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

@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.

This is spot on! I personally really dislike the idea of me traipsing to bed at 8pm like a child! I would like to go to bed with my husband and actually converse of an evening, or as pp said, maybe even have sex or at least cuddle! Otherwise we are merely existing.

To answer a few questions, baby naps are short and I also run a business so no time for naps for me. Although I'm on maternity leave as I'm the company director I still have to login and do books etc.

Husbands job isn't driving or anything, just desk work, but can be tough and can be long hours. It varies and some days he takes regular breaks to play with baby. Other days he's in back to back meetings or working hard towards a deadline.

Night feeds at present are around twice.

B

I’m not sure that being at home with the kids is harder than working. Some jobs are a piece of piss and some kids are easygoing, while obviously the opposite is also true. It depends on the circumstances doesn’t it?

What on earth is "desk work"? What levels of concentration/ decision making are required, and how crucial are any mistakes made due to tiredness?
Makes a difference.

I did all the night feeds and childcare as I wasnt working during the day. We split the housework and he earned the money. It worked for us.

@RunningFromInsanity

If Dad does his share of childcare and housework during evenings and weekends then

D. Mum does night feeds weekdays, 50/50 night feeds at weekends.

^This

It's 20 years ago but when I was a sahm, DH did Friday and Saturday night's feeds and we had one weekend lie in each. DS woke for the day at 4.45/5.00 until he was past 2.

If mum is a sahm/maternity leave I would expect 100% of feeds on work nights (sun-Thursday) and 50% Friday and Saturday. Assuming dad works Monday to Friday.

I did 100% of feeds (breastfed mine) dads who are also the breadwinners need to be fit to work to support their family in my opinion. Once both parents are working then 50/50 of course

Im pretty sure it's not legal for you to be working on Mat Leave unless you're taking official KIT days - your cover should be doing everything.

RE your point about sleeping in shifts - i think most people kinda take for granted that when youve got a small child you don't get couple time. We barely saw each other without the baby til she was about 4 months. It's not forever, you just do what you can to get through it!

My husband does the night feed Friday night and Saturday night. I do it Sunday to Thursday. Don't see why mum should only get one decent night's sleep presumably dad can nap on the weekend or have a lie in.

D. but also the dad could do an evening feed allowing mum to go to bed early and get more sleep that way. If mum went to bed at 9 and dad did 11pm feed, for example, then mum could perhaps sleep from 9 till 3 then get a few more hours between 4 and 6.

During the week; We found it easier for hubby to stay up until midnight ready to see to lil one while I went to bed at 9pm and got sleep in before lil one woke at 2am and 4am for a feed. Hubby would then do 6am feed while I slept and then got up at 8am.

On a weekend pretty much the same except hubby would do the 2am feed and I'd do the 6am both getting up for the day at 8am then.

So long as we both got what sleep we both needed it didn't matter if it was 50/50 etc. As for housework we both had our chore we didn't mind doing over the week eg him vacuuming up me dusting. I always cook he always washes up.

We still work simular to this now and lil one is 20 months old.

Well...sometimes you have to compromise. It won’t be forever that you go to bed early, but if that is what needs to happen then it needs to happen. Housework can take a back seat, you don’t need to nap while the baby does but just closing your eyes and resting helps a lot. Allocate a couple of hours a week to do your books (guessing!) and have daytime sex at the weekend while the baby sleeps.

When I had my first, husband and I shared the night feeds although he was working - his job wasn’t taxing at all so he could be tired at work with no issue. But if I think to now, where I have quite a stressful job that has sometimes long hours, I would be very unhappy if I also had to do night time feeds. On the flip side, the person that does the night time feeds then gets the lie in at the weekend.

@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.

The weekends. With DH and my arrangement I got leisure time at stupid o clock in the morning after the dc had fed and gone back to sleep but I was wide awake. Worked very well as an F1 fan watching races live I otherwise would have caught on catch up. There were several hours in the evening before I went to bed to spend some time cuddling with both DH and the DC. Mine are a lot older now and I'm pretty sure we get less time together than we did when they were really little, though we do tend to get a full nights sleep.

Also depends on how long baby sleeps at night. If baby doesn’t sleep in long stretches and dad has a desk job, then should consider doing more than 2 nights.

At our place I did all feeds and even now do 90% of night/early morning kid waking issues. But DH pulls his weight elsewhere like life admin, so I’m ok. Play to our strengths to get through.

I also wouldn't want to go to bed at 7:30 and my husband wouldn't stay up past 10 anyway so a bit pointless.
Also our older children do activities until 8 two nights a week so by the time we get home it's hardly worth going to bed only to get up an hour later.

Half and half for wfh

Each family is different, there’s no right or wrong, I’d say ‘C’ but others will disagree. Do what suits your family best, just like the rest of us.

Split it.

The reverence for working is always interesting. What do people think working mums do? Including those of us who are doctors or drive for a living etc.

We feed our babies and night and carry on with our jobs during the day.

Your DH role is to be a parent to his child and supportive to you. There is no ‘rule’ - he just does what’s required. If you’re up doing every night feed and you are exhausted then he should step up and help you regardless of what day of the week it is.
I agree with this^. He has flexible hours so I would expect him to help you now and again during weekdays, some days it could be 100%, sometimes 0% and give you 1 day of longer sleep on weekend.

We had similar situation but as dh had to be more on it for the day at work I did all feeds during the week then we alternated on the weekend so each did a night of the weekend (Friday or saturday), dh split parenting and house stuff 50 50 on the weekend.

It's really up to the couple. I breastfed so all night feeds were me BUT dad would help settle on bad nights, he'd do all toddler care when at home and he'd give me time in the day to rest if needed.

It was C for us.

Dh worked away, so it was down to me.
On the weekend when home, he would do the early morning feed and let me lie in.

I would do everything in the week and Dad takes over nights on the weekend and everything else on weekend is 50/50

Depends on the circs entirely.

There's no hard or fast rule.

I had peri and ante natal depression. DH looked after me while working shifts.

It makes me sad to think that other women would say no he needs to work. You don't deserve help.

Which is the end point of what many are saying.