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!

You are going to be home all day so can sleep when baby does so I don't think your husband is being unreasonable in wanting to ensure he gets enough sleep to ensure he is able to do his job.
My husband managed to sleep through in the same room which I preferred. No point in waking as I was the one feeding but in emergencies (e.g. Poonamis or vomiting) he was on call.

Most families I’ve maternity nannied for had them dad sleeping in separate rooms. As obviously he has to get up for work. When mum is back at work they share again then.

Fortunate that my husband took 2 weeks paternity then 2 weeks annual leave, when he went back to work I would do nightfeeds etc and he would sleep in the spare room, but I would go to bed at 7 and he would stay up with the baby till 11 downstairs so that I atleast had 4 hours of our uninterrupted sleep, it worked very well. But we did sacrifice time as a family I guess for me to sleep.
Weekends he would take baby until 6am, then I’d get up with him and he’d sleep through till 11. We both seemed happy and it worked

So the is plan to set a silent alarm on my smart watch to wake me up for feeds

You will have a not so silent alarm to wake you up when baby needs a feed. The baby namely.

I'm surprised I have managed to have two babies and have never crashed my car during maternity leave.

Same here.

And since returning to work, and still being
exhausted from lack of sleep i have managed to avoid being fired too

It makes me laugh that there is so much desire for male/female equality but all this thread does is perpetuate that child rearing is woman’s work whilst the man gets his oh so important sleep for his oh so important job. And apparently it’s fine for an exhausted mother to potentially fall asleep at the wheel, but we can’t risk it happening to the man.

@GPatz exactly, I really doubt that Bob who works in human resources really needs 7 uninterrupted hours to send emails and sit in meetings, but it's OK for his wife to be driving babies around on no sleep.

I EBF and coslept and DH slept in the spare room, but we also operated a shift system in the early days whereby I went to bed at 8-9pm and he sat up with baby until midnight or 1 so I could have a block of unbroken sleep without a baby in bed with me. He would either bring baby in for a quick feed if necessary or give a bottle of expressed if needed during that time.

It worked for us - the breastfeeding hormones made it easy for me to drop back off after feeds whereas if he'd been up changing nappies he would have found it much harder to get back to sleep. If I was having a really tough night I could always tag him in or he'd take baby early morning and give me a few more hours. I preferred being on my own in the bed with baby anyway.

'You are going to be home all day so can sleep when baby does'

Isn't that when we are supposed to do the housework and the cooking because that's our maternity job?

My DH sleeps in other room he is a horrendous snorer and with baby wake ups it would be me not getting any sleep.

My DH goes to bed around midnight and I will go to bed around 9ish so if baby wakes up before then he will deal with him.

My DH is going to get a shock when I go back to work as he will need to pull his weight!

Agreed. I was lucky that I rarely had to drive when mine were small. I also should have said that in the early days when DH was on paternity leave we figured it out together. You will figure it out too.

But I agree that all this "DH CANT POSSIBLY do his job tired!!!!" is sexist wank. I continued getting up for feeds during the night for months after I went back to work with 2 babies and I haven't crashed the car yet either. And as someone once pointed out on this thread, surgeons do shift patterns for decades and often have to operate on very little sleep, and they manage too.

In a sense he is right. If the baby is EBF you'll need to wake up anyway, he won't be able to help so he might as well sleep in the spare room.

HOWEVER this easily turns into the mother having to do everything and the father continuing with his previous routine and leisure time. At weekends he should do the most that can be done with an EBF baby to let you get some rest as well and if he doesn't get his full night's sleep, well tough luck that's what happens when you are a parent. Also, as soon as the baby is no longer EBF he should take a more active role at night times.

I also think that he needs to accommodate the fact that you will have the baby for such long periods of time during the day because he will be at work and at night because of EBF. So he needs to make extra parenting efforts at the weekend so you both have equal free time.

DH was out of house 7am-7pm. We slept in same room, he would do any feed/nappy change until midnight then it was over to me. Feeding/nappy change were done in another room. DH would be up at 6am and would take DD with him if I wanted to doze. I would point out DD was a baby who slept very little (20 mins at a time at most) so no naps for me in the day. Also, from the start I was the sort of Mum who was up and ready to start her day at 8am and got stuff done so DH would come home to nothing but his family and a rest.

