To ask you to settle disagreement over DH's role?

[afewvindako]

Disagreement over DH's contribution to night feeds here. What is the general consensus on Mumsnet? Assuming baby under 6 months is bottle fed, mum is stay at home mum on maternity leave and dad is breadwinner (WFH during pandemic). Assuming mum does the parenting and housework during working hours whilst dad works at desk job, then during evenings and at weekends parenting / childcare is shared along with housework.

Should:
A) mum and dad split night feeds 50/50
B) mum does night feeds week nights and dad does weekends
C) mum does all night feeds

Question for those suggesting that mum goes to bed early and dad does a 11ish pm feed: when do new parents get to spend time together? When do they curl up and watch a film, share a bottle of wine, maybe have sex? When does mum get to sit down and have a long bath or read a book?

Without having some conscious child free time, it's more of an existence than living sometimes. Mental health is likely to suffer, mood is likely to suffer, it's just a bit rubbish really. All so a man doesn't have a few disrupted night's sleep a night.

I think it fully depends on the dynamic in the house before a child and not sure there’s a right answer.
I did 100% more for the fact that it takes DH around 30 minutes to wake up enough to do it; and I would already be finished. (He’s been like that as long as I’ve known him, not just because of child!)

Mum does night feeds during week
Mum & Dad do one weekend night each

I think it depends on how often the baby is getting up and how tired each of the parents are and how good they are at coping on little sleep.

If you have a baby that sleeps ok and only gets up once or twice a night and naps in the day so the mum gets a rest then I think the mum should do most of it and the dad should do half weekends and holidays.

If you have a crap sleeper like we did who got up every 90 min then one person cannot physically or mentally cope then the dad needs to step in more and help out, in my opinion it's not on to have a very young baby and one parent carries on getting a lovely 8 hours sleep as they did before for at least 5 nights a week while the other gets 5 lots of one hour and is falling apart because of it.

I breastfed and my husband worked and still got up in the night and took the baby a walk or a drive to try and give me more than an hour in a row as it was mentally and physically killing me

Tortoise, I think anyone who has a baby recognises that life will change. Watching films and having sex and drinking wine isn’t really what the nuances of life are made up of, there’s a transition period from couple to family and I don’t think forgoing the things you mention above are likely to lead to any sort of mental health issue. People stick with dull jobs because the misery caused by not having one at all would be too great. Adults do not-fun things all the time.

I think there is a sort of weird assumption that the prioritising of one's sexuality is the only way to feel ‘adult’ and actually I don't think this is always true.

@rainyoutside

Funnily enough, because we split it 50-50, our lives didn't change much in that way. We had a lot of decent quality time together. We had friends over in the evening (ahh pre Covid...), We maintained a vague social life. Our relationship got even stronger, and having a baby never felt like drudgery.

Neither of us were exhausted. We were both frequently a bit tired, but only during sleep regressions did it feel like I wanted to crawl into bed at 8pm.

I'll stick to the neither party exhausted, both parties having fun, doing fun adult things, and both getting sufficient rest for a happy life, rather than a slightly sad existence where I never got to spend any quality time with my partner, never got to have hobbies, or time to myself.

The benefits of sharing the burden are huge :-)

I think there is no perfect solution, I think it’s fair for the person that can have naps in the daytime or get up later if they need to, to maybe take more of the hit in the week. I would probably approach it with a shift situation (assuming you’re DH works from home from 9-5) where he does all feeds until midnight for example, then you do any feeds from midnight until 8am. That way he still gets a full nights sleep and you can go to bed at 8pm if you choose to. But I also understand why a lot of people go for the SAHP doing the weekdays. I think unless he goes to bed unusually early though it definitely makes sense for him to do the dream feed.

@Thespottytortoise

Question for those suggesting that mum goes to bed early and dad does a 11ish pm feed: when do new parents get to spend time together? When do they curl up and watch a film, share a bottle of wine, maybe have sex? When does mum get to sit down and have a long bath or read a book?

Without having some conscious child free time, it's more of an existence than living sometimes. Mental health is likely to suffer, mood is likely to suffer, it's just a bit rubbish really. All so a man doesn't have a few disrupted night's sleep a night.

Well - in this scenario I’m assuming the bloke doesn’t want to get up in the night, and prefers to do the 11-12pm feed to avoid that. Therefore he has to accept that his partner getting enough sleep is more important than time together as a couple. If he wants to do night feeds so his partner is more rested and therefore up for couple-time, great. But otherwise there’s the weekend evenings when things can be shared more equally overnight and so sex and wine and films might be more on the cards, and the weekend daytimes when the mum can take some time off for leisurely baths and book-reading while dad’s hands-on with the baby.

Option D from the first post.

I don’t think mine is ‘drudgery’ either! But if you’re spending time together then that’s because the baby is asleep. Sometimes you do just have to (try) and sleep when they do. I breastfed, though.

Dad does one weekend night shift so both parents get a proper weekend sleep.
Night feeds shouldn't be shared when one is working and one isn't.

