To expect help during the night with newborn?

[Holly129]

Am I being unreasonable to expect my partner to help me with newborn during the night? If I ask him to just change a nappy he tells me he's tired and has work in the morning and that I don't so therefore I have to take care of ds during the night. I'm exhausted, I have to work from home just to keep us afloat and I feel like he doesn't understand that looking after ds & dd all day is just as (if not more) exhausting than his job. Is this normal? Am I supposed to be doing everything in the night because I don't have to get up and drive to work?

Personally I am of the school if thought that if you are up anyway as you are BF then why involve another party for the sake of it.

I even insisted DH sleep elsewhere (spare room) for about 10w so we could all get as much sleep as possible.

Just my feeling tho.

There's no way I could have done 5 nights in a row with my DS, I would have totally cracked up.

DH and I both work full time, so we share getting up at night. We both have to cope working on top of unbroken sleep. That's how it is when you're a parent so YANBU and you're DH should be pulling his weight, particularly at weekends.

Dr other than when breastfeeding I sleep like the dead. Now my DH gets most of the night duties as I never hear DC anymore (although she is 4!)

me and DH split the night stuff.

We have both had turns at being the SAHP and agree going to work is the easier option.

OP, do let us know how you get on!

I think night waking needs to be shared, I cannot see how it is fair for one adult to have a full night's sleep every night and one to be up every couple of hours every night. If the sah parent can get some sleep during the day they it's probably fair for them to do more, but if they can't then I don't see why they don't need their sleep just as much as the average worker (excepting some particularly dangerous or vital roles, I suppose).

It just seems like another way that society buys into the idea that for some reason women are less entitled to have their basic needs fulfilled than men.

I wouldn't say you are bu, but I am a single parent so had no help with anything from the start with dd, I just got on with it. I was also studying for the first few months of her life so didn't have time to nap during the day with her. I don't see the point in both being awake during the night, but perhaps once a week it would be decent of him to do the nights to give you a rest.

Thing is Mummy I imagine, as I assume would most, that there being someoje there who could help but doesnt is actually worse than there being no one else.

I think it depends on how bad the nights are. I used to go by the 'no point in both of us being up, you have to go to work and need your sleep' school of thought until I nearly went insane from lack of sleep when my first born was waking every 45 minutes and I was getting no sleep at all. Then I realised that work or not, everyone needs some decent sleep.

i was also a single parent and just had to get one with broken sleep and working. my commute was over an hour in rush hour traffic as opposed to 3 miles aswell.

however as you both need to be conscious and driving every day then i would suggest you both go to bed earlyish (8/9pm?) and take it night about to see to the baby. if you are breastfeeding then obviously you will have to feed the baby but you could express for say the 11pm feed and the 7am feed (i'm just guessing at times here) and you do the ones in between so you could be sleeping from 8pm -1am and then again til 3 (if baby settles?) and then from say 4ish til 8am. and DP gets sleep from 8-11pm then from 12ish til 7am. of course babies aren't robots but i think you could try this til you get into a routine and see what works but he definitely should be doing some of the night time stuff and i think either a some of the feed every night or every other night at least.

how often is the baby feeding/waking during the night?

Every time this question comes up, some posters seem to treat it like a zero sum game: i.e., that the OP is asking the DH to do ALL the night wakings! She's not; just for some help. There's no reason at all that he should be entitled to a FULL night's sleep when she's getting very, very broken sleep with multiple wake-ups. Even him taking one shift, so she can have one stretch of 4-5 hours, means the world at this early stage. Nobody in the world, bar serious medical conditions possibly, is incapable of doing their paid job qfter having got up once in the night to a baby. Pfffft.

I think it depends how many wakings, what dp does as a job and how the baby is in tge daytime.

