Getting up with baby at night

[owltrousers]

We have a 5 month old baby, DH and I share night waking duties - he does one night, I do the next. On average getting up 2-3 times a night.

All my family and his are AMAZED that he still gets up even though he works 9-5 and I get to stay at home on maternity leave. They act like I should be extremely grateful.

Personally I think this way is fair and right, equal parents - equal responsibilities and its not like my day is a doddle, its 12 hours of childcare with very little time to myself.

AIBU?

I’m always slightly in awe of people who actually manage to nap during the day. Even at my most tired with a newborn, I couldn’t switch off to sleep myself.

There is no correct answer to this. Whatever way you split the nights, it needs to suit you as a couple and no one else.

It’s really not having worked and had dc and being a sahm, it’s being pretty boring day in day out if I’m honest. I can’t wait to get back into work.

Years ago when I had dd. The Moses basket then the cot were on DHs side of the bed.
So she would start to wake up, and boom i'd be awake. I would creep downstairs in the dark to make her a bottle, put the living room lamp on and stick the TV on.
10 mins later DH would pad downstairs with dd and he would go back to bed.
Me and dd would sit and watch 16 and pregnant. We did this every night. I was gutted when the series ended. Then she started sleeping through the night.

Now she is very nearly 9 and if she wakes up now, Very rarely only if she has a nightmare or is ill then it's me that gets up. We both work full time but he genuinely doesn't hear her.

I do all of the night wakings for our baby as I'm on maternity leave, DH is not and him being sleep deprived and having an accident at work is a lot more serious than me needing to have a day time nap. He does though tend to deal with our pre-schooler if he wakes in the night.

So the problem here is whether or not you consider a day at home with a newborn less tiring than a day in an office - which depends on what kind of job you do.

Sort of, but it's exacerbated by the fact that, come 6pm, my DH came home and his boss didn't call him up and demand he fed him from his body.

It isn't just 'whose day at work is harder' - as a new mum, if BF, your job is literally 24 hours a day. The baby might sleep, might not. My DD wanted feeding at least hourly during the day and every two hours during the night for a good two months. You can't compare an eight hour shift behind a desk to that level of physical commitment to a tiny, screaming child.

No wonder so many women come on here thinking they have gone crazy for feeling like their partner isn't pulling his weight. So many other women are standing ready to gaslight them!

You have a 5 month old that naps and gives you breaks. Depending on your partners job, it does sound like you are very lucky. Assuming you have just 1 child to manage. The demands of being out at work are very different to being at home with a baby.
Fair play though, you've got him to do it and he's happy to.

I think it's easy to forget what a huge shock to the system having a baby can be. My first had horrific colic and his first 3 months are a bit of a blur. I struggled with breastfeeding, had a nasty infection, dozens of stitches and a bad case of PND. If I managed to get dressed and leave the house once a day it counted as a good day. If my husband hadn't helped such a lot with the baby, it would have been disastrous.

By the time my 4th was born, it was all much easier of course, but looking back at my first makes me shudder. It doesn't matter how easy other people think your life is at all. It's better for everyone that you have enough help and support to feel well and happy. There is a bit of competitive suffering here, but honestly, if you are happy and your baby is well cared for then I'd just ignore it.

Also, my DH doesn't have a 9-5 where he can regularly turn up sleep deprived and spend an hour taking lunch and several tea breaks, we often joke about how easy life would be with a 9-5, paternity leave, paid holidays etc... unfortunately we own the company!

I wouldn’t worry. Looking after a baby all day is hard work. I’m on my 3rd (he’s a year old now). He never has been a contented baby at all. So I could never nap when he did.

He’s still waking a few times in the night and my dh sees to him almost every night while holding down a demanding full time job. Some nights I even go in the spare room (as baby is still in our room). He settles better for dh than me. I’m happy, my husband is happy and baby is happy.

Everyone finds their own routine of doing things to make it work for their family.

To be fair in my case I do nights with DD and let my husband sleep in another room if necessary because they often aren't that bad. I can often wake up before she comes round, turn on dim night light, pick up and feed, gentle wind and put back down to sleep without having to get out of bed.

If she was up screaming for hours in the night I would expect DH to do an hour so I could lie down with my eyes closed. I rarely get to sleep during the day as she doesn't nap well and cries when put down.

@penggwynn but she's obviously not breastfeeding as he wouldn't be able to do the 2/3 wake ups in the night? I didn't factor in breastfeeding to my reply as a breastfeeding mum I've never been able to have the luxury of a night off the wake ups, and to be honest the 2 that went on to bottles by that point it was just easier, quicker and less disruptive to do it myself as that's what they were used to, but my other halfs job at times involves lots of driving and it would worry me if he'd been up a lot when I could, if exhausted just rest at home with the baby/children.