I guess, the guy doing the late night feed (when he may well be up anyeay,) means that the guys life changes very little. He still gets unbroken sleep, an evening mostly to relax (albiet by himself) , but he can watch TV, do whatever.

Whereas the woman has rubbish sleep and zero down time.

It's not so much splitting the nights, as the woman giving up her leisure time to sleep.

Night feeds should be shared. Looking after a baby in the day is hard bloody work. Why should dad get all his sleep and mum get none?

Question for those suggesting that mum goes to bed early and dad does a 11ish pm feed: when do new parents get to spend time together? When do they curl up and watch a film, share a bottle of wine, maybe have sex? When does mum get to sit down and have a long bath or read a book?

Ha ha ha ha ha.

I think it depends on how people structure it. I know a couple where wife would feed baby at 8pm and then go to bed and dad would do last feed at midnight and out baby down as he went to bed. Wife would do night feeds and husband would feed and change baby first thing before he got ready for work so they both got a decent chunk of sleep. On the weekends they’d share night waking and go back to bed after first feed for a few hours.

@rainyoutside

I breastfed/still am my second (accidentally weirdly), so it wasn't as shared with my second. The difference in my energy levels and mood was huge, and very illuminating. It made me believe even more strongly that it shouldn't be one person's job.

We've tried to balance it as much as we can with the breastfeeding (I lie in about 6 days a week), husband was up with toddler for 3 hours last night, I'll take the next insomniac shift etc, but its not enough.

I've struggled to loose baby weight, my hair is lank, it takes me far longer to get over bugs, and I don't have the same bounce as I did when I got an unbroken night sleep every other night.

My husband has slightly more energy, but it's pretty negligible, as the tiredness from usually getting a full night sleep to alternating broken and unbroken isn't that bad.

Question for those suggesting that mum goes to bed early and dad does a 11ish pm feed: when do new parents get to spend time together? When do they curl up and watch a film, share a bottle of wine, maybe have sex? When does mum get to sit down and have a long bath or read a book?

When their baby is older and they are not doing multiple night feeds, probably.

Dad only does nightfeeds Friday and Saturday night, because he needs to be alert enough to do his job and not tired and make cock ups. As a sahm you can have a nap while the baby is napping. One little baby isn't that much work if you have evening and weekend help.

Question for those suggesting that mum goes to bed early and dad does a 11ish pm feed: when do new parents get to spend time together? When do they curl up and watch a film, share a bottle of wine, maybe have sex? When does mum get to sit down and have a long bath or read a book?

You can do a lot of those things during the day (assuming that the child sleeps during the day and Dads have 2 days off) I'm surprised if many new parents are able to watch a whole movie uninterrupted

Question for those suggesting that mum goes to bed early and dad does a 11ish pm feed: when do new parents get to spend time together? When do they curl up and watch a film, share a bottle of wine, maybe have sex? When does mum get to sit down and have a long bath or read a book?

As a twin parent I'm assuming having one dc at a time makes for a very different experience.
As a twin parent I'm going for the answer before the dc are born.

Unless your dh is a surgeon or a pilot (I assume not if he is wfh), I would expect a balance of help most nights, exceptions being if he is ill or has a particularly pressing day at work the next day. Or if you both prefer, you do a bit more (but not all) night feeds during the week and get a lot more help on the weekends and a lie in.

Our first was bottle fed and dh was up to help with every single night feed until she dropped them at 9 months. He made every bottle and I did the feed. Every single night feed for 9 months, baring I think one night when he was ill. He did this while working full time and also starting up a business in evenings and weekend time.

Realistically, babies don't just magically start sleeping through the night when mat leave ends. So if you are doing the bulk of the night wakings now, is that going to change to 50/50 when you go back to work? Are you going to no longer do any of the night wakings because you can't possibly manage not having a full night of sleep and working the next day? No, parents of toddlers who wake up 2, 3, 4 times a night still manage to go to work and function the next day, so it will do your dh no harm to share more balance of the night feeds now.

I think how you decide to do that, whether it's a bit more involvement every night or you take most of the work nights and he does all of the weekends, is up to you.

Rule?
F that it's 50/50. This whole oh your husbands work please lick his shoes when he comes in.
What are we in the 1950's?
Ridiculous. He is a parent regardless of if he works. Being at home with a child is harder. Boohoo he has to do a night feed then be up maybe 3 hours later.

Being at home with a child is harder.

See, I disagree with this. Even after the toughest night, you are still at home. You don’t have to get up and showered and dressed if you don’t want to, you can nap with the baby (assuming other children are at school or are happy to chill on the bed with an iPad while you nap as mine is). You don’t have to speak to anyone or be responsible for work.

I’d rather be at home with a baby than at work anytime. If I was working full time, I’d find it hard to concentrate on broken sleep.

(I do appreciate that we are all different and some people find it harder than others looking after a baby though).

But if both parents are working then absolutely it should be 50/50.

I agree one in the week and one at the weekend would be a fair Start

If he was going out to work I may be more sympathetic to him but that’s just because I fell into a habit of doing all the feeds with my two