DH - new baby and ou bedroom

[Gobbolinothewitchscat]

We have a 14 month old DS and a 4 week old DD

DD and I have been sleeping in our bedroom with DH since she was born

However, DH has said tonight that he would like DD and me to sleep in the spare room during the week as he is shattered join the fucking club

He has offered to,domFriday and Saturday nights with DD with expressed bottles so I can sleep then

However, DD is fed exclusively expressed milk (latch problem) so I'll still need to get up to express anyway in the night

DD currently gets up about twice a night. Has a bottle. I settle her and then express for about 10 minutes. Sometimes I put he on the feeding pillow and feed her and express at the same time. She is very good and I do not leave her to cry. DH seems to do a pretty rucking good impersonation of being asleep during all this

I feel totally pissed off that we are being evicted from our bedroom. DH is 6 foot 6 so saying he can't sleep in the spare room as the bed has a footboard and he can't fit in - which is kind of true.

He has moved DD up to the spare room already - which has really pissed me off. It's like a Mexican stand off as I do not want to leave our bedroom and I feel like putting the monitor next to DH's head and getting him to do the night feeds - not that he would wake up. Plus DD is then in another room from us

I'm just so pissed off. Hearing how DH is soooooo tired. Yes. So am I. We also have a 14 month old DS and I feel that I am constantly "on duty" while at least DH gets to go to work. OK - he does do a lot when he gets in but I do not think it is reasonable for him to basically order me out of our bedroom whilst chuntering on about how tired he is. When we're both fucking tired. And everything to do with the DCs feels like it's ultimately my responsability. And it's like ducking ground hog day. I'd quite like to bugger off for a week and leave him to deal with everything

Honestly I wish I lived in UK so I could come and give you a break! Please try to find someone to help you, just a few hours of sleep will lend some perspective.

Also definitely GO TO SEE A LACTATION CONSULTANT. These might help in the mean time newborns.stanford.edu/Breastfeeding/ kellymom.com/?s=latch

Good luck.

Been here, done it. I'm on your side!

I too hated my husband the whole time I was sleep deprived, and he actually did get up at night sometimes. Our night time arguments were venomous.

DH not having breasts was my issue. Bastard. There was no way I was not breast feeding, I just resented him for not being able to help.

I once told my sister who'd also just had a baby how irritating I was finding him and she said oh you're just going through the what's the point of men? Phase. This was true. it's largely but not totally passed now.

Going back to work would be shit and would break your heart, if you can't even think about putting your older one in day care at his age.

Stay in your own bed. If he has a problem, let him sort himself out!

Laqueen - you're in. I'll be in touch once I finish my mat leave.
Gobbo - do you want me & Laqueen to come & sort hubby? Undercover boss style? I think between us we can cause a fair bit of mischief.
Ps. I bet he's having a lunch time nap in his dental chair. It's what I did for 9 months.

Calm down. I completely sympathize with you. We have 4 month old twins, from Day 1 we each took one and did our night feeds, etc. I have always taken one, so he's used to me. He messes around with DH and it takes him ages to feed, so I've stuck to feeding him at night. DH took the other one and has always fed him at night. Now, the twin that DH feeds at night is sleeping through from 7pm-7am. Mine is not. (last night he woke at 12:30pm, 2:30am, 4am and up for the day at 6am). I have cleaned the spare room out, put a pretty duvet on it, loads of lovely pillows, and when mine starts mooching or making noise or wants a feed, I hop out of our bed and go into the spare room. Could you do that? Go to bed with your DH every night and have a cuddle and when your DD wakes for her feed, bring her into the spare room and sleep the rest of the night there? It might make you feel more like a team. Lack of sleep is a total bastard, but you have to remember you're not on different sides here. We've had some ridiculous arguments - usually about who got more sleep at the start or who was up more or who forgot to turn the heating on or who got "bonus" sleep on the couch or ate the biscuits during the night - stupid stuff that doesn't rationally make sense to argue about. This is not going to be forever - and I'm sure if your DH was able to fit in the spare bed then he'd have moved out instead of asking you. Don't kill each other over it, it's not worth it. And let him do the express feeds like he offered to, at least you'd have two nights' sleep a week to look forward. I haven't had a full 7-8 hours since last August :(

Oh Gobbo I completely sympathise. My DP told me I was doing the third of a job of a childminder (2 DC) & badly at that, so why did I claim to be tired when he was a doctor & important?! Grrr. Hard times.

