AIBU - DH and baby sleep

[Heartbreakeyes]

I think I probably am being unreasonable here (at least in part) but new mum uncertainty and sleep deprivation mean I’m not quite sure of anything anymore!

DD is 6 months old and is not a good sleeper. She wakes every two hours, often more frequently, throughout the night and apart from a few good spells she always has done. She naps well during the day (around an hour in the morning, 1.5 at lunchtime and 30 minutes to 1 hour in the afternoon). She is EBF and I still feed her to sleep. I’ve tried napping during the day but (a) I get to sleep just as she’s waking up and (b) it feels so miserable doing nothing but looking after a baby and sleeping - I really value having that time to myself.

We have not tried sleep training yet (apart from some failed attempts to put her down drowsy but awake) - we may end up doing it but at the moment would prefer not to as she still seems so young. DH is on board with doing whatever I want.

At the moment DH is working from home but he works long hours, his typical day is about 9-9 but he can be working until 10/11/12 at times. He stops work for an hour in the evening to have dinner and do bathtime. He also gets up with DD and has her for two hours in the morning, usually 6-8 so I can catch up on sleep. He often sleeps in the spare room during the week. I do all the night wakings, though he will help if asked and often does at around 5am. DH is going to be off work for a month in May as he’s changing job.

The result is probably that we have about the same amount of sleep, though his is unbroken and mine is in 1-2 hour chunks. I haven’t slept more than four hours together since DD was born, and it’s very rarely more than 2 hours.

I feel like DH is doing a lot given how much he works but:

1. I really need a longer stretch of sleep soon, but DD wakes up for a lot longer if DH tries to put her down at night instead of me so he’s reluctant to take over any night wakings.

1. DH can put DD to sleep without feeding and I can’t. I have tried copying how he does it (rocking and pacing) but with no luck. Given that all the advice says we need to break the feed to sleep association I’d like him to take the lead on getting her used to bedtime without feeding to sleep. However, while he will help when asked he’s really resistant to committing to consistently doing bedtime for a while.

I suppose in part I just feel like I’m the main parent (unsurprising at I’m on mat leave and still breastfeeding) and am a bit overwhelmed with all the decisions. I feel hard done by doing all the night wakings but then I’m sure DH feels hard done by doing all the early mornings. Any suggestions gratefully received!

YABU = the poor man is doing enough, leave him alone!
YANBU = he could be doing more to help.

Note; I have been diagnosed with PND and anxiety - thankfully both mild and improving so I don’t think it’s relevant but including so as not to drip feed.

There are actually a large number of studies that demonstrate the importance of sleep for babies and children, the positive impact of good sleep and negative impact of bad sleep, so if sleep training leads to better sleep (it does, if done properly, those who say it doesn't work didn't do it properly) then it is beneficial.

@NameChange30

There are actually a large number of studies that demonstrate the importance of sleep for babies and children, the positive impact of good sleep and negative impact of bad sleep, so if sleep training leads to better sleep (it does, if done properly, those who say it doesn't work didn't do it properly) then it is beneficial.

What is bad sleep? Are you suggesting that a 6m old waking to feed every couple of hours (v normal baby behaviour) isn't sleeping well? Can you link evidence that a baby waking up every 2hours and being attended to would suffer from it? To me it is just normal baby behaviour and unless baby is grumpy/clearly unhappy it isn't a problem to solve for baby's sake. Hence my suggesting of co sleeping as if it works well it means those wakings aren't even real wakings anymore, baby just goes over to mum to feed and goes back to sleep. Seems pretty good sleep to me :)

Can you link evidence that a baby waking up every 2hours and being attended to would suffer from it?

That’s a largely silly thing to ask for, no adult unable to concentrate/insomnia/low IQ from
Slow cognitive development (totally making these up) is going to go to the GP and then reply - ah well how many times did you wake per night before you were 1?

There isn’t a way of knowing exactly how shit sleep impacts the whole family. I know for my lot we were miserable zombies, now we get enough sleep we’re happier, DC has developed exponentially over the last month. We didn’t sleep train but we’re having other sleep issues so I have absolutely no doubt that a good nights sleep is good for all. I know you didn’t want anecdote but.. our DC was waking 8-10times a night for breast. Fuck that. We were all living in hell, he was crying all the time, never happy with anything. Now he sits laughs and enjoys things, he’ll craw over plonk himself on my knee and we’ll cuddle for 5 just watching the birds or something.

FTE - that's the thing tho - your child was clearly unhappy so yes the situation wasn't working for him.

However I'm doubtful that normal baby behaviour (frequent wakings) would be inherently bad for baby. At 6months old is it normal for baby to wake up frequently and if baby is attended to it is unlikely to be an issue for baby.

