To not give DH a lie in?

[Aliveinwanderland]

DS is 6 months old and wakes every 3 hours to be fed in the night. DH does a bottle at 9pm then I breastfeed all the other feeds.

On a week day DH is at work so takes DS downstairs for half an hour in a morning while he has his breakfast. He sometimes makes it home for bath and bed, sometimes not.

At a weekend he wants a lie in. I know he works hard but since he gets from 9pm -6am uninterrupted sleep I think he should let me have the lie ins! (By lie in I mean from 6am when DS wakes to around 8/9am).

AIBU to claim all the weekend lie ins myself?

Sorry its got to be one day each weekend! You are both just as entitled to the extra time in bed. I had intentions to let DP do a few feeds at night much in the way you do but DD10mths never took to a bottle at all so I have done every single night feed and at one point she was up every 1.30hrs. Which was practically torture! We are still feeding at night but the routine seems to be a feed before bed and then up once sometime between 3-4am. Definitely don't get into playing the "who is more tired game" it's not helpful. DP will sometimes take DD to the park for a few house in the afternoon at the weekend so I can have a nap which is fantastic becuase there is no chance of her waking me up if she cries!

I am shocked by the persistence with which people still seem to imply that working for money is much harder than working at home with babies/children all day. They are both work. OP is working full time too. In fact, she is working 24 hours a day.

Take the lie ins OP. I have a three-month-old baby and two DDs aged 3 and 5. I am on maternity leave and am approximately five million times more knackered than I was when I was at work. I have a stressful job but I kip on the train on the way there, regularly have hot cups of tea, and get to go to the toilet alone when I am at work. I also have some form of regularity to my day when I am at work.

People forget just how physically demanding it is parenting a tiny baby. And I'm honestly having the time of my life on leave with these three. But being in charge of a baby all day when you are too exhausted to move is not good for anybody.

Also it's not the 'who is more tired game' when one person is doing all the night feeds! That person actually is more tired.

Ds2 was waking every 20 mins - 3 hrs till he was 18mo. Despite being a right podger eating very well from 6mo. He still wakes for 1-2 hours most nights at almost 3.

Dd is ebf and has needed to feed every 2 hrs from 2 months old (before then it was pretty much constant). I was hoping it would get longer stretches in between but sadly not. I start her on solids next week, but I'm not holding out much hope.

DH and I agreed I would keep baby (and sometimes dd1) until 7 or 6 if a bad night then he would have them until 8.30 when he went to work and at weekends I could lie in unless he was feeling particularly rough.

I think you have to be flexible. It doesn't matter how many of us agree or disagree with you, the only important thing is to keep things sweet btwn you and your DH, and that means forming a solution that is acceptable to BOTH of you. Note I said 'acceptable' not 'ideal'.

Fwiw - initially DH agreed to split nights with me. As it happened I coped well with the sleep dep this time around and he just couldn't handle it at all so I just didn't ask him to do any more nights. It was totally not what I had planned and if someone else suggested it to me I would have said it's unfair - but it was our unique situation and our tailored solution.

OP - stop asking MN and go talk to your DP to find your own tailored solution.

Agree ineed. I used to run events when I worked. This often meant breakfast receptions where I had to leave the house at 5am and evening parties where I didn't get home till 1am. Nothing prepared me for the exhaustion of parenting a baby, broken sleep and breastfeeding.

I'm with you OP. Whilst baby is waking so frequently and DH gets to potentially sleep 8 hours it's fair to give you extra opportunities to sleep. Once DC is sleeping for longer split the lie ins.
I say this as someone who did all the night duties with a frequent waker for just over two years. DH has recently started doing night cover whilst I sleep downstairs some nights.
We did always split the lie ins regardless though I always felt it was less fair considering he didn't do any night duties and dc2 is not and never has been a good napper either. She still wakes at least twice a night. I tried to sleep when she did in the day but it was hopeless. Sleep deprivation is the worst. DH was not giving up his lie ins even temporarily.

