To get cross every time I see a woman say her husband doesn't do any night feeds because "he works"?

[TeenTitans]

I'm in a few mum groups online and I keep seeing this and it's driving me mad. Women who's husband's never do any night feeds because they work and women who think that's perfectly okay. Erm do you not think looking after the kids all day is work? My response is always "so do you!" when I see it. My partner has always helped with the nights because they're his kids as well and it's just as much his job as mine.

I'm not complaining about couples divvying up the work as they wish but the justification. YOU ALSO WORK.

well, put it another way: if I had been the one going to work full time whilst DH was staying at home on paternity leave , I would fully have expected him to do the night shift!

Of course, I would have taken the baby on Friday nights or Saturday nights to give him 1 night a week, and would have helped at home (like y DH did), but the night shift belongs to the stay-at-home parent in my book.

It just happen that I am the one who gave birth and needed the rest at home, I am the one who breast fed, and I am the one who didn't want to go back to work,, so the woman in my household did the night shift. We could have chosen otherwise.

@teentitans

Obviously, there are times where you need to be on form but on an average day you just need to get through a day at work. I should say I am a director in an environmental consultancy. I take my job very seriously and am very ambitious. I manage a team and do bids for the company. I could easily do a days work on four hours sleep. No problem. I loved leave but it was bloody exhausting. I felt like I was on holiday when I went back to work. For the first few months my son got every cold, infection, bug going when he started nursery. He was up constantly at night. However, give me enough coffee and I’m fine. Obviously, I have an office job and easy commute and I recognise that not every one is the same. Plus many people don’t have the luxury of a partner. However, By doing it all We are basically saying that men’s lives should be as unaffected as possible when the baby comes. This is part of the narrative that states that family life should in no way impact on the world if work. That’s a job for a woman! God forbid men might not be 100% productive. Until employers see that nenhave kids too and we start making them do 50% of the domestic stuff we will never achieve equality in the work place.

My dh had weekends off, but I still did the night feeds because he has no boobs. It's not that Dh does a life-or-death job or that he physically couldn't get up in the night and still work, but his job is a hell of a lot harder than looking after a couple of tots all day and being able to hang about in your pyjamas if necessary. Fwiw I could never nap either.

And it's usually women who've had easy children through nothing other than luck who think staying at home is the easy option*

We all make choices as to how we chose to parent, you CHOOSE demand led, absolutely fine but please don't then complain that because others like me CHOOSE a different way we suddenly have easy babies through luck.

My DD was a 4lb 7oz premature baby with some complications for the first 6 months, and my DS had to have an operation for a rare lump on his neck at 11 months...none of those are 'easy'

Op you seem determined to feel sorry/somewhat cross with women who are happy to do night feeds, this speaks of some disatisfaction on your part rather than anything else. Many here have explained why they are satisfied with the status quo in their relationships and division of tasks, why does it bother you so much?

Reading all these stories, it's apparent that everyone's circumstances are different.

Different babies, different sleepers, different needs, different feeding methods, different sleeping arrangements, different jobs, different sleep deprivation thresholds, different abilities to nap, different abilities to get back to sleep in the night, different household and financial arrangements, different mental health considerations, different workload splits, different shift taking between partners.

Therefore I would say, YABU for getting cross for a generalisation when actually there are so many factors at play. Each family has to come to a suitable arrangement.

Saying that, YANBU to be concerned that the primary carer is getting taken advantage of, and to be looking out for areas of inequality and calling them out as you see them. It's good for women to watch out for each other for a change.

During my sleep deprived hell, I remember pondering that baby sleep is a bit of a feminist issue, and that if men bore the brunt of the sleep regressions and constant wakings, then some technical solutions would be found to help everyone get more sleep!

3 kids close in age with ex. He never helped with one night while babies or much during the day for that matter. He's now dad of the year to the older 2.. only just starting with the youngest. So frustrating

Yabu". I prefer my husband alive so wanted him rested rather than crashing the car. I choose to ff and he bought dd up fed and changed at 11pm (id gone to bed 8pm). He then slept through till 7 and i did the 1am and 4am feeds which only meant being up 20 minutes due to pre prep machine. If dd had a bad night i could sleep when she did. Dh didnt have that choice when driving over an hour then working before driving an hour back. One of my good friends died driving home tried as he done the night feed. Never ever wanted that!

