to ask for your opinions about a woman's role and responsibilities on mat leave

[Aracha]

And how much does your DH help? Does he have specific jobs or do you feel baby/household is your job while on mat-leave?

Does he help during the night?
What about weekends?
How do you allocate personal time?

(I'm not a researcher... I'm planning to show this thread to DH as we'd like to know what other parents do)

Background:
DS is 6months, wakes every 1-2hours at night, sometimes has a 3-hour stretch. Can be difficult to settle after feeds. EBF at night but will take bottle/sippy-cup. Goes down at 6pm up for day by 6am, often awake for few hours in night.

DH has a high-stress job (with 1-hour commute each way) leaves house around 9am back around 7pm.

Maternity leave is primarily to allow the mother to recover from the birth and for whichever parent is on leave to look after the baby. You don't get extra for housework. Cleaning up leave isn't a thing. DH participating in non-employment related tasks isn't 'helping'. It's him looking after his child and home.

The way we did it was that in the early days, nothing much can be done other than holding the baby. I had difficult births both times, so DH had to do more than a lot of men would while I recovered, but fortunately babies whose night waking settled down in the first couple of months. This did include a period with one baby where he was both working full time and doing the night wakings, as I was still unwell. Lasted about a fortnight. I imagine that must have been very tough. FF helped here, I can see how EBF would be different but they can still do things like settle and change baby.

Once baby will be put down, you're a bit better after birth etc, reverts to normal day when one of us is working and the other at home with DC. So the parent at home aims to do basic housework: meal prep obviously, washing pots, cleaning spills, washing and drying clothes. Evening meal on by the time the other gets home. Of course there are days where this isn't possible, and we certainly wouldn't aim at anything more ambitious than that. Vacuuming and the like waits until weekend. However, this is reliant on the baby being able to be put down, go for a few hours between feeds etc.

In your scenario OP, you must be absolutely knackered and should just be doing whatever you can do to get through the day. If you're the one getting up at 6am during the week, DH should also be giving you both weekend lie ins because of the level of sustained sleep interruption you're incurring. His hours are fairly civilised, his commute non-drastic and his starting time conducive to a lie in.

Looking after the baby during working hours. That's it!

Everything else, as equal as it was before and I now that I am back at work.

Housework, shopping, cooking - joint responsibility.
Night wakings - bf so did all the feeds, when DD was stopped feeding in the night (9 months) we took shifts or alternate nights.

In reality, this worked out differently sometimes, but that was our general approach.

But does it really take all day to look after a baby? Perhaps my babies were easier than most but I found myself at a loose end for a lot of the time and so I may as well stick the washing on or push the pram round the supermarket rather than sit with my feet up? Admittedly it got harder as they got more mobile/demanding which is when I went back to work

Beware of taking on everything ie all night wakings, bedtime, cleaning cooking. I did that and 2 children down the line ft at home, me working 15hrs a week without childcare I was still expected to do everything. Now they are at school I work 30 hrs a week from home without childcare and am still expected to do everything including bedtimes, washing up, meals etc because I'm at home (even though I'm working).
After 5 yrs of feeling like a slave and getting nowhere with the negotiations on household split, I make sure I have one day a week off to myself to relax (I sure as hell have earned it) and he pays for a weekly cleaner and bought a dishwasher. I stopped doing his washing 3 years ago as I simply didn't have anything in me left to give. Now I feel it's more equal.

Depends entirely on the baby ceeveebee. For most of them, the answer is sometimes yes and sometimes no. Hopefully you get a period of relative calm between the end of the newborn unputdownable weeks and the onset of mobility.

However, in OPs scenario, it isn't just about whether it takes all day to look after a baby, because her sleep is so disrupted. When you're waking up every 2 hours and presumably have been for the full 6 months, the question is also how much energy you have and how much you can reasonably and realistically be expected to achieve because of this. You can be at a loose end a lot and not be able to do anything more than drag yourself on and off the sofa to tend to baby.

