18, 2024 - 7:19AM

Time lapse of toddler twins going to bed

Family Life

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It was just after midnight in the house, and Becca* was peacefully asleep in her bed.

She had been feeling a bit poorly in recent days, and really needed to let her body recover.

Downstairs was the muffled sound of the TV, as Becca’s husband Mike* parked himself on the couch and watched his favourite channel.

As he cracked open another beer, Mike heard a revolting sound in front of him.

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Becca was furious when her husband woke her to clean the carpet. Picture: iStock

Husband wakes up his wife to clean carpet

Mike looked down at his feet and noticed their little dog had vomited all over the carpet.

Rolling his eyes, the British dad stood up and walked out of the living room. But instead of turning to the kitchen and grabbing cleaning essentials, he walked upstairs.

All the while, Becca, who was fast asleep, had no idea what was going on.

That was until Mike woke her up.

“Just half an hour ago he comes upstairs and wakes me up to tell me the dog has been sick on the living room floor,” she told Mumsnet.

At first, Becca thought Mike was waking her up to tell her the dog was sick.

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“I could understand if he was concerned that dog was ill or something, which was my thought as I was going downstairs that he must be worried about the dog,” she said.

“That was absolutely not the case,” she said.

Instead, Mike told her the dog’s sick “stinks and there is no way he will clean it up.”

Meaning Becca had to clean it instead.

Half-asleep, Becca got out of bed and walked downstairs to the living room to begin cleaning.

“I don't speak, as the dogs [are] already too excited to see me,” she said.

“I'm not impressed with getting woken up and I haven't got the energy for a conversation.”

As the woman was cleaning up the dog’s vomit off the floor, Mike hung around and watched her at work.

“'I don't know how you can clean that up,” he told her, to which she responded in a huff.

She grunted back that she had “no choice” but to clean it up, since no one else would (not any other adult, anyway).

That got Mike’s back up, telling her she didn’t need to be an “a**e about it.”

“I don't enjoy cleaning it up any more than he would,” she hit back. “He also knows I've not been well and really in need of some rest.”

This isn’t the first time he has woken her up to do something he couldn’t manage to complete, but it’s starting to grate Becca’s gears.

“He never hesitates to wake me up over absolutely anything,” she said, fuming.

“He, however, goes in a bad mood if he gets woken up when having a nap in the middle of the day on the sofa and one of the children makes a noise!:

“Do you really want to put up with that?”

The Mumsnet community couldn’t quite believe what they were reading, all asking Becca the same important question: “Why are you still married to him?”

“Out of order,” said one woman.

“If there was lots of sick and he'd already attempted to clean it and failed and woke you to help him, I'd understand. But this is lazy. No way I'd have done it.”

“F**k that!” wrote another.

“He thinks you're staff,” someone bluntly put it. “Do you really want to put up with that?”

Others brainstormed ways to get payback.

“I would spitefully enjoy ruining every one of his naps I could,” a woman wrote.

“Make sure you wake him up extra early just to let him know the dog hasn't been sick again and seems to be feeling better now,” said another.

*Names have been changed