Put the baby in a separate room

We do sleep separately on work nights as there is no way my DP would be able to function at work or drive safely with lack of sleep, I go back to sleep through the day when baby is asleep, dp does night feeds and/or nappy changes on day off. If he was woken during night I know he would be asleep as soon as he got home from work and I’d far rather have some awake time with him. He does help with majority of housework so don’t need to worry about that during day. When I go back to work in 6 months then we will have to take it in turns but for now we doing what works best for us. Maybe the difference is my dp would have never suggested it in first place, it was all completely my plan so it’s what I felt comfortable with.

^^ not heard of SIDS then? Never mind the psychological damage that risks.

Also, I’m lucky that baby sleeps for few hours at time during day. If he didn’t then I’d possibly have to rethink the plan

When I go back to work in 6 months then we will have to take it in turns but for now we doing what works best for us.

Guarantee you this will never happen. The baby will be used to you and prefer you, assuming your DH actually does want to volunteer to give up his full nights of sleep after 6 months.

Put the baby in a separate room....

A) What stupid and dangerous advice.

B) And this would help how, do babies in their own room not need feeding?

I don't think you need to be waking him up every feed but why the need for a spare room what do people do in a 1 bed flat?

I can understand him needing his sleep but its his baby to and if baby does end up feeding every hour you will need his support even if he just makes you a drink in the night 🤷🏻‍♀️

DH slept in the spare room (at my instigation) because I EBF. However, he got up at 6am EVERY SINGLE DAY for over 6 months (DS was a shite sleeper) to give me a bit of uninterrupted sleep till he left at 8am. Sometimes when I was afraid of falling asleep holding DS I'd call him down in the middle of the night to take over (only happened occasionally) and he always did it and never complained. He has a v senior, highly responsible job that he commutes to on a motorbike down country roads, so he did need to get 7-8ish hours most nights but the odd broken night wasn't going to suddenly cause him to lose all ability to function. I despair of some men claiming they need loads of sleep - go to bed early then!

Regardless of what you agree you both need to realise you both will have less sleep than you want until your kids are well in primary school.

Ideally he should take over from you as soon as he steps through the door and deal with the baby until 11pm so you can do things. Then he goes to sleep in what room/bed you agree on. In practice as babies often cluster feed in the evening/night you likely won't have this option.

Where he can help is at 7am is deal with the baby will you have a quick shower, have some breakfast and put some day clothes on. Then he can do his getting ready and go to work. He needs to condense his morning going to work pattern into 30 minutes. He can also do the housework and cooking.

In my case my DP works shifts so is often sleep deprived so just managed. He was off for a month and then took over from me at 4 months. When I went back to work I was bf when I came in, during the evening as she cluster fed, in the night when she woke and before I went to work. I then would drive to and from work. We randomly slept in different rooms and still do only because one of us stays up to finish watching a program and falls asleep on the sofa. When she is teething we co-sleep because otherwise we won't get any sleep.

Dh drives and works 14 hour days, sometimes longer. I've always done the nights with the dc and he slept in a separate room while they were newborn. Ds2 would cluster feed from 10-5ish each night, it meant dh got sleep and I got to snack and binge watch shows without worrying about disturbing him. Worked for us. If we go through a tough time with illness or teething he still gets shipped off to the spare room.

Guarantee you this will never happen. The baby will be used to you and prefer you, assuming your DH actually does want to volunteer to give up his full nights of sleep after 6 months.

Actually @edgeofheaven I went back to work after 9 months so DH could take 3 months' SPL. DS was absolutely fine, he got used to the change within a week. If DH had given up after one or two difficult nights I'd have lost all respect for him.

I have a 5 week old. My dh works full time, he sleeps in the lounge. I am EBF so no need for him to wake up in the night, she wakes to be fed and if she needs her nappy changing it's no bother to do that at the same time. He did sleep in bedroom with us the first two weeks before he went back to work though, and helped me fetch things as I had had a c section.