To ask my dh to mind the baby while I make a bottle during the night?!?!

[Fuzzyduck21]

Ds is 4 months and wakes crying twice a night for a bottle. He's in a cot next to us. Whole bottle making process takes up to 5 mins if I also wee. Aibu to ask dh to try and comfort him while I make the bottle?! He seems to think so as he gets up for work at 5am. I've just taken ds downstairs to lie under a play gym while I make the bottle as dh has been making such a fuss recently but ds gets very upset and I thought it's kinder to ds to at least try and be comforted... Wonder whether your dh does the same?!

DS used to wake a minimum of three times a night - most nights it was five or six times, and some nights every 45 minutes or so. If I'd had to do all of those five nights a week because DP had to go to work, I'd have died. Literally died. No sleeping while DS slept either - he refused to nap for more than twenty minutes at a time, and those had to be lying on my chest, or in the car. Hated the sling, refused to sleep in the pram. Up by 5am every morning. I ended up with hideous PND in part from sleep deprivation, so if I'd been doing all the night feeds too, I think I would have killed myself. Fortunately, DP isn't a selfish dick like so many men seem to be, and he did every ting he could to help me, including more than half of the night feeds and early mornings.

DH used to sleep in the spare room during the week and I did DTs night feeds. I went to bed around 9 and he would stay up to feed them at around 1030, then we both did the morning one and DTs and I went back to bed. Worked for us.

Whatever you do with baby whilst making up night time bottles, don't stick him under a play gym. Night time should be completely unstimulating. Leave him to cry, keep it dark and quiet and just feed as quick as possible.

Oh and get the pre mixed stuff for nighttime if you can afford it.

Being at home all day doesn't require the same mental alertness though. And you can have a day of doing nothing but smooching around in your pyjamas. Dh did all the cooking for the first 3 months and pretty much all the housework so it also depends on how you split the rest of the jobs!

Dd was a terrible sleeper and it only really affected me when I was back at work tbh. We just took our foot off the pedal while I was on mat leave and dh helped evenings/weekends so I got a break then.

Also, dh has always been a heavy sleeper and I've always been a terrible sleeper so I always woke up when the babies started and struggled to get back to sleep so it was easier to do nights and dh let me have long lie ins as much as possible.

My baby is the most placid little man 99% of the time but when he is hungry, he is HUNGRY!!! He goes from fast asleep to screaming himself to the point of coughing in less than the time it takes for me to make him a bottle - and I have a perfect prep machine! It escalates very,very quickly in this house so understand where the OP is coming from.

My partner will either soothe him whilst I make the bottle or get up and make the bottle for me to feed him.
I don't expect him to be up all night when he's working and I do most of it but I do agree it should be shared. There seems to be some kind of thought that maternity leave just entails lounging on the sofa all day and it's not, it's can be tiring looking after a baby all day, cleaning, cooking. Work can definitely be the easier option sometimes! Babies make everyone in the house tired and no-ones tiredness is worth more than the others. So in summary, YANBU - It's nice to be nice!

Rightly or wrongly, I slept in the spare room with ds so exdp didn't get woken. He used to have ds overnight at weekends so I could get some unbroken sleep though. So that might be worth considering?

Can you not put DS in a sling while you make up the bottle?

To be fair if I wasn't working and DH had to be up for work at 5am, I would find a way to let him sleep (but expect him to help at weekends).

just use one of those formula container portion pots, and a bottle or two of preboiled water next to your bed, and get your baby used to taking his milk cold

You know what - with our first baby I did all the nights cos dh had to work, and for some reason we both thought his job (programming computers) was more important than mine (bringing up the next generation). And I didnt get to sleep in the day (non-sleeping baby) but he did (on the train, twice).
2nd child didnt sleep either and I couldn't be in 2 places at once so he had to get up too. Guess what, he survived.
Now one of our dcs has medical needs so, 13 years on, we take turns to get up in the night. The one who is less exhausted gets up. We have both learnt that you can function perfectly well after a broken nights sleep! But it's not fun, so you share it.

Being at home all day doesn't require the same mental alertness though.

I beg to differ, I can do my job with my eyes closed. Mind the baby? Not so much.

I do all the cooking though as DP hates it and is shit at it. He does most of the housework.

Of course he should help occasionally, maybe not every night depending on circumstances. He may have to do heart surgery, test fly the latest miltary stealth jet, drive a cargo of uranium to Italy the next morning.

I breastfed and my husband used to help out at night, he still managed to get to work and grow his career. As I was bf of course I did most of the nights and couldn't take weekends off but there was the odd nappy change to do. Also the odd night when they got windy and would scream for ages. I couldn't imagine doing it all myself with no respite, it would have led to resentment and divorce.

I went back to work when my first was 6 months, commuting over an hour by car each way, on a 24/7 on call rota. I had a baby who still woke at night and sometimes had to sort out work issues at 3am. No one ever showed me any concern about my tiredness levels, or my ability to safely drive to work or do my job Forget heart surgery I had the most important job, working for an ISP making sure people could get email and access the web

I can see his side as well. Is he getting up at 5am for work? That's brutal. And is he able to go back to sleep straightaway? If I was woken at 2am and then knew I had to be up at 5am, I would find it very difficult to go back to sleep.

