To not let DH feed DS again?

[BumWad]

Surely IANBU.

I look at after 16 week old (8 weeks corrected) DS all week, DH works and sleeps in the spare room. We agreed that he would look after DS at the weekend nights allowing me to get some sleep.

DS has had a bit of a cold (his first one!) so his feeding has been a bit off however he has picked up. I have been making sure that I feed him atleast every 4 hours as he has been sleeping longer at night however not been feeding his required 'amount'.

At 22:00 last night I left DH with instructions to wake DS and feed him at approx 1am and 5am. I am currently pumping as DS refused breast at 12 weeks. I had left 2 bottles of ebm in the fridge.

So whilst I was pumping at 3:00 I heard DH get up to feed baby. I asked DH what had gone on, DH had great pleasure in informing me DS had slept woohoo!

DH then brought the milk up for DS, I asked how much and he said oh 90ml. I asked why he wasnt given him any more as there were 2 bottles in the fridge, and he usually has around 115ml per feed, DH then decided to tell me he had spilt a whole bottle by accident. As you can imagine I am still furious at that. The thing is if I hadn't asked how much he was feeding DS he would have just given him a lesser amount and left it at that!!!

Luckily as I was expressing I added a bit more milk to DS bottle.

However before then I heard DH shake the bottle of ebm to mix the infant gaviscon powder in. I have told many a time to swirl the milk not 'shake' it as some of the goodness is lost but he just does not listen.

Plus as I was going downstairs to put the expressed milk in the fridge I found a nice ring of fat on the previously expressed breastmilk bottle which DH had not warmed properly. It's the most important part of the feed ffs I have told DH so many times to make sure he warns the ebm properly so that the ring of fat is mixed in.

Sorry if it doesn't make much sense, the one night where i am able to catch up on some sleep and I'm sat in bed stressing about DS. I worry about the poor little thing probably more than I would if wasn't premature on top of having to pump regularly. I just can't seem to trust DH to feed him properly.

I feel like crying.

my 3 month premature baby (dc3) didn't get to leave hospital until she started demand feeding as opposed to being fed at specific intervals. I never once woke her to feed nor was I advised to do so.
I get you're stressed OP (Dcs 1 and 2 were 9 week prems as well and im pretty sure I never once woke a sleeping baby to feed them) but I do think you're making things way more complicated than they need to be.
Take care though. It does get better/easier. And one day the fact that they were teeny tiny prems is just a distant memory says Violet weeping as 6ft dc1 leaves for uni this week, remembering when he was a 3 and a half pound newborn

Dads aren't an inferior breed you know.
Yabu, and I think you must know that by now!
Try and share the sleep when you can. Everything will get better.

Also, be kind to yourself. You are doing an AMAZING job when you are under stress from lack of sleep, having to express full time (which I bloody HATED, it was so stressfull), plus dealing with a preemie. If the baby is sleeping, just take it, don't wake him up hon, if he's hungry he will wake up of his own accord....keep going, you are doing so well, just try to let loose just a little bit, though that's easy to say I know xx

You want to make sure everything is just right, and that's understandable - but, you know, some people are here might have been given condensed milk and water, or rusks in a bottle, or god know what else at 16 or even 8 weeks and even though it wasn't a great idea, they're alive and posting on Mumsnet. So shaking one bottle is fine, really, in the great scheme of things.

Oh and it is fair to say a knocked over bottle of expressed milk would have been like a death in the family to me.

I still remember the time I spilt my breast milk.

Oh OP ...you sound completely strung out. At any other time, spilled milk would mean nix, zilch, nada. But the graft you're putting into feeding your baby has turned your milk into gold bullion, hence your overreaction. Yes my love, you're overreacting. You are NOT being unreasonable but you are in the zone! And holy cr*p it's hard if your baby is not a preemie and feeds perfectly well. So I can feel how draining it all is...and it is for all mums. Hugs and . All I can say is, lighten up on hubby...try not to turn into a snarling, exhausted, post-partum nag (don't worry, I'm describing who I become!! We have three kids and oh my goodness, it's taken a year for me to start being nice to my poor husband since our last- now almost 16 months-was born!!).

Cut DH some slack.
Cut yourself some slack.
Get sleep whenever, wherever you can.
Let the man feed his kid .
Let go...let sh*t go.
As long as no one is in harm's way, you need to allow for things to not go absolutely according to plan- babies bring chaos and order just flies out the window.
Trust!

Why are you up at 3am expressing when it was your night to catch up on sleep ?
Is that something that has to be done?

I think you need to cut your dh some slack and let your baby sleep longer if he is happy to do so.

My youngest is nearly 9 years old and I have EBM in the freezer. I can't bring myself to throw it away as it was so so precious!

OP I don't think you are being U. You are putting your utmost into everything, endlessly, your DH does one piddly shift and whatever he can get wrong he does! Wouldn't it be convenient for him if you didn't ask him again?? I'd be fucking fuming quite honestly.

The baby got fed, your DH did fine. If he's 4 months old now you need to stop worrying a bit and get some sleep.

If you are fully expressing you do need to wake up in the night to ensure adequate supply.

I see it that the OP is busting a gut to make sure her premature baby is getting everything he needs and her DH can't be bothered to follow instructions for one night. No wonder she is annoyed.