I do find it quite amusing when people insist it must be easier being a SAHM than WOTH because they find it so. Always makes me wonder if they see their children as unique individuals at all - or maybe they think they have easy kids because they're just such superb parents?

DS is a really easy kid. So yes, it must be down to my flawless parenting. Nothing to do with him being so like his father in terms of chilled sweetness it's almost uncanny, natch. I fear DD may resemble her mother more. In which case, we're in real trouble.

Hmmm... I'm a bit at the dentist worship too.

Leaving him aside, it is completely verboten to co sleep these days? I'm out of touch- mine are teens. However, i did have three under four, and used to find that if I took the baby to bed with me he would sleep whenever. So I took him when the toddler had an afternoon nap.

By the time I had three of them, I also went to bed at 8.30.

Sounds mad, I know, but it got me through the first six months in one piece, and actually my friends used to marvel at my positive attitude.

I'm no Madonna, I assure youand as much of a feminist as the next woman. But the extra sleep is REALLY worth the sacrifice. Friends of mine who took a different " why should I have to go to bed early approach" fared far more badly, including a fair bit of PND.

I'm with you Green, I coslept with dd2,(she's 20 now) I breast fed so it was just so much easier.
The reaction I got from some people was quite shocking. They're first question was "what does your H think of that, mine would never put up with it"
I wanted to reply that as he was a kind, considerate human being he didn't care where dd slept as long as we were ALL getting as much sleep as possible.

Hi Gobbolino, how are things looking today?

Don't go to work just to get your husband's respect. If you wanted to stay off with the baby for a while, then do, and if he doesn't respect you, that is because he is an arse. Let me talk to him. Seriously. What's his phone number?

I had angry exhaustion-fuelled discussions with dp where he said things like "well go back to work then, if you hate it so much" and was completely unable to articulate that I didn't want to go back to work while I had a tiny baby, I just didn't see why me not being out of the house 12 hours a day meant that I had to sit at the bottom of a chute of domestic shit sliding down on top of my head.

I would have been really sad if I had said "ALRIGHT THEN I WILL" and flounced off in some ill-fitting, milk stained clothes to do a job I had temporarily no interest in at all, just to get away from him and his SNORING and COMPLETE INABILITY TO WIPE KITCHEN SURFACES. and I would still have been shattered anyway.

(I actually loved going back to work, in a way, when I did, but I was ready)

The problem here is not that you have a tiny baby who feeds around the clock or an active toddler. These are things that are making you tired, yes, but they are not the problem. The problem is that your husband is acting like a high-handed patronising arse, appointing himself to some sort of de facto seniority while actually understanding less and contributing less than you (who effectively is working 24 hour days doing a job he has no conception of knowing how to begin, at the same time as having paid for your house, so there is no part of this you are not better at than him). This is making you angry and resentful which is, in turn, making you feel guilty, and then more angry that you have to bear the guilt on top of everything else that is exhausting you. Print this paragraph out and show him. Tell him to get back in his box and stop acting like King BogBrain or something because he has NO superiority, NO seniority, and his acting as if he does in this situation while you are temporarily in a home-based role is an example of prime, mindless, neanderthal, brainless, grunting, thuggish, atavistic male entitlement. Tell him this and then put him on the phone to me if you have a problem.

Hello everyone.

Well, I am feeling slightly better. Although I haven't admitted that to DH yet

He asked me nicely if we could just try the separate bedrooms thing for a bit.

So, he dealt with all child related/sterilising things/tidying of kitchen etc last night when he came in til 12. Which to be fair, he does tend to do anyway. But i have just kept DD with me before as it seemed quicker to feed her and ive stayed up to talk to him. Hiwever, he insisted i went to bed last night. Then he gave me DD at 12. She slept til 3 and then had a quick feed and then slept again til 7. So I've actually had quite a lot of sleep as I think I went to sleep about 10pm.

I'm to admit that apparently DS woke up last night as he had sore teeth. But DH dealt with that. I didn't hear as he still had his monitor

So, we will try this weekend with DH doing the nights. I also just expressed once last night (at 3. Didn't bother at 12) and felt ok so hopefully can wind down the night expressing.