Could you not put the baby in a sling while you prepare the bottle?

DH could do the feeds on his own on his days off as well.

I didn't expect DP to get up as I would have chance to nap through the day to catch up. I used to hold baby in one arm and make formula with another, had to boil bottled water in a pan too as we couldn't drink the tap water (lived in Middle East). It was a right faff and always ended up burning myself! Then I read that making bottles in advance was okay despite the advice on the tin and life got soooo much easier then. Warm up bottle, job done!

DP gets up in the nights and has done for a while now, his choice. We have discussed it a few times now with me insisting that it is really not an issue for me to help out.

I do all the cooking, housework etc. He works 4 on 3 off. I consider myself pretty lucky, most Fathers I know are "too tired" to help him DC in the night.

If you didn't want to give your DS cold milk, OP you could invest in a bottle warmer? It really helped us out.

Dh used to help more at the weekends and less in the week when I was on maternity and he was working and they were up in the night. That seems a fair compromise to me.

Now we are both working and we still have a 16 month old it just depends who wakes up first really.

I know how hard it can be trying to make up a bottle with a screaming child under your arm! By 4 months, I wouldn't have been just so worried about making up a bottle of water in advance and then adding the formula at the time - by that stage DS was putting things in his mouth from the floor anyway, so it didn't matter just so much! We moved all the bottle-making stuff upstairs - kettle, powder etc, which made it easier. At that point he started refusing the bottle, though, and has been ebf ever since, but still!

If he wakes up howling, presumably you and DH are both awake anyway? At that point I'd lift DS from the cot, and pop him in next to DH for cuddles while I got organised, I think. You'll only need half a minute, so DH can start to doze back off - I assume that the alternative is that you try to make the bottle with DS screaming, which is hardly going to let DH sleep anyway. That was pretty much what we did, though the other way around - DH made the bottle while I cuddled DS (DH did one bottle feed at night, and I did the rest as breastfeeds).

but babies benefit from having the full attention and interaction from the person feeding them. Eye contact and verbal interaction during feeding time is vital in providing stimulation and developing bonds. Use this time to strengthen the bond with your baby rather than being distracted and diverting your attention to MN

Sanctimonious horseshit of the highest order. Ignore!

I am certainly no downtrodden wifey, but when ours were little and DH was back at work, I did everything in the night. He had to get up and go to work the next day to a high enough standard that he could hold down the job which paid our mortgage. I had to get up and go to a.baby class, meet friends, or if it had been a particularly shit night, just chill while the baby was asleep. A bit of a no brainer to me. He even wore.earplugs and a blindfold thing so he wouldn't be disturbed!

Once I was back at work, he sometimes.got up in the night if not was a night where we were.both working the next day. Fair enough.

On the making bottles thing - I believe the WHO still says that bottles.can made.in advance, provided the water is clean, heated to 70 degrees when made and then stored at an appropriately low.temperature for no more than 24 hours. This seems like.common sense to me.

Oh and as long as you make sure you shake properly, and do it carefully heating for a few seconds in the microwave isnt a.problem either.

I think it depends on what you've agreed it's an awkward one - at 4 months DH is back at work and you are not - personally I wouldn't haven't expected DH to get up at that point but that's just us.

My baby fed every two hours or less until she was 6 months, FF. she woke up screaming for milk. No way would I have left her with DH to wake him up, I used to whisk her Into the kitchen with me and the feed her in the lounge. When he did a night shift of feeding he did the same. Why wake the other person up?

YABU.

My DH felt he needed a solid 5/6 hours to rest, so we came to the arrangement he did anything that was needed before midnight and if little one needed attention after he got up at 6am, he'd do what he could bearing in mind he was getting ready for work. I would do anything required in middle of night and if necessary take over after 6am.

If you've got no chance of resting yourself in the day, then you need help at night.

I am certainly no downtrodden wifey, but when ours were little and DH was back at work, I did everything in the night. He had to get up and go to work the next day to a high enough standard that he could hold down the job which paid our mortgage. I had to get up and go to a.baby class, meet friends, or if it had been a particularly shit night, just chill while the baby was asleep. A bit of a no brainer to me. He even wore.earplugs and a blindfold thing so he wouldn't be disturbed!

To a certain extent, none of this really matters, does it? What we do or did do has no bearing on the OP or her DH. It's not working for her as it currently is. They need to find something that does.

Ignore the Martyrs! Yadnbu. When DD wakes in the night DP of comforts while I make the bottle (perfect prep machine is a god send) then he goes back to sleep while I feed and sort out, it's 2/3 mins max and he can do it while dozing.

It's his baby too and in the long run its better to keep the room dark and quiet for night feeds, stimulating them with speaking/eye contact/light etc just makes it worse for the baby as they have to then go back to sleep from being wide awake.

What kind of arsehole can listen to his baby scream and not move a muscle because he has work the next day??

XDH treated me like a domestic appliance with a fuckhole as soon as DS came along, that's why I divorced him! So unattractive and I lost all respect for him.

For the first 6 ish months of your babies life, you will be shattered, it's not about you anymore, if you can't accept that and get the fuck on with it you are an incredibly inadequate person IMO.