Sleeping arrangements with new baby

[NCsleep]

NC as DSis is on here and DH knows I post.
We are expecting our first DC any day now, currently 40 weeks. DH will be taking paternity leave for 2 weeks and then going back to FT work, fairly stressful job and he's currently out of the house approx 8am-7pm.

He has said that after paternity leave has finished, he'll "have to" sleep in the spare room as he won't be able to function at work with such broken/lack of sleep. He moans now about being knackered with 7+ or 8 hours sleep while I'm getting sod all sleep as am so uncomfortable

I think that is slightly unreasonable as I'll be knackered too and it's our first baby - also neither of us know quite what to expect yet and how well DC will sleep etc. So I don't feel like we can plan that far ahead yet, whereas he seems to have it in his head that this is what is going to happen.

How do others deal with night times when their DP goes back to work? Some people i know do "shifts" but DH said he couldn't do his job properly if we did this.

I am planning on EBF (so it would be a case of me feeding and him doing nappy changes I guess) and he is generally great, absolutely pulls his weight and will be a good dad so it's definitely not a "why are you having a baby with him"/LTB situation!

So the is plan to set a silent alarm on my smart watch to wake me up for feeds without waking my husband up.

Breast fed babies don’t feed to a regime so I would put this idea out the window.

Mine used to wake up and feed for about 40 minutes and then he’d wake again 1.5-2 hours later and do it again.

Breast fed babies do not behave like bottle fed babies so do not expect any kind of feeding routine. Breast fed babies feed a lot overnight and they certainly won’t need waking for feeds when your alarm clock decides it’s time for them to have one.

And regarding expressing - for the first few months it’s really important for a supply to be maintained and expressing should not mean a mother can sleep through for 6 hours. General advice is if dad is up in the night giving a bottle of EBM the mother should still get up and express at the same time as it’s really important the breasts are stimulated to make milk by ensuring they are being emptied every 3 hours at a minimum. So actually it’s not restful at all for the mother and it’s simpler and quicker to just feed the baby themselves and babies are far better at stimulating a breast supply than a pump is.

Milk production hormones are at their highest during the night time hours so if anything it’s even more important that breast feeding occurs during the night time hours to ensure your breasts are stimulated enough to produce enough milk for your baby’s needs.

Also, there is the very real chance of bottle preference occurring in the early days if a BF baby is regularly fed with a bottle so this is also something that needs to be taken into account....

Maybe just see how the baby is and then decide. We'd already planned that whoever was on leave (we did shared parental) did all the nights in the week and weekends were shared. DS was not a sleeper so it changed to the one working did till 11 and all nights at the weekend till 8 to give the one on leave a chance to sleep.
On nights when DS allowed zero sleep you could tag the other person in at 5 or if you were really struggling to catch a few hours of sleep.
So go with the flow.

You get people on these threads insisting that for fairness you should both be up and awake and looking after the baby. However, parenting is a team thing and to me it’s far more sensible for one parent to be up with the baby and the other sleeping / resting. Doubling up - especially when just to change a nappy - is such an ineffective use of time / energy. Also, if you go on to have DC2+ people rarely insist on both parents being up in the night with baby as there are others to consider.

As we had a one bed flat we all slept together (co slept) until dd was 15 months, she never stayed long in her bed after that either. H coped fine. If he were a dr, nurse, driver, pilot perhaps it's a consideration but my h napped in his office, unlike me. At one point there was 4 in the bed, but dd1 stopped coming in about 2.5

DS' nursery was huge, so we put a double bed in there and I slept in the nursery (ds hated the cot, so we coslept since birth). I'm with your DH, if he's got to go to work 5 days a week and you're EBFing, making him wake during the night seems a bit pointless. Churlish even. As long as he doesnt expect a spotless house and dinner on the table when he gets home, and pulls his weight at weekends, I don't see the problem.

Ps I did night nappies, no point waking him

It's unreasonable for him to not do anything in the night. Nappy changes through the night are only for the first 6-8ish weeks anyway.

I coslept and ebf but my dh was always in with us, and he got up and did every single night nappy change. Yes, he was back at work. Yes, he was tired sometimes. But it helped me enormously and meant I wasn't a complete wreck trying to look after a newborn all day alone.

I fed lying down so I didn't actually have to get out of bed and the baby didn't really cry much because the boob was right there whenever she wanted it. I had an emergency c section so physically getting out of bed was difficult for a few weeks. It was fairly easy for my dh to get up, change baby on the floor for a couple of minutes, then go back to sleep.

Dh and I slept in the same room. We co slept with dd when she was very little. Her inside my night dress with covers to my waist and a dressing gown to keep my back / arms warm. She also slept a few times on dh’s chest with him on his back. I ebf also.

You need a plan, which works for you. Going to bed early and tag teaming sounds sensible. I didn’t have a plan. By 8 weeks I was exhausted because dds sleep was erratic. Dh is a really heavy sleeper. I got her into a routine and that sorted our sleep. Had maybe 3 night wakings in the beginning even with that.

H coped fine. If he were a dr, nurse, driver, pilot perhaps it's a consideration but my h napped in his office.....

That’s brilliant about your husband!!!

I’m a nurse, out the house for 14 hours and sometimes I go to work on 4/5 hours of unbroken sleep and I survive. I even manage to drive there and not fall asleep at the wheel.

There are a lot of female doctors who I work with (and other nurse), who also have young infants that don’t sleep, who also do long shifts, come to work on very little sleep and just get on it.

It’s only men that seem unable to do this....

