DH and newborn (formula feeding)

[Jelly67]

Hi just wondering how you spilt the care/ feeding with your DH? My DD feeds roughly every 2 hours with colic/reflux and sleeps max 10pm-5am with a feed at 2am. So I do the 2am, 5am, 7am and the whole day. DH gets home about 6pm. Is it fair to ask him to do 6pm to 10pm? Baring in mind these are her witching hours where she'll scream non-stop for those 4 hours. He was doing them initially but more recently he's finding it really tough so I end up taking over and doing the evening, then the night, then the day, evening, night and never getting a break. She just gets so worked up and we're in a small apartment I just can't sit by and let them both get stressed out. But it's been 7 wks and I'm shattered!

[BackforGood]

YOu have to just work out what works for you. You need sleep, and you will probably not sleep if she is screaming in the next room.
Me telling you that I used to go to sleep about 8pm and get a good 4 hours sleep before the 1am/ 2am feed, and dh used to do the 'whatever time up to midnight' feeds and then sleep until 4.30/5am doesn't necessarily help you.
At other times we went through a spell of one of us doing all the feed one night and one doing all the feeds the next night. We did have a house though so probably could be a bit further away from the baby than you can.
It is hard. Keep repeating the mantra that it is a phase, and she will come out the other side.

[Jelly67]

Thank you so much backforgood i think we need to sit down and work out something like that and looking forward till this phase passes

[mrs2468]

We take each night in turns for those feeds. The other makes dinner does bath time and any house stuff that needs done. Works for us then early night.

[emmaluggs]

My LO was breastfed so slightly different, but he used to sleep quite well from 8pm until 11 where I used to go upstairs and they used to snuggle downstairs. Could he do a few early mornings before work?

Either way as PP said it will be phase and you’ll come out the other side it feels knackering now but you’ll look back wondering how quickly it passed and ponder how you survived those tricky few months, you’ll probably find at about 3 months the colic and reflux will reduce a bit and things will be a bit easier.

[NeverTell9871]

Not sure if you're still needing help OP but me and DH used to split the night. DD fed every hour and a half and it took around 45 mins to feed her a bottle so realistically we would sleep maybe 20 mins between feeds after settling her etc (oh how awfully tiring that time was!)

We used to split the night, as opposed to one night 'on' one night 'off'. So I did the 'night shift' which was about 7pm-1am, DH did the 'morning shift which was around' 1am-7am. I slept when he took care of the baby and I slept when he did. When he went back to work after paternity we mixed it up and just did whichever 'shift' was needed. But we found as soon as our heads hit the pillow we could get around 6 hours sleep straight which made a massive difference.

Still wasn't perfect but it was the best we could muster at the time!

The 'night on night off' thing just couldn't work for us as DD was up so often you'd find you were awake for a full 24 hours at a time which was just impossible!

Hope you're all doing well!