Mystified at talcott- WHY are you both entitled to a lie in? If dh had worked so hard all day he didn't have time or opportunity for breakfast or lunch , and there was some accident meaning we had only had food for one, I'd give it to him. That's both fair and loving someone. If I had not had breakfast or lunch and dh thought we should scrupulously split the dinner meal, I'd be pretty upset and feel very unloved. If every night dh sleeps and I get short bursts of broken sleep only, then he gives me the chance at am extra hour or two. Because he's not a selfish pig.

Sleep when the baby sleeps?? Do people who say this actually have experience of doing this? My whole maternity leave I managed this once. For 15 minutes and then FIL let himself into the house and I thought we were being burgled so screamed blue murder at the "burgled".

Oooops. That went off topic. Yanbu. Being up every 3 hours is torture. You should have all the fecking lie ins

Waking up every three hours could mean different things . If bed sharing and baby is latching on for a few min while you both barely wake during the process and you don't wake up feeling tired , that's one thing . If each of the wake ups means you are resettling , getting out of bed , struggling to get back in and wake up feeling wasted , you should definitely get all the lie ins . Bfeeding my one year old here who has a mixture of both those nights . If he feeds every three hours am fine the next day - bfeeding releases a hormone that allows you to sleep deeper to make up for the broken sleep . If he is teething or ill and wakeful and difficult to resettle I definitely get the lie in AND dh would take him out for a few hours so I catch up on sleep .

And regardless of this , if the OP feels she wakes up tired because of the night feeds , she should get both lie ins.

Mammy - not when they were tiny newborns, no. I was too wired, even though I was actually exhausted. By the time mine were four months plus, I had got to know this little person a lot better so I found catching some zeds when all was quiet quite easy.
Even now I can curl up on a chair and snooze at the drop of a hat. I love a wee nap.

Hang on, all this for ONE HOUR? I thought you were arguing about an actual lie in, till like lunchtime or something. If it's only an hour, then obviously you get both. I can't see how an extra hour could possibly be necessary for him.

Why only an hour OP?

DH and I intended to split the lie ins when DC were smaller but it never really happened to be honest.

I'm a really light sleeper so I found that even if it wasn't my turn to be up, I still woke up with the kids and by the time I'd woken DH and he'd gotten up with them it just wasn't worth going back to sleep.

It started causing arguments so in the end we scrapped the lie ins altogether , both of us got up and we just used c-beebies as a babysitter for an hour or so whilst we nursed cuppas on the sofa.

Now the DC are older we've suddenly discovered that we are getting lie-ins again!

We always split the lie ins right from day 1. Also at weekends I often went bf then went and had a nap knowing that I had around 2-3 hours alone. DH and DS had nice alone time.

I think you should work on moving the bottle feed to later. You bf at 9pm, pootle off to bed, the next feed is your husband's. You'll get six hours of sleep before you have to get up for the 3am (?) feed. I know you said you're uncomfortable if you miss one, but in this case you'll just be missing a different one and will be totally 'empty' when you go to bed. Then you can split the lie ins too.

It's quite normal for a 6 month old baby to wake every few hours.

6am is not an ungodly hour to get up, particularly after a full nights sleep.

Sleep is a basic human need. OP is sleep deprived due to wakeful nights. OP needs sleep ins.

OP, I think you should get the lie ins at the weekend and then when baby sleeps through you get one each. This stage will pass soon.
In the meantime, can your DH have an afternoon nap? There must be a compromise somewhere. Hope you get it sorted.

not me. single parent and I work.

Maybe I'm really lucky, but I got all of the weekend lie-ins while mine were little and waking in the night (I have 3, all have been EBF bottle refusers, 2 were pretty dreadful sleepers as babies). I made sure that DH got undisturbed night time sleep (and for long periods slept in another room with the babies). But weekend morning early wake ups were the pay off for this (he seemed more than happy to get up with the children and never really complained). And now we don't get lie ins at all because they have so many sporting activities that they need to be ferried to....