I am currently a SAHM with an ebf 3 mo and 18 mo.
I do everything for 3mo. And for both of them when OH is at work (7am to 6:30pm, I think 9-7 are very good hours). Cooking is mixed, usually I've been shopping and prepped food for cooking and he cooks as its at the same time as I'm usually bfeeding. Sometimes I do it all, very occasionally I text him and say I've done nothing and he picks up something pre-made/easy to cook. One day a week he works from home and cooks that day.
Once in on weekdays he either helps with kids or cooks, then we both do bath/bedtime (he puts 18 mo to bed) and then he goes downstairs and cleans up from tea, 3mo is feeding whilst he cleans up so we usually get to bed about the same time.
At weekends I do everything with 3mo and we split other things/do them together. He usually cooks on a Saturday.
Cleaning meh. If I get a time when they are both asleep I clean the bathroom or tidy up. I also do the washing. He often does the kitchen/dining room floors at a weekend (they get a sweep or wipe to remove any spilt food during the week and that's it). Dusting is for people with more time .

But like everyone else has said its whatever works for you. I'm incredibly lucky to have an easy 3mo. Sleeps through/usually naps well. 18mo was not an easy baby so I know how different it can be! Your night time routine for a 6mo sounds really tough and I'd have to do something about it as I'd be a walking zombie. I've almost never napped during the day so I disagree with the posters that say OH needs the sleep for work so they shouldnt do night feeds - I mean weekdays fine but then weekends whoever is doing the childcare needs to get a chance to catch up. I was so tired when 18mo was a baby I felt sick/dizzy and def wasn't safe to drive. Given how much your LO is waking during the night I'd say you have to split the getting up - maybe you do the first half of the evening and he does say from 4am onwards, allowing you a lie in before he goes to work. But also I'd try to get your LO waking less at night - sleep training seems to be an evil word on mumsnet but for us it was the way we got things back on track when 18mo was waking all the time at night.

I think this 'maternity leave is for looking after the baby only' stance, is a mumsnet only thing.
I don't personally know a single couple, not one, where the person at home didn't also do all the housework too (mon - fri).
Not because of any sexism or 'stuck in the 1950s', but simply because they've got far more time than the woh parent.
Obvo if you have a baby who for whatever reason doesn't allow you am hour or so spare in the day to get things done (and again, I don't personally know of any babies like this) then it would be different.

Alternatively, maybe you and the people you know are unrepresentative.

Some babies are an absolute dream, and let you have a couple of chunks of time a day to get things done.
Some don't.

I've seen the difference myself - on the very, very rare occasions ds has two solid naps, I feel like I've got all the time in the world. It's a joy to be on mat leave and the house is in order. If he was like that all the time, and slept well at night, I'd be overjoyed. I'd probably be thinking what you're thinking - gosh this is easy!

But he doesn't. So the house is at 'staving off chaos' level and I do what I can to survive on tiny tiny nips of sleep. Luckily I have a decent partner (who has just put a chicken in to roast while I wrestle ds into bed.)

You cannot have set allocations that apply to all parents.

Basically the mum on maternity leave's first responsibility is everything to do with the baby. After that, she needs to ensure she is actually ok - too tired as up all night etc/pnd/anything else. if she is ok and the baby will be happy on a playmat or something then she might be able to get house hold stuff done. It varies so much. Some people are so exhausted by constant waking/demands that it is unreasonable to expect them to manage anything household wise. On the other end of the spectrum, you have people who get a full nights sleep, have a baby that isn't demanding and will play or watch what's going on - in that case, reasonable to expect a big chunk of household stuff doing.

You can tell if the allocation is wrong when one parent is sitting watching TV or doing something for themselves (like a hobby) whilst the other is rushed off their feet, exhausted and miserable. You have to share the load as fairly as you can. Sometimes the load is too big and both will be permanently exhausted. It isn't a competition and you have to work together rather than decide who is most tired, stressed, etc.

My experience is the same as arethereanyleftatall.