I bf to 6 mts so did all night feeds aside from the odd w/e night I went out n expressed for Dh to feed. But still had to pump for relief! After 6 mts dh would do one night of the w/e so we'd both get 1 full night sleep n lay in on the w/e. I went back to work when they 12mts by that time luckily wake ups rare but we'd take turns. Worked for us. I didn't really nap daytime but I did watch lot of box sets with DC feeding / dozing away on me!

Each to their own and all that. Each dynamic is different, in some areas of work, concentration is needed, if the person is the main earner it makes sense that they try and keep their job, and be at their best most of the time. My dh did not do night feeds as he needed concentration for his job, and was very hectic in the day. It was only for a short while whilst dcs were babies.

while women have to spend their day covered in puke with screaming kids and don't even get the luxury of sleep at the end of it

But how many women actually do this? Even when I had DC2 who was a projectile vomiter, I didn't spend my days covered in puke, nor did he scream all day. Plus the blessing of breastfeeding was that there was nothing else I could do at the same time, and I found it pretty relaxing just having to sit and read or watch TV whilst he fed.

Most men and women are office workers. Which is easier than looking after multiple children.

When I went back to work, it was in an office. No, it wasn't easier than looking after my three children, not least because by the time I had three, two of them were in school or nursery - and if you have multiple children then, unless they're quintuplets, that will be the situation for most parents.

I'm not saying that being at home full time with the children was a bed of roses, but suggesting that it automatically equates to or is harder than going out to work for everyone is naive at best.

@teentitans - no worries, I didn't mean to ask you to apologise - it's more I think we are an interesting control group. I mean, presumably I have just as much innate capacity to wake up for a crying baby as DP (if we think that is gendered rather than situational-hormonal).

As it happens, DP was so out of it on morphine for the first 10 days she had no idea, and she never did wake up for the baby very easily, which may well be to do with that early issue.

In DD's life, we've both had reasonably 'skilled' jobs (and OMG, what a lot of snobbery, to think this is about skilled jobs! I think a highly-skilled lawyer can cope much more with lack of sleep than a long-distance lorry driver, FFS). Yet we've both always shared wake-ups. I get that it doesn't work for some. If you EBF and your baby doesn't wee in the nighttime, I can see you might not really appreciate someone else being there. But plenty of people EBF and still appreciate someone else getting up to change a nappy. Surely?

I do really think a lot of it is about the ingrained ideas about who is important and who isn't, not about what's really best or kindest.

I agree mamma

By doing it all We are basically saying that men’s lives should be as unaffected as possible when the baby comes.

Thank you!!

you are not going to make me feel bad for choosing to breastfeed, choosing to stay a year on maternity leave per child.

Replace mother by parent. Should the stay-at-home parent do the night shift? Well, yes. Obviously.

But surely the majority of women breastfeed (at least at the start when the night feeds are most frequent) and men aren't exactly....erm.... qualified for the job?! Lol. My dh used to wake up to pass me the babies when I was post csection and couldn't get to them, and would offer me a drink, help change them when/if needed. And then once they got to 7ish months and I wanted to reduce night feeds dh took over the wake-ups and they started sleeping through at about 8/9 months so we both got to sleep then. He openly admits he doesn't need much sleep and copes much better on less than I do, so this is what worked for us. Even now, and eldest is 4.5, if they wake at night he goes to them.

I think @LaurG has some good comments on why people see this as an issue even though it doesn't directly affect them

Of course it should be whatever works for each family

But it just feels a bit wrong that what works for most families is the woman doing all the night work and the men being unaffected. It's true that there are a lot of jobs that if you're tired one day a week, you can still perform no problems. And I'm not talking 2 hours sleep, I'm talking getting up once to do a feed. I think most people can cope with doing that and working fine, in most jobs.