I do feel a lot better now I've had more sleep last night. GP friend asked me to keep a note of moods and amount of sleep I'm having as apparently if moods are better with more sleep then that means that it may be indicative of sleep deprivation causing the murderous thoughts rather than PND. But not definitive. So will do that.

I have also temporarily deferred my return to work. . And the divorce.

DH has accepted that his somewhat....logical [ahem].....approach may have caused some offence.

So, I do feel slightly better. And I've had a lot of great advice on this thread.
So thank you, all

I'm going to post this in the breastfeeding topic but a quick question for those who gave me the breast feeding advice

DD can feed fine from the bottle in that she sucks ok

I dug out some nipple shields I had from DS. Then hand expressed so the milk was right there for her. She latched in quite happily clearly thinking it was a bottle and sucked away. But got absolutely no milk. Now I have plenty of milk. I know from the expressing. So what on earth coukd this be indicative of? Latch? Weak sucking? Any ideas in how to fix it? Am going to call a lactation consultant today.

She's out on 2lbs in 2 weeks since she was last weighed on day 12. She'd lost a pound and 2oz on day 5 but had regained that all by day 12 - we started bottle feeding on day 5. So she's defi Italy feeding well from the bottle and taking big feeds so it's not that she has no sucking reflex.

I'm totally

So glad things are better, sleep and husband wise, this morning. I haven't got any advice re the feeding, but hope that gets sorted soon too.

Can you expend on what you mean by "she got no milk"? (Ie how do you know?)
Glad things a bit more positive yesterday.

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Hi brand - there was a tiny bit of milk in the nipple shields from what I had hand expressed. So,she had that.

Then, after 5 minutes, I thought that I didn't feel the sort of tingling feeling I did when expressing. So took of the shields - no drops of milk in them at all. Tried her on again and waited 10 mins. Not a single speck of milk on the inside or outside of the shields. No milk round her mouth no milk in her mouth. So I'm quite convinced that she git nothi g. This was like the horrid first 5 days when she was hysterical with hunger. Everyone told me her latch was great, just trust my body, blah blah and then on day 5, she had lost 1 pound 2 oz and all of the self same people said, oooooh she's not getting enough milk! I do t thi k she got hardly any as she did no poos and her nappies were hardly wet.

Now she is being bottle fed, it's poonamis and her nappies are soaking. Plus she's put on tons of weight.

I think it sounds like posterior tongue tie, Gobbolino. I'm not an expert though so do go and see someone with more experience on these matters.

Aaaah - really? Hmmm....DS had this but couldn't get his tongue out of his mouth. DD can so I was told she was fine Grrrrrr

No, some tongue ties do present like that but quite often it's very difficult to spot with the untrained eye. The fact that your DS had a tongue tie makes it more likely that your DD does too as it often runs in families.

There's a lot of good information on here - milk matters

Can you see a lactation consultant? I think that as it doesn't present in a textbook manner you may have difficulty getting a straightforward diagnosis from a GP or other non-specialist.

Ah I see, tingly feeling doesn't always happen (I haven't had it for months, did like it though!) but with shields you'd expect to see a wee bit. I know loads of people on mumsnet have experience with tongue ties, it's certainly not as easy as "can they stick tongue out" or even I could diagnose them! I think this is worth pursuing, doesn't help with the dh situation but feeding from source must be easier than all the expressing, surely - if that could be fixed I think you'd both be very pleased.

Gobbo DD could stick her tongue out even though it was tied. What she couldn't do was lift it up.

Hi OP. This is off topic. But both my kids could latch but not get milk. A midwife recommended trying nipple shields as they were big enough for them to get a good grip and a bit like a bottle teat.

I used nipple shields for a few weeks with both babies so I could breastfeed. Then I weaned them off. Would this be a possibility with your DO?

I appreciate people really want to help, but OP said quite early on that Oh and I've seen every single lactation consultant and midwife going. They all declare that DD has a perfect latch and everyone is stumped about why she can't transfer milk efficiently. So so many people suggesting a lactation consultant isn't really helpful. As someone whose child had serious oral problems which impeded feeding but required specialist knowledge to identify, a bog standard lactation consultant, however impressively board certified, is a chocolate teapot. And an expensive one to boot.