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!

Other couples make a joint decision and do what's best for them.

The point is though that this hasn’t been a joint decision - her dh has decided what’s best for him and that’s it

Where's the OP anyway?

I would say that if you really plan to be a parenting team it has to be the case in all areas, if course he can't feed the baby but I often found that if I asked DH to walk around with baby or cuddle them to settle them instead then they actually settled quicker and didn't need to settle on the breast. DH can also absolutely do nappy changes or you can help each other out with them. Also if you have any stitches or a c section, you might need help getting in and out of bed/lifting the baby for longer than 2 weeks. Encourage him to go to bed earlier with you so that you both get more sleep and can cope with broken nights. He can't expect to lay all of the baby care responsibilities at your feet while his daily routine goes unchanged. YANBU.

I never understand why people expect their other half to be up during the night if they EBF? It seems so pointless? It takes less than a minute to change a nappy - why wake someone for that?

Because when the nappy needs to be changed after an hour of feeding, settling, burping, round and round in circles and it's the third wake up of the night, you're happy to delegate anything possible to the other parent for the sake of five minutes peace (longer in the case of a poonami). Been there, done that, nightly for weeks on end. And DH didn't complain once because he knew how fucking hard I was working overnight, every night.

Every baby is different and some need (waayyyy) more support overnight than others. The problem is OP's DH deciding before the baby is even here that he'll continue getting a full night's sleep, thank you very much.

Oh and yes to safe cosleeping and feeding lying down... we did this from day 1 with our second and third children and it made a big difference. However... I know you've said in PP that you don't believe you can plan yet because you don't know how baby will be but honestly OP, absolutely nothing can prepare you for the type of tiredness you experience as a new parent. It's not like other tiredness, it's like a sledgehammer, and it will endanger your relationship if one of you shoulders it alone and the other isn't helping or sharing the experience.

I really don't mean that to be patronising at all, no matter how aware I was of what to expect I still was blindsided by how it actually felt. Make sure he's in it with you or you will end up resenting him.

You need to work something out that means you both get some sleep. Before we started a shift system I honestly was harbouring resentment towards my husband because he’d got more than two hours sleep and I was totally exhausted.

Nothing can prepare you for the initial tiredness, you get used to it eventually but it’s very hard at first and you need to both support each other because it tests your relationship.

When I EBF there really wasn't any point in DH being awake in the night. He used to bath, dress the baby whilst I ate my evening meal. Then I would doze in bed and he would settle the baby for the witching hours. By about 10pm we would all be asleep, I would then awake every few hours and feed the baby with a nappy change maybe once or twice. Then by about 6am he would get up with the baby leaving me to have an hour or two. There was absolutely no point at all him sitting awake whilst I breastfed the baby. Plus I then napped every single time the baby did. No chores got done at all until he was home and he did all the tidying and cleaning.

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

No. I'd expect a well rested other parent to step up and cook and clean as required. Me and dh are a team. He slept in another room from about 1am. It worked for us as a family. He took over straight away when he came in from work to give me a rest. Our sleep situation was not sexist or anti feminist. It was just what worked best for us at the time.

Now LO is a toddler and I'm pregnant and still working, he does all night waking because no feeding is needed anymore.

One idea - depending on the job DH has - if he has colleagues with young children, he could ask them now how they've managed tiredness with work. That way he'll get some advice and see how it's worked for different people.

Also might serve as a useful reminder that yes it IS possible to do most jobs on broken sleep, even when it's grim sometimes.

The point is though that this hasn’t been a joint decision - her dh has decided what’s best for him and that’s it
The point is I was replying to the comment that Men do... not the OP.

I tend to be up with the baby and DH does the huge majority of housework. On particularly bad days my DH has come home to nappy bins overflowing, me without even brushed my teeth or changed out of PJs and me hanging eaten only biscuits. He then sweeps in, takes baby, tidies house and I'm more rested because I've slept 2-4 hours over the day when baby slept

Hi OP

I EBF two babies

The first time we got an ok sleeper (average waking up for age) so my husband would sleep with us sometimes and on his own sometimes. I had a really nasty birth and was quite ill with anaemia for a few weeks so he did end up getting out of bed to change the baby and pass me the baby for a few weeks. Fortunately he is good with little sleep and managed to go straight back to bed. I did Express as well and he did do an expressed night feed once or twice a week for 3 months until the aby started rejecting bottles. We would go to bed early and he would sleep with the baby, feed her then pop her in with me, when she was in a smaller bed. He tended to do this at the weekend.