And pps most newborn fuss in the evening, that's when dad's can be their most useful, hand them over so you can have a bath/shower/talk on the phone/sleep

What I don't understand is that many babies get to 1 without sleeping through or even developing worse sleeping patterns and many mums are back at work then. Do the husbands then magically agree that it needs to be 50/50 when the mum returns to work or after a year of night time being "her business", do they suddenly step up and realise that she needs a bit of kip of a night too?

Well exactly

And from many of my friends experiences - no, they don’t suddenly decide it’s fair to step up and share nights!

he can help on his weekend nights for sure but if he's at work FT i don't see how he can be expected to be up in the night unless essential. with baby #1 you the one on leave can catch up on rest during the day.. with #2 this is a whole other problem i'll let you know in January how we survive it. seems petty to get him up to do a nappy when you are up anyway particularly whilst he's working those long hours.

What I don't understand is that many babies get to 1 without sleeping through or even developing worse sleeping patterns and many mums are back at work then. Do the husbands then magically agree that it needs to be 50/50 when the mum returns to work or after a year of night time being "her business", do they suddenly step up and realise that she needs a bit of kip of a night too?

Completely agree.

It’s not ok for them to go to work unless they’ve had a full night’s sleep but when the mother returns to work it’s perfectly fine for her to do it....

First child we tried to share duties, were both knackered and at each other’s throats.

For DC2 I stayed in our room with super king bed and DD in a bassinet. DH moved into DS’ room.

I did all night wakings/BF/nappy changes with DD and the rule was that come 5am I could (if necessary) hand DD over and sleep until 8am (when DH headed off to work).

Worked so much better than whisper-shouting in the dark at each other. Even on a bad night I’d get 6-8 hours broken sleep in 2-3 hour blocks.

I think it's sensible to plan, but keep it flexible as you don't know if you'll be able to stick to it. I planned to EBF but then needed medication post birth which meant I couldn't.

We did shifts, DH is a night owl and I'm the opposite so he'd do until 1am and I'd take over, having slept 8pm-1am.

At the weekends I think there can be more 50/50.

It depends on your child--DS didn't sleep for more than 45 minutes at a time for 6 months but my nephew was doing 3-4 hour stints quite quickly.

Yep 2 elf and did it together

In the early stages after the c section he helped get her whilst I recovered and then we tag teamed

I did 12-6 anything before and after I would feed and then he would settle or spend time with. Allowing 10-12 and 6-7 as my sleep time and allowed him to deal with settling

He got 12-6 (usually more if they slept through from 10-12) for his sleep.

my dh couldnt help thru the night (medication) and I wish we'd thought about it a bit more in advance....as my knackerdness made me grumpy and a bit race to the bottom in the tiredness stakes (my dc not a good sleeper and reflux/colic made for a shit combo).... so i didnt catch up on lots of sleep in naps

however if you can express for a bottle feed I would def do that - and leave him to do evenings and go to bed early as well as the split shift - he can also do a morning stint/feed /nappy change ,as long as he remembers to never wake a sleeping baby

I woud think its for a couple of months and then see how you go....and yes weekends he takes over lots of everything so you get to have a bath /time to yourself ,we split the mornings I would get Sat and DH Sunday for lie ins...

My tiredness made me very rigid thinking and felt I was being judged/martyrish/thought a crap mum for asking for help .....so really nourish yourself

P.S. DD is now 16 months and generally sleeps through (touch wood) but we started sharing nights when I stopped breastfeeding at 11 months. I went back to work at 9 months and that was hard as she was a bottle refuser & reverse cycling. We each get a sleep in on the weekend.

We done this and it suited fine, obviously there were moments where I was annoyed and tired but he drives for a living and I didn't want him tired and causing an accident, he slept in with us Friday and Saturday. It's so much easier just one parent doing it anyway. No point in both being tired.

Yeahbutnobutyeahbutno. I see the point some people are making about there being no sense in both parents being sleep deprived...BUT I dunno...there’s also something quite off about him prioritising this way before your baby is even here. I hope he’s not starting as he means to go on, in that you are left to get on with it, while he sits back and worries about himself.

My dh wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on all the intimate night-time rustlings, even though he was disturbed by them. It’s part and parcel of being a parent. Seems a bit me-myself-and-I to want to separate himself from you both in this way.
Perhaps when baby is here he’ll decide not to.

See how it goes. My husband just annoyed me when he was up in the night with us. Seemed pointless!

We started out with DP doing nappies – I couldn't get out of bed at first due to c-section – but tbh it was a ballache poking him awake, him mumbling into the pillow, dozing off, me prodding him again, him going "WHAT? I did the nappy didn't I?", then him making a big production with turning the big light on and insisting he couldn't see without it, flapping the fresh nappy open like he was spatchcocking a chicken, general faffing. Next time I'll just do changes in the Snuzpod and have the baby in bed next to me. Easier to cosleep without a big snory man flailing around anyway.

What worked better for us was me going to bed early and him holding the baby for her evening sleep til she woke, and bringing her in to me; taking her in the sling on weekends as much as possible; and him doing the lion's share of shopping, cooking, clearing up, life admin, etc etc. We still do it this way at six months because DD is a dickhead bad sleeper.

For the first few weeks we split the night , so I would Go bed At 7:30pm and would have solid sleep til 1am while husband took responsibility for baby then we would switch so he could then have solid sleep 1am til 7am .
It's not ideal but it worked for us at the beginning .

Get one of tbose co-sleeper cots and all sleep together

I much preferred having DH in the spare room. That way I could focus on the baby and have the whole bed to feed her in. It also meant I could set our bed up for safe co-sleeping more easily, which meant I got a lot more rest. And there was absolutely no point both of us being shattered. He could then take the baby first thing in the morning to let me have a lie in and could help by doing other things around the house.