I could be completely wrong in this but I think that class may be a slight factor in this. As a working class woman I am very much of the "scrub your front step " mentality. When we were both working DH and I would be up at 5am to clean the house. I love cleaning my windows etc. I find that when I visit homes where the family have a similar background you see a similar attitude to housework. My more middle class friends either have a cleaner of do what I call "boho shabby mess"

But yes it does also depend on the baby and how old they are. As I said before for the first few weeks DH does everything

DD is 11 weeks and incredibly demanding. Some days I do no housework at all. Overnight she wakes every 1-2 hours. In the day if after an hour of effort I've finally got her to sleep in my arms I'm not going to risk putting her down. 90% of the time this results in her instantly waking up followed by two hours of overtired screaming. DH understands it's not because I'm lazy and we share housework when he's home. I hope to be able to do more as DD gets a bit easier to deal with, which she is, today she had a nap in her Sleepyhead and I managed to tidy the kitchen.

I'm from a working class background and that wouldn't be my experience at all. Actually my class background was probably the main factor in having oodles of help particularly in the early days after birth. Had I felt the need for my front step to be scrubbed, someone would've done it for me!

We had when we are desperate but having somebody do my cleaning makes me feel very uncomfortable .

Sorry - we have had help

I suspect feeling uncomfortable at family help when incapacitated is unusual amongst working class people. Everyone I know where I live had it, be it housework, cooking or taking the other kids.

Mine was-
I did all housework etc whilw on mat leave, all night feeds, baths, changes etc.
Still do all housework, cleaning, empty bins etc.

People like me clean other people's houses, we don't have cleaners. For the short time I have had help I have hated it and probably have ended up trying to do more out of embarrassment

Who said anything about having a cleaner? The help is from family, something which is so common as to be the norm in the working class community I live in. Feeling uncomfortable about this is completely alien to me and mine, and I'd venture to suggest that's an unusual attitude amongst those from working class backgruonds generally.

I did most of the stuff while on maternity leave but DH loved helping especially as he was totally in love with his little princess (still is). Still, he found it problematic to accept he needed to pitch in more after I returned to full-time employment.

I did all night feeds. And did most of the washing/ house cleaning. And made dinner on weeknights. Weekends were family time and we would normally do a big food shop then and I would top up in the week.

I think it is impossible to say there is a rule for this sort of thing?

I know some days I cleaned the house from top to bottom, baked a cake and had dinner on the table for DH getting home (ok, at least 2 or 3 days...). Other days I was glued to the sofa cluster feeding, pureeing endless fruit and veg, or out the house the whole day visiting family/doing fun classes etc, and didn't manage to do a single item of housework.

DH (out the house 6am-6pm) would just walk through the door, look to see what needed to be done, and then do it.

However... I did all night wakings even at weekends as bf, which was every 2-3 hours for a long time.

When it came to personal time, it was hard to adjust to the lack of it, and the fact that DH still had some. He was keen to let me get out to exercise etc regularly, and it did happen for a few months, but then we just couldn't get DC to take a bottle any more. So I took every opportunity to do fun stuff with friends during the day, often at the expense of housework time, and felt quite justified in that.

HarlotBronte I misunderstood, if my family ( beyond those I live with) were able to help that would be lovely. However they mostly can't keep on top of their own lives - never mind help me - I visit them to clean their houses! I would ski have to clean before somebody came to my house to clean - I totally accept that I have issues!

I do think that ensuring you both have leisure time is important and if possible equal amounts. The difficulty comes in defining that is leisure time - particularly for a SAHP or somebody on maternity / paternity leave. This morning I have taken the children to an exercise type class and had coffee afterwards. I see that as leisure time, others wouldn't. Cleaning isn't leisure but hanging out with the children mostly feels like leisure to me in which case most of my time is leisure time and therefore DH will always have it tougher than me

DH would do 11oclock feeds as he prefers to stay up later then i would do night feeds. In the evening he would see to baby whilst i prepared tea helped sort other children to bed. Weekends each would take turns getting up with the kids allowing the other to nap. Housework and cooking was my domain.