If baby is unhappy then yes it is a problem to be solved for baby's benefit. But otherwise it is a problem only for the parents. It doesn't necessarily make a difference in the approach: I'd still try co sleeping first. And sleep training as a last resort. But let's not pretend sleep training is for the benefit of baby, in many cases it is for the benefit of the parents (doesn't mean it shouldn't be used, I am just responding to the claim that sleep training is always FOR baby)

@Okbussitout we have discussed childcare for when I go back to work - I’m going to go back four days a week and we have a confirmed daycare place. We’re considering whether we need a nanny on top but I don’t think we’ll know that until we actually try it and while we’re both relatively well paid London daycare and a nanny would still be a huge expense for us, especially with me cutting my hours.

The question for another day is whether DD does well, and whether we are happy, with her spending that much time away from us when she’s still that young. But as I say I think we’ll need to give it a go and see if it works for our family - if it doesn’t, we’ll need to change something but don’t have a fixed idea on what’s going to give yet.

A. Sleep training IS beneficial for the baby because it benefits the baby directly to be able to fall and stay asleep independently and sleep longer stretches without fully waking, they get more and better sleep
B. Benefitting baby v benefitting parents is a false dichotomy. Anything that benefits the parents also benefits the baby indirectly. Happy parents, happy baby.

Hi, I have read the main post only but I wanted to share my experience with sleep 'training' and my partner.

Note we did gentle sleep training which doesn't involve cry it out for hours. We kept changing sleep props one at time. I used to feed to sleep (bottle), we replaced with water, then moved to cuddles, to hand on chest, - so reducing what he was getting and then he stopped demanding. But we didn't do this till -14 months.

My partner is hugely supportive and very lateral in his thinking. I am very emotive. Any type of sleep training made me very concerned and upset about upsetting my son by taking away his milk. My partner looked at his like - he doesn't need milk at night we need to wean him off this habit.

So he took the lead - he knew my son associated me with milk so he did the series of nights and as a team we did it.

@NameChange30 yes he very much wanted DD. His reluctance to commit to being consistently available to do bedtime is because he is worried that things will come up at work and doesn’t want us to be in a position where he is the only one who can get her to sleep without feeding and also to be unavailable. My view is that he should be able to commit to the 10-30 minutes it takes to put her down at night, when it’s at 7/8pm he should be able to consistently take a break even if he has to work again afterwards. It’s a long term issue with him - he really is lovely but part of that loveliness is not wanting to let people down and he knows that I will forgive him for doing so more easily than his colleagues/boss.

Honestly I am not happy that DD has ended up being “my job”, to an extent it’s inevitable with the breast feeding. I knew his hours would mean I’d be doing most of the nighttime work but it’s been particularly relentless for the past four months which has meant I’ve ended up doing all of it. It’s been quite a shock to go from being independent and career focused to spending 95% of my time alone with a baby, no matter how much I love her. Particularly in lockdown.

The original plan was to do shared parental leave but DH’a new job has meant that won’t be possible. It’s a great opportunity that I agree he had to take but he won’t be eligible for leave with the new employer.

On the sleep training debate. I really appreciate hearing people’s views and experiences and those taking time to link to resources (some of which I had already read and some of which I definitely will now).

It is such an emotive issue because both sides clearly want to do what is best for their children and we are dealing with an issue where the answer is not 100% clear (at least not to me). My current view is that, based largely on the cortisol study, it’s likely that there are some short term negative effects for baby’s experience in any training which involves some form of crying which is not responded to by fully calming the baby. However, whether those effects persist in the long term, how unpleasant they are for the baby and whether they are worth it in light of both baby and the parents getting the sleep they need I can’t find a definitive answer to.

For now the situation is making us unhappy but it’s liveable with for a while longer while we try weaning off feeding to sleep and perhaps reducing daytime naps as some have suggested. If that doesn’t work then we can reevaluate and may go ahead with some form of sleep training, perhaps in May when DH is off work.

"Honestly I am not happy that DD has ended up being “my job”, to an extent it’s inevitable with the breast feeding."

I'm breastfeeding and DD is only "my job" when she needs a breastfeed, or when DH is working (luckily nowhere near as many hours as yours). When he's not working the children are a shared responsibility and he does his bit, including night wakings when it's not time for a feed.

Some people might say I'm "lucky" to have DH and I guess I am, in that so many men are so shit, but tbh I think what he does is (or at least should be) normal. I don't get a medal for what I do and I don't see why he should get one for what he does (although we appreciate each other and our contributions).

Also I think he only needs to commit to holding/rocking DD to sleep for a week or so, after the first few days you should be able to do it as well, it's just to begin with that it will have to be him.

@ineedaholidaynow going back to work in September so there’s plenty of time for things to change between now and then.