The second one we had a nightmare sleeper. Up every 90 min to feed until we got a sleep trainer in at 7 months. It was horrific to be honest, looking back it affected my mental health and I was just so tired I couldn't think straight or drive, I was snappy and emotional and lost things, made mistakes etc. He dealt with the toddler who regressed with sleeping on arrival of her new sibling. Bottle feeding didnt work so well this time but it got to the point where sometimes he took out the baby for a walk in the pram or a massive long drive on the motorway for a couple of hours, just so I could turn my hour of aleep at a time (always takes me a while to go off) into 2 or 3. He also used to get up with her in the morning and entertain her after the first feed so I could go to bed, and looked after both kids in the day so I could get a nap. In these circumstances it's not fair in my opinion for one person to get a full night's sleep while the other person just breaks down not coping - everyone that works eg returns after mat leave will have times when their kids are ill or dont sleep and they will still have to deal with it and go do a full days work the next day, and people cope. Everyone should expect to be a bit tired after a new baby. And yes it depends on their job (eg an NHS surgeon working 12 hour shifts or air traffic control I wouldn't necessarily get to do any night work) and how much sleep you both need but having a baby is a joint effort. It's not like looking after a new baby all day is easy or you dont have to be safe - you often still have to drive, you have to make sure you dont fall asleep feeding the baby on the sofa (which can and does kill babies and it's harder than it sounds to stay awake). At one point I was fainting with tiredness and didnt feel safe walking up the stairs holding the baby.

I would talk to him again. I think if you have an average or good baby then he is being reasonable as long as he takes the baby in the mornings if they are an early waker, and helps out at nights where he can on the weekend. If you have a poor sleeper though he will have to give up some of his previous 8 hours otherwise I promise you will want to murder him if he moans about being knackered after 8 hours consecutive sleep and you've had 1 hour at a time (even 7 hours over 1 hour slots is awful as it's not about the total length it's about how many times you're disturbed and if you get chance to fall into the deeper sleep cycles)

I'm amused at the silent alarm idea We did have to set alarms the first night home from hospital as DD was jaundiced and very sleepy, but not a single night since then!

We came to an arrangement that works for us where I do all night stuff, unless I need his help, but he takes DD at 6am every morning, rain or shine, and has her till he goes to work. He works flexi time and from home a lot, so on bad nights he would rearrange stuff so he could keep her till 10 or so. In the early weeks, he did all the cooking and cleaning too. We are more even now she's a bit older.

DD has always been a good sleeper generally, but if she had been a bad sleeper then we absolutely would have done shifts.

To the people who do shifts with the baby after DH gets back from work:

When do you get time as a couple? Even couple + baby?

If you're so sleep deprived you need to do shifts, I think quality time with your other half has to be put on the back burner a bit. Sometimes it's about survival!

When do you get time as a couple? Even couple + baby?

You don't, in the early weeks. That's life with a tiny baby. You get evenings back when they start distinguishing day from night better and tend to sleep from 7ish (still with wakes to feed, obviously) from 12 weeks or so. And on weekends, obviously. Couple time is the least of your problems in the days of broken nights.

On another note and as someone who has gone to work on basically no sleep more than once, I actually agree with a PP that going to work on crappy sleep is a lot easier than looking after children on crappy sleep. When people are irrational and annoying at work you can tell them so or go away from them, whereas when my 4yo is annoying I can't really get away with leaving the room or telling him to fuck off. Also you can sometimes snatch a nap at work in your car/an empty meeting room etc.

@NCsleep, you have many separate issues there

1- your dh needs lot of sleep. I am the same and have always been, incl when I was in my 20s. So yes finding a way to ensure I got enough sleep for me has bene important when i had my two dcs. That doeesnt mean I never got up during the night though!

2- the fact your dh is alreadyt moaning about the lack of sleep. He is setting the scene here. He is basically putting everything in place so he NEVER has to get up EVER, regrdless of the age of the child. Thats not good enouigh imo. He is going to be a father and with that comes the fact he will have to get SOME distrubed sleep.
There should be no discussion around that and he cant just make a wide ban on him been woken up.

3- you are planning to bf but actually ave no idea for how long you will do so. What if you decide to move to bottle feeding when baby is 3 months old, does t mean he still doesnt have to get up? See point above/
What about when baby will wake up but actually doesnt need a bottle? I bfed dc2 until he was bout 12 months old. By the time he was about 6 months, I knew that he needed reassurance rather than a feed and that DH could give that to him. Yes DH wqsnt ahppy to get up but you know what he did. And thanskfully he did becase dc2 carried on waking up several times a night until he was well over 2 yo (think taking 20 mins to settle down and have the little noise, such as the floor creaking, waking up up again ). There is no way I would have coped wo DH stepping up (see the point 1 and I needed sleep, more than DH did).

4- What about when you go back to work? does ot also mean he will get his sleep but you wont? or that he will get his lie ins in the am but you wont?

So the bottom line is,

• dont accept a blanket ban on been woken up at night. It HAS TO be an agreement that will be short term and reviewed ccording to YOUR needs and the baby's needs/behaviour.
• dont just accept 'he needs more sleep' so I'll do all the waking up at night because you'll be exhausted too and you'll need some energy to be able to cope too.
• plan ahead about what will happen at the weekend. Will you get a lie in? who is going to get up at 6.00am when baby is up for the day? How will your DH participate in giving you a well deserve break? Eg by taking on all the cleaning/cooking at weekend so you can rest? Or by taking over the lloking after the baby and you wll only do the feeding during the weekend etc....

