AIBU to think I will be able to leave a 2 month old breast fed --hopefully-- baby at home with dad (and expressed milk) for 1 day a week.

[honeytea]

I'd love some advice about my parental leave plan, I'm not sure if I am being really unrealistic.

It's a little long winded I apologise!

We live in Sweden so we are very lucky to get 18 months of paid parental leave to share between me and DP, the rules are that we both have to take at least 60 days and DP gets 2 free weeks directly after the birth. To make things more confusing if we split the leave 50/50 we get a bonus of around 1500 pounds (so it would be usefull to split it 50/50.)

PFB is due in December so our plan is for DP to take his 2 weeks leave, then holiday for 2 weeks (over christmas so it will add up to around 5 weeks all in all.) When the baby is 8 weeks we were thinking of DP working 4 days a week and me working 1 day, I am intending to breast feed, I know it might not work out for me and the baby but I hope it goes well, if I do BF DP (hopefully) give the baby expressed breast milk whilst I am at work. Has anyone any advice about this? could breast milk but from a bottle negatively eggect BF?

Also am I crazy to consider leaving my 8 week old baby for an entire day when I do have the option of staying at home, will I be a weeping wreck on the train to work in the morning?

To get the bonus we would have to change over when the baby is around 9 months so I would work 4 days and DP 1 day. DP has never changed a nappy and despite being very excited about the idea of being a dad doesn't really have much interest in children in general, should I maybe push for me to take all the leave myself.

I have no idea what it's like to have a baby of my own, I am making all these plans based on logistics not emotions I would love some advice regarding how it feels to have a baby.

:)

I did the one day a week with my dc and it worked very well. Though as we live in the UK, dh had to take unpaid leave which was painful. I didn't feel separation angst was a problem for either of us: they were so close to their dad from birth that me leaving them with him wasn't any different from him leaving them with me. And once my milk supply was established pumping wasn't too much of a problem.

But you do need to make sure your dh is involved with all the daily chores from Day 1: it will boost his confidence and help the bonding. Let him do the first nappy!

Dh had very little baby experience pre-dc but quickly became expert.

I haven't read the whole thread but my DS1 is 4 months old and I started doing some freelancing when he was 8 weeks old... This was arranged before he was born, when it came to it I was an absolute nervous wreck, and really really struggled. It's taken 2 months for me to feel confident leaving him, he is also ebf, and is not great at taking a bottle, although my mil, my dm and DH are usually able to get a bit into him if it's a real emergency when i'm not there. (I only go out for about 3 hours at a time in the evening so most of the time DS is asleep) I would wait and see how you feel. I was shocked at how hard it was to leave him!

I really wouldn't worry about your DP and how he will be with the baby - what you say about him could easily have applied to both me and DH before we had DS - neither of us had any experience around new babies, had never been particularly fussed about other people's kids etc - we both managed fine and DH did one day a week from the time DS was 6 months old. It worked out brilliantly and I'm really happy that DH got to have a day a week with just him and DS, the same way I did.

Remember that if your DH is nervous/unsure around the baby, the best way for him to get over that is to do MORE baby care, not less!

Your swap over point at 9 months might be difficult, the baby will be lovely then, you might not want to go off for 4 days. If it were me I'd want a full year off myself and then to share the childcare afterwards - a 3/2 day split maybe? Is that selfish??? Probably! And it's nowhere near what happened here, but that would be my ideal.
Hopefully you don't need to make any decisions just yet,.

I am dreading the changeover point but there is lots of pressure to let the dad be at home with the baby here, mil has already been saying how I have to share the leave and how much dp has been longing for a child he hasn't really he's a pretty easy going guy

I will try really hard to let him get to grips with the baby, I know it's best for everyone in the ling run :)

Just to chip in, we've just done the "handover" you speak of. I went to back to work FT when DS was 7 months and DH took over as the SAHP for the summer as he is a teacher. Although I'm probably about to hand in my notice to find a job that gives me a better work-life balance (4 hours commuting each day is too much now), it's been brilliant for the reasons outlined below.

I expressed for the first 6 weeks but it was exhausting and took a huge amount of time out of my work day. Once DS was well established on solids we went over to mixed feeding - I have managed to go down to morning and evening breastfeeding quite easily, and DS has formula during the day.

But the absolute BEST thing has been DH being a SAHP the last couple of months. I realise now what a "gatekeeper" I was, not just about the baby but also other things like cooking and household management, even before DS was born. Left to his own devices with me relinquishing all control, DH has suddenly found hidden reserves of organisation, cooking skills and baby whispering. I think it's been the making of him and we actually have a proper split of household chores now, whereas before I thought we had a good split but in fact I was doing at least 3/4.

So in short - you should definitely give him this chance. DH didn't know anything about or have any interest in babies before we had DS. Now he is Annabel Karmel-ing, going to coffee mornings, batch cooking, taking DS swimming and planning and packing for weekends away (including packing for me!) without any input from me. It has led to more of an appreciation on his part of what I was doing all day on mat leave, and an appreciation on my part of how he feels coming home after a day's work, and has made us much closer as parents and partners.

Women in the US do it all the time - 6 weeks unpaid leave for childbirth means you pop the baby into daycare at 6 weeks old and pump away at work and home to provide them with breast milk (my sister did it for nine months!). If US women can do it 5 days a week, you can do it one day.

Exactly peshwarinaan.

I notice that the people being negative about it are mostly people who declare that they could never leave their baby at that age, and not people who actually tried it and did it.

Yes it can be hard getting a baby to take a bottle, we struggled with DS1 but when it came down to it I had to go back and that was all there was to it.

Another friend went back at 3mths and assumed the baby would take a bottle because she wasn't there, and it did, no problem.

It's often easier for someone else to give the bottle, not the bfing mother.

I'm quite at how many people are advising AGAINST doing ONE, yes ONE day out of seven, when the OP has given very sensible reasons for doing so and it sounds like it will benefit all involved (incl. the baby who gets to have a great relationship with its father).