You make it would as if you are 'senior' parent and DH is the minion who takes instructions from you! Just leave him to it- he is equal.
I think that it is more important to the baby that he has a mother who gets adequate sleep and relaxes.

Accidents involving spilt breastmilk aren't always because someone doesn't care enough about the effort and care involved in breastfeeding to be careful not to spill by accident. Sometimes they happen because you're tired.

There were a few occasions where I accidentally spilt a bottle of expressed breastmilk, and as I was the one who'd spent ages expressing the stuff, I appreciated more than anyone else in our house the effort and care that had been involved in getting it into the bottle. Spilling it doesn't necessarily mean you don't care enough to be careful.

G1vemestrength your response makes you sound quite controlling tbh. The OPs husband needs to build his confidence and that usually comes from having a certain amount of agency over how things are done.

So he split some bm. Shit happens. The other stuff, I wouldn't classify as getting it wrong. He took decisions differently to how the OP would have done it. He's not a machine there to obey orders.

Humphrey, the DH does not exist to 'follow orders'. They are a team.

Whilst I understand the place you are in you do need to let go a bit. It's going to end up smashing your blokes confidence and then in a few months you'll be complaining he never does much with his child.

Is your baby losing weight? I don't understand the waking to feed.

Some posters in here are being very judgmental on the DH.

Are you ok OP? It feels like you're being completely unreasonable but having a baby does funny things to your hormones and I can remember how tough it all was myself. Have you been told to wake the baby up to feed? Is there an issue with weight gain? If not, I'd have thought that letting him sleep and not counting his feeds so obsessively is the way to go.????On a side note - have you spoken to anyone else IRL about this?

Most of us have been there & know how hard it is but I think you should 'let' dh take more care. He won't know instinctively what to do & will be feeling pretty helpless I imagine.

I know you won't have the energy to be really encouraging to him atm but it's important for you to try to get some more sleep & baby will waken if he's hungry. You are doing more than double the work of ebf or ff mum. I've been there & it's beyond exhausting. Do you have a hospital grade double pump? That could help if not-NCT rent them out.

I'd prescribe a trashy magazine & some choc after some more sleep

I understand a lot of what you're saying OP (although I never expressed or breastfed as our preemie had prescription mega calorie formula to help weight gain) and would still have been feeding on schedule when DS was same corrected age. We were discharged with him on a 3 hourly feeding schedule and I'm afraid that if we'd left him like some suggested he would have been in trouble as he was so small he just slept. The difference was DH and I were both obsessive about him having the right number of ml per feed as we'd had weeks of celebrating every ml not down a tube!

I think if you can speak to your DH calmly and explain why it upsets you it could help him realise the importance, but ultimately he's helping and your baby will be fine despite a slightly smaller feed. Hope you're feeling better now, you deserve a medal for the expressing, I don't think I'd have been able to cope getting up even when my turn to sleep!

OP, I get the place you are coming from. My first wasn't prem, but he was earlier than I think he was ready for (38 weeks exactly, and I subsequently had a 41 weeker and the difference was very apparent - now a day before my due date with no. 3 and no sign of anything happening, which strengthens my theory) and very skinny at the beginning and we struggled to establish bf in the early weeks. I was trying to get him to take my breast, expressing, topping up with formula. Nightmare. And yes, the loss of some of that hard-won EBM would have pushed me over the edge. Add that to the anxiety you are likely to have gone through with your ds' prematurity and, no doubt, the all-encompassing significance of weight in that context and I can understand how distraught this must have made you feel.

However, YABU and counter-productive in the long term, in relation to your dh's relationship with his son. Obviously I don't know whether you have been specifically instructed to carry on waking him at these intervals, but I wouldn't have at 8 weeks - they come to regulate their own hunger and wake when they need to. And, while I know it must seem like every feed counts for so much and needs to be just right, the feed your dh gave him sounds fine. I'm slightly concerned about the use of language such as 'let' and 'trust' in relation to your dh and ds. While the main burden of care falls upon you and you are obviously more au fait with what is done when, your dh is your ds' parent as much as you are and it would be a terrible idea long-term to start thinking of and treating him (put a little drastically) as a junior assistant now. It could cement patterns of perceived competence and incompetence which leave you stuck in particular roles.

This too will pass. Apologise to your dh if you flew off the handle at him (it's unclear from your post) and be proud of what you have done so far for your lovely baby.

That is all.

Like most people say. Your are exhausted and worried and stressed, and no wonder with such a prem baby. Don't worry about what DH does, he loves his baby as much as you do.

Take every opportunity to rest and realise you are doing a great job.

I'm expressing milk for my 12 wk old ds. Not exclusively though, but mix feeding with formula. I too would be devastated if DH spilled a bottle of ebm. I know it's only milk and accidents happen, but it represents a lot of hard work and is like liquid gold!

I totally understand where you're coming from, but you have to let it go - it's ONE feed. Explain the reasons again why things are the way they are to DH and then trust him. He wants to do it right and these things seem huge deals on v little sleep.

YABU and need to try to step back a bit and let your DH do the feeding on these nights. You just sound completely exhausted and strung out by trying to be in control of it all.

I remember that need to be in control and not believing my DH could do as good job as me at looking after our DS as a tiny baby. But it wasn't true. He could do a good job, just not exactly the same job as me. And if you don't stand back and let your DH try then he will never get better at it.