You'll have to find your own rythm that works for both of you BUT it doesnt have to be 'mother is doing it all and father needs his sleep' as a starting point. He HAS TO step up in some ways (and that means HE will get more tred too )

We have 3 kids under 4. We do shifts during periods of chronic unrest by 1 or more of them (days of bad sleeping) or during illness. Hubby always takes time off when 1 or more are ill because we have 3 kids who are so young. Not for a sniffle but if they can't function as normal,then he will. If it is really bad then we will do shifts alternating between the other kid(s) and the sick one(s).

I can understand shifts being a temporary measure during an atypical period of sleepless nights but I think having it as the default for the typical (for your baby) nights makes it much harder to fit that couple time in later.

The transition for us has been less time as couple + baby (or 3!) and more time as a couple in the evenings as they have got older and sleep better.

But I doubt anybody here is talking about shifts as a long term measure..? They're what you do in the early weeks of very broken nights or when there is an atypical crisis (sick child, bad teething). We're talking here about the OP and her DH navigating the initial adjustment period with a newborn. This might drag out into several months if she has a very colicky or refluxy baby or something, but generally babies, even if they still wake, spend most of night time asleep once you are 6 months in. I really don't think "but where is the couple time?!" is something she or anybody needs to worry about to begin with. And you still have weekends. Many couples don't really get any couple time during the week anyway.

DH said a couple of his colleagues told him they did this after their babies were born and DH was horrified by it. It wouldn’t have worked for us, I’d have resented the shit out of him.

We put a single bed in DC's room and I slept in there for the first 4ish months while my DH slept in our room. DH runs his own business and i knew that as I wanted to feed on demand there would be a lot of night disruptions, and I thought it wasn't fair on him to have such disturbed sleep. DH used to get up at 6/6.30 and quietly take DC downstairs so I could get a couple of uninterrupted hours in the morning before he left for work at 8ish. It worked brilliantly for us - not least as since DC has always been in his cot in his own room, we didn't have the same sleep trouble lots of my friends did when at 6 months they tried to move their DC into their own room. I have friends whose DC are still in their room because they couldn't make the transition. We were lucky to have the space to do it, but I'd really really recommend it.

I think the attitude is the difference. DP would never have said 'This is how it's going to be' or 'I'm going to do this so I can get a full nights sleep'. We came to an arrangement that worked for both of us once baby was here, and a flexible one at that, that doesn't involve one person totally absolving themselves of all overnight responsibilities.

Being a new parent is tiring. New dads should expect to sleep less and be more tired than usual. That's what having a baby entails. It doesn't last forever, but it is part and parcel of having a newborn.

We have a sort of hybrid sleeping arrangement now. DP and I go to bed in our bed together and DD in her room. When DD wakes up, usually around 4, I go in to her room to feed her and then generally we both fall asleep in the double bed in there till morning, when DP comes in and takes her and I go back to sleep for a bit. A bit unorthodox maybe, but it works for us but until she moved to her own room, I slept in our room with her in her cot and DP slept in spare room most nights. He goes to bed late so would wake me up coming to bed, and he's also clumsy so can't get into bed without making a racket 🙄 He needs a lot less sleep than I do and doesn't do lie ins, so it works quite well. It's about finding something that works for everyone, not just for one person.

See this whole 'oh man must have 8 hours sleep to function and provide' really pisses me off. I mean I would be expecting men to be writing this shit, but women? Come on.

My dh does one of the jobs that people always mention on here that 100% needs a full night sleep. Did he get it? No, because he is a parent and lack of sleep is well documented in the job description.

Babies on his side of the bed for the 1st couple of months (sections) he gave me baby to feed, practically latched them on sometimes when it was so painful. Then he did everything else, went like that for the 1st 6 weeks or so. I would then express and go to bed around 9pm he would bring the baby up around midnight and I would feed again around 2am.

He is a heart surgeon. I am a nurse. 12+ hour days on broken stretches of sleep are nothing to us. Plenty of times he has worked 20hrs. Or got into bed after work but is on call, the phone rings 20min later and 40mins after that is is scrubbed and in theater.

I couldn't even comprehend having babies then him saying oh by the way I need my sleep, your on your own. Plenty of women are back at work, and are are also doctors/nurses/pilots/giving important presentations/running companies and I would bet everything I own that they are not sleeping in the bloody spare room! Because these babies don't magically sleep through from 6 months. They still wake/need fed/ get sick. Women, we just have to get on with it. Moan or complain and it's, oh you knew what you were getting into. Men? Nah, they just move into a spare room and sleep for 7hrs + It really is a man's world. People should really be upping their expectations. Maybe then there wouldn't be so many posts about men who won't do housework/childcare/women's work. Or women on their knees with exhaustion and and PND.

‘To the people who do shifts with the baby after DH gets back from work:

When do you get time as a couple? Even couple + baby?’

You generally don’t. I stay up a little later on weekends and we have a nice meal or takeaway together. It’s only temporary and we find it’s better for our children for us to be reasonably well rested. It’s not for everyone but it works for us.