@NameChange30

A. Sleep training IS beneficial for the baby because it benefits the baby directly to be able to fall and stay asleep independently and sleep longer stretches without fully waking, they get more and better sleep B. Benefitting baby v benefitting parents is a false dichotomy. Anything that benefits the parents also benefits the baby indirectly. Happy parents, happy baby.

Co-sleeping will achieve the same result re not fully waking etc (or indeed baby being attended to by a parent in a responsive manner, which we what we all try to do initially of course). Hence it remains my first port of call. There is no need to teach a baby to fall asleep / stay asleep independently - it will come eventually when they are ready for it.

OP - I hope things get better!!

I have twins and breastfed them- I used to wake up every hour for months. I would go to bed early and my ex-DH would keep them downstairs with a bottle and a travel cot and bring them up when he was ready for bed. That way I got a good 4-5 hours unbroken sleep.

Good luck- it’s awful isn’t it. I always fed mine to get them back to sleep but in the end it was perpetuating the issue. I was too exhausted to even address it! They stopped waking when I stopped breastfeeding at 2 (not recommending this as a course of action BTW)- with 1 baby and a willing DH hopefully you can try new things to settle her not just a feed.

The widely referenced study which claims that baby have higher levels of cortisol when left to cry during sleep training is not a robust or reliable study.

"this study should never have been published, at least not in its current form. Middlemiss and colleagues had no control group. They performed the wrong statistical analyses. They had huge amounts of missing data which they did not account for at all. Her key findings relied on less than half of her original sample of 25.
These are not minor, nitpicky problems. These are major, glaring problems that make interpretation of her findings impossible.
Warning women against sleep training on the basis of this study is absurd."
expectingscience.com/2016/04/21/the-middlemiss-study-tells-us-nothing-about-sleep-training-cry-it-out-or-infant-stress/

This study is better and showed lower cortisol (less stress) in the sleep training group
pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2016/05/21/peds.2015-1486
Conclusion
"Both graduated extinction and bedtime fading provide significant sleep benefits above control, yet convey no adverse stress responses or long-term effects on parent-child attachment or child emotions and behavior."

@NameChange30 I clearly need to have another read through all of this!

How about throwing some money at it and paying for a sleeptrainer/night nanny for a short burst. Sometimes you can't see wood for trees especially if you are so sleep deprived and someone there to help might just help.
A quick google brings up several options especially if you are London based.

@NameChange30

This study is better and showed lower cortisol (less stress) in the sleep training group pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2016/05/21/peds.2015-1486 Conclusion "Both graduated extinction and bedtime fading provide significant sleep benefits above control, yet convey no adverse stress responses or long-term effects on parent-child attachment or child emotions and behavior."

The starting point of this study is night waking being seen as a 'sleep problem'.

That is the issue I think. Our society viewing a baby waking up frequently at night as having a 'sleep problem'. It really isn't the case. I'm a firm believer in responsive parenting (attending to the child, possibly in turn etc, co-sleeping) before moving on to other ways. That's just my view.

I used a sleep trainer for my baby at 12 weeks old

• he wasn’t a bad sleeper but I just wanted to make sure he wouldn’t end up sleeping badly because of me encourage bad habits! Apart from teething he has been a super sleeper and napper, it took about 2 weeks to get into a routine but I can say hand on heart it was the best decision. He sleeps 11-12 hours since then and is the happiest baby. Could I have done it myself from books and not paid someone? Probably but for me and my husband we felt the best approach was to ask for help before we needed it & it’s worked

I fed all three of mine to sleep. The first two were brilliant sleepers in their own cots from around 4 months, the third was a terrible sleeper and was in with us until he was about 18 months. I guarantee it's nothing to do with feeding/not feeding/breastfeeding etc. My advice is do what you have to do to get through the day and sleep will sort itself out eventually. Also, your baby will settle quicker for DH if he does it more.

@LittleOwl153

Feed her around 7/8pm and put her to bed. Go to bed yourself - not in the same space as her.

Express milk for a 11/12 feed for your dh to give her well away from you. (Seriously consider formula feed for this feed ifnyou cannot express) He then puts her to bed.

If you get to 2/3am before you are woken up you will feel so much better.

If you can do this 2-3 days a week it will help you no end. I would say it is hard as you don't get time with dh in the evenings but it doesn't sound as though you do anyway...

Use his month off to get her sleep training. You cannot carry on like this. Sleep deprivation is a form of torture!

I did this.... and my dp gave my son formula at the 10/11pm, changed him etc put him back to bed

I wore earplugs! And went to bed at 8.30:9pm
Dp woke me up for later feed 2/3am which my son eventually dropped! And we all slept happily after ( not really but I did help me a lot)
We kept that dream feed going until he was about 9months old!