I do all the night wakings with 8 week old ds, I do that because dp is a lorry driver and I worry about him driving when tired. Ds only wakes for a 10 min feed once a night then goes back to sleep, I breastfeed so even at the weekend there is no point dp waking up. Ds sleeps or chats to me or lies under his babygym in the daytime he doesn't need walking up and down and jiggling so my days are easier than dp's days (I am aware this will change!.)

Dp gets up with ds at the weekends when ds wakes around 7 so I do get a lie in twice a week.

The other thing to note is that OP has an older child as well. So that means no possibility of napping when the baby does.

Honeytea, one waking per night for 10 mins? That's astounding. I'd be happy to do all the wakings in that scenario too, total no-brainer. I think the OP is talking more like 3-5 wakings and some long unsettled periods, though, that's more common at this early stage.

Are you bf or ff?

I bf but DH helped and still does with rocking back to sleep, nappies or if other dc wake. He has a very demanding job too but there is no way he needs a full nights sleep to do it! I was back at work and our youngest was still up multiple times so working is not an excuse! The only exception would be if he had to be up early for a flight it a long drive then we would sleep downstairs on the sofa bed. The best scenario is if both parents get 4-5 hours sleep, you go to bed at 9 and get a kip until 1 or 2 and he sleeps 2-7 or whatever. Obviously if you're bf that's a bit different but I would nip this in the bud with your partner before long, you're both parents!

When DDs were tiny and we were in the worst of the unsettled feeding, night-time exploding nappies etc. DH would often be awake together with me. Helping out, changing nappies, cuddling DC etc. I appreciated the show of support to be honest in those first confusing, exhausting times.

DD1 got into a good sleep pattern early on, so wasn't too much to be discussed. DD2 was a different matter and at age 2 is still a poor sleeper. Once she stopped bf at night, DH took over night wakings with her. Now we share them.

But the discussion about how and what you want from each other doesn't work if you have it in the middle of the night when you're knackered and there's a child screaming. Make time to talk about it properly. Prolonged sleep deprivation is horrible whoever you are and whatever you have to do with your day. I have been a FT WOHM and a FT SAHM to a baby and toddler and being at home is by no means the easy option!!

DS only started sleeping so well once it was just me looking after him in the night time. The first couple of weeks when DP was on paternity leave DS slept badly, he would wake up lots and not go back to sleep. I was dreading DP starting back at work and doing the nights by myself but the DS sleeps much better if it is just me who wakes up with him.

I think it might be because when DP helped me we would turn the light on and chat, it was really nice family time all being awake at 3 AM and I think DS was learning that he had mummy and pappa's undivided attention if he woke in the middle of the night. Now it is just boring mummy and I don't talk to him or put the light on he has got bored of night waking. he does have the occasional bad night but even then I would not wake DP as I would be worried about him driving the next day if I woke him up.

I always did nights for my two because 1) my husband worked and I was a SAHM and 2) I was breastfeeding, so there was no point in him getting up as he wasn't able to do the feeding and I saw little point in us both being exhausted.

I think you need to guard against the attitude that if you're knackered, then so should he be. You're a team, contributing (hopefully) equal parts to the job of raising your family - both practically and financially. Night waking is very tough, I appreciate, but then so is working outside the home. Whatever you do, don't get into a contest about who is more tired - you'll just argue and argue over one, because it's purely subjective.

In v early days when I was sore from birth my df would get up to pass me ds and help with night changes.

Eventually as I was bf it was just me - unless it was a drama ( when ds threw up all over the bed (couldn't have changed it with df asleep in it and it was everywhere)

Can he take the baby when he gets in from work so you can have a nap?

Rest during the day. With 1 baby you can nap when they do so I do think YABU.

YANBU! It's his kid too. And it's not as if looking after a newborn all day when he's at work (sitting on his bottom!) equates to doing nothing!

Or if he helps a bit they will both get enough sleep and be reasonably rrested.

DH did the 1030-11pm feed with dd from about 10 days (ebm/formula) so I went to bed at 830-9. She rarely woke again before2- wworked for us.