I know men who never helped a night feed because they worked, who will go out boozing til 3am with work the next day. Funny how they manage that without any sort of disaster!

Also there seems to be an assumption that men are always the main earners, this is becoming less common - infact I think a third of couples have women as higher earners and there must be a lot with similar earnings. So it shouldn't be automatic that the mans job needs to be protected at all costs

Replace mother by parent. Should the stay-at-home parent do the night shift? Well, yes. Obviously.

What if it means that the SAHP is then on their knees with exhaustion while the working parent carries on as before? In that case surely there should be some division of duties, no matter who the SAHP is. I would never expect DH to manage on 3 hours sleep while I got a full night’s worth every night, especially not if he was in sole charge of small children.

My DH commutes a long way on one of the country’s busiest motorways and often drives to meetings during the day too. He can’t risk having an accident through tiredness. I only make 10 minute trips around the village so my tiredness is less of an issue. Also if he fails to perform and gets fired we can’t pay our bills - the consequences of my tiredness are far less serious.

As an AP my babies slept next to me and were EBF until 3 so luckily nobody really lost much sleep. I'd do it all over again (although unlikely to have any more though as I'm 38 now) ☺

Yabu

Yeah sure.. It is hard work looking after a baby. But when my 11 month old DD naps twice I day I have the option to just sit and have a cuppa. Sometimes I'll do house work but rarely. I often tend to do that when DD is in her high chair, or sometimes even my OH does it when he gets home from work. So seeing as I have longer 'breaks' than he does, I think he deserves to get more sleep. He definitely works a lot harder than me during the day too. Being at home with my daughter is a delight anyway! I get to take her to play groups or go to lunch with friends. I can go see my mum and she will spend time the baby in another room whilst I catch up with my sister. I don't see it as 'work' at all.

I think most couples don't have a completely inflexible schedule 53rdWay. If the stay-at-home parent is truly exhausted, of course the other one takes over - provided you don't have an EBF baby obviously, which is quite the point.

But having 2 exhausted parents instead of 1 is not really helpful to anyone.It makes more sense to share the rest of the chores instead of having 2 useless zombies.

I did every single night feed for both kids. My dh would help in the early days of nighttime nappy changes but he works in an INCREDIBLY dangerous job. One slip of concentration and he could be killed and/or kill others. So, yeah, he needed more sleep than me. If I had asked he would have but safety outweighed it forme.

This is the most ridiculous, ill-thought through, illogical OP I’ve read on here.

You’re about half a step away from saying AIBU to think it’s not fair that women have to be the ones to get pregnant and give birth

I did all the night feed with the twins from about 3 weeks old. Dh was up dealing with the two year old, who sometimes woke.

I remember making an arrangement with him that if he could get up at 7 and take one of the twins away and give the two year old breakfast, before he went to work at 830, that I was prepared to do every feed singlehandedly. I was breastfeeding and some mixed feeding with bottles.

There was simply no point in making him get up and do night feeds. He did have to go to work and cook supper when he got home and put toddler to bed, AND help me get twins bathed and to bed, offer moral support. It was a fair division of labour.

I Always HAD NAPS in the day. Definitely, after lunch. All three children went to sleep from 2-4 in the afternoon. I willed it to happen and it did...the thought of doing any housework at that time was perfectly insane. Sleep whilst your baby[ies] sleeps and all that.

Napping is a habit I heartily recommend, especially with very very tiring twins. You have to make the decision not to do anything, cuddle up somewhere, feed them to sleep nearby and turn off the phone.

My husband works in finance and deals with a lot of money on a daily basis. A tiny mistake on his part due to sleep deprivation could result in millions of pounds/dollars being lost/paid to someone else in error. Not something I'd want him to be pulled up on so I think YABU. I've massively struggled with a non-sleeping, frequently unsettled baby and know parenting is a two-way street but I can make up for lost sleep during the day, whereas my husband can't. Instead, my husband takes the baby early in the morning until he leaves for work and lets me have a lie in on the weekends. It's what works best for us.