But I've been back at work with toddlers not sleeping through - and had to suck it up (because by that point they would have an opinion about who gets them in the night & wanted me). it is totally possible to work on no sleep. It's horrific but possible.

i do think the balance should be a little more in favour of expecting blokes just to get on with it, too.

If your baby wakes at 830/1030 and 0530 it makes the most sense for one of you to go to bed very early and do the 0530 wake up and the other to stay up to do the 1030 feeding and then sleep until morning. Either stay on the same pattern or alternate.

I don’t agree with sahm having to do all night feedings but I also don’t agree with dragging working parents out of bed for spurious reasons in the middle of the night. The balance should always be to ensure both parents get as much rest as humanly possible - life is no fun when you’re sleep deprived, whether at home or in the office.

Boredandtired

Exactly. So, as she isn't BF, there is no reason a 50/50 can't be achieved. In my case I was doing far, far more than my DH, but there are those thinking this woman - who isn't BF - should be working as hard as I was. Why? She works at home all day with her 5 month old, he works all day out of the house, and they split the nights. Totally fair.

It's hard work and really unrelenting at times being at home with a baby but I didn't ask DH to get up in the night.

But it isn't the same as going to work imo. If you want to take it easy and stay in your PJ's and go back to bed when the baby is asleep, you can.

As long as the wohp does there fair share of other work of course.

If you want to take it easy and stay in your PJ's and go back to bed when the baby is asleep, you can.

No, you can't. The baby might only sleep in your arms, or in its pram.

You probably could do it I you were prepared to never leave the house yourself, ask your partner to do all the shopping, the cleaning and the washing, but then you never get a break from the baby and he never gets any time with the baby, and you're still stuck doing all the nights and never getting more than two hours sleep at a time. Recipe for PND, anyone?

It depends on his job really. Long commute to the hospital where he cuts kids open?? I reckon our surgeon's wife did all the night wakes....

Short public transport commute or short drive to work in an office doing a typical office job? Share away. I never slept whilst the baby did because the baby liked to asleep out the house!! But DH is dead and doesn't hear him so I did then anyway. Weekends I get to lie in and he gets up with him.

It's all about looking after each other - hat do you both need? He even used to do some hospital ward nights during the week if I was exhausted be cause that's what kept is functional as a family

when DH was on his 2 week paternity leave we worked in shifts at night so we both got some sleep ie one of us would sleep in spare room from 7pm-1am then we would swap over. The first few nights he basically did absolutely everything though due to C-sec which i just felt terrible about as i really wanted to be so involved but was just in a lot of pain.

once he was back at work i tried to do most of the night feeds/changes sun - thurs nights and then weekend nights he did his fair share so i could get a break. its not fair to leave it all to one person but its also not fair when the other person is working the next day. I guess it depends slightly on their job though, are they operating machinery etc and would it be dangerous to be tired.

Parenting should be 50/50 but night wakings are not the only way to shoulder some of the responsibility.

YABU thinking that your DP having lunch is the same as being able have a nap. Unfortunately not having time to drink a cup of tea when it’s hot is just part of being a parent.

to be honest, as some others gave said it isn't really anybody elses business and as long as it is working for your family then yadnbu.
for those saying that OP has more down time during the day, that is not necessarily the case. surely that depends on baby (not just how well they nap but also how full-on they are while awake) and on what kind of job the partner has.
another thing to consider is whether op is planning to go back to work. I did all the nights with mine because I was breastfeeding but when I went back to work baby was so used to me being the one to get up, she would keep calling for me if my husband went. so this meant another 6 months of me doing the lions share of the nights(while I was back at work) until we were able to split things more equally. if we had always split the nights then I imagine this could have been avoided

Unfortunately not having time to drink a cup of tea when it’s hot is just part of being a parent.

But only when you're a woman. Short breaks during the day at work for coffee and lunch are 'nothing like being able to nap', but not being able to sip from a cup is just part of being a parent.

It doesn't mean you would never leave the house. It means you have the option of taking it easy if you want to.

Some men actually enjoy caring for there children on occasion you know , my husband always did the night feed when I needed him to and enjoyed doing it as he loved looking after them and getting time alone with them .

GreatDuckCookery

But if that means 'sleeping when the baby sleeps', it's either not leaving the house (unless you can sleep in public places?) so you can sleep, or not sleeping. Isn't it? If your baby doesn't sleep at predictable times you will be constantly waiting for him/her to fall asleep so you can have a nap. If you go out the baby will probably sleep in the pram because of the movement, so their nap is done by the time you get home.

Lotttts of ppl berating me here, for having it easy with just 1 baby. WAIT TIL YOU DO THE SCHOOL RUN, HAVE 5 MORE etc.

Its likely thats all we'll have, 1. Anyway, however many there were I'd expect the same from DH.