Mums on mat leave with bottle fed babies...

[MsFrog]

...do you do every night feed every night? I know different things work for different couples. Is it reasonable for one person to do all the night feeds? Is that a stupid question?

I think this depends on the individual family set up.

My DH has a chronic illness and so needs more sleep than I do. He also works full time and has regular hospital admissions. I'm a bog standard generally healthy person on mat leave. Of course I did all the wake ups. Of course there were times I was on my knees with tiredness, but working full time while ill is no picnic either so I just needed to crack on.

It does mean that I am left with an irrational anger against people who "can't cope" in much more straightforward circumstances. Some kind of PTSD maybe.

DH doesnt do the night feeds. Not necessarily because he was at work because being at home with a 3yr old and a baby is just as hard work but because baby DD didn't feed well with DH and DS is also a 5am riser so DH gets up with him and I can catch an extra hour.

I think some of the responses may have been kinder if you'd mentioned the toddler in your first post.

I have a 1 year old and a 2 year old. Toddler stopped napping before baby arrived. My days start at 530am, end at 8pm and usually involved several wake ups. I am back at work full time now too, and I give you ALL my sympathy because being home with 2 young children felt so much harder to me than working!

I'm not in your position because I'm breastfeeding but resentment started to build up here. I recall sitting in the nursing chair mumbling to my baby about 'daddies useless fucking nipples' while he snored away oblivious!

Please talk to your husband. After a lot of communication I managed to help my husband understand how exhausted I was and how it was impacting my relationships with the children. He now gets up with them on both Saturday and Sundays so I can catch up a little, but also puts them both to bed twice a week so I get some 'me time' - for a gym class or just a glass of wine in the garden. Its helped my mood and my mental health no end.

You might not find compromise on the night feeds themselves but you may find there are other things he can do to make life easier in general!

I think it’s reasonable to expect some involvement from the working partner in night wakings/feeds. Maybe not 50/50 but you should be working together to make sure one parent is not carrying the full load. How is it reasonable for you to never have a full nights sleep? Baby was/is mostly breastfed but DP has always done a bottle feed (formula) at about 10.30 (in newborn days this meant I got to sleep uninterrupted til 1-2am) and I did the other night feeds. I had the odd night off in the spare room & he bottle fed during those. since we night weaned at about 6months he has done the 5am settling. I then get up with baby at 7ish so he can have and extra half hour or so in bed. We also alternate lie ins & “nights off” over the weekend.

Oh to add when I was doing the night feeds DP got up with baby so I could have an extra half hour-hour in bed

I wouldn't expect a working partner to get up and do night feeds. For us, I'm a lark, he's a night owl so it went like this:

8pm - DH - that's his 'bonding' time
midnight - DH - I'm already in bed and he's up watching telly
4am - me - I'm awake
The rest of the day, me because I'm on ML

However, if the feeds were different hours, ie 2am, no way would I expect DH to get up BUT he would have done the 6am feed.

It is about balance. And I personally don't hold with 'lay ins' I felt that just upset my structure.

For me it was totally reasonable to do all the night feeds because DC was our first child and a pretty easy baby so I could have a rest during the day. We’d lie in, potter about the house, maybe go to a baby group or for a walk and have naps. While babies are tiring, that wasn’t as hard or tiring as work unless you have a really easy job which my DH doesn’t.

Obviously looking after a baby and one or more additional small children is a different ball game. And if either parent is ill they get to sleep/rest while the other steps up.

DH helped in the early days when DD was tiny and feeding a lot and not settling between feeds. She's 9 weeks old now and in a much better routine. DH does 10pm and 6am feed, I do 2am feed. DH went back to work after only a few days off (self employed) and he still continued to help.

SAHM should 6/7 nights so they get one lie in.

I did all the night feeds and ds's dad didn't even work. Apparently he didn't wake up when ds was crying 🙄. Needless to say we didn't stay together.

Haven't read the thread past page 4 but my feeling is that as a partnership you try to support each other to feel as good/strong as possible. So you might say 'the person not going into work does the night feeds' but lack of sleep is gruelling and can really affect your mood and ability to function, so surely if you're struggling the person going into work can pitch in? Equally if the out of the house worker is struggling to work properly when doing night feeds, the stay at home person takes the brunt for a bit.

Obviously this only works if both partners are prepared to be honest about how they're feeling and generous/empathetic about playing their part. If not you have to formalise it a bit to unsure it's not really unequal.

Hahah thanks @Trixie78 . My twin babies are of course going to be perfect sleepers and my two year old will not play up atall.... we have already made this agreement
Thanks for the tips though. Going to be tough!

I did all the feeds but only because I expressed to feed, so would feed and then pump while he went to sleep, at the weekends dh would feed while I pumped.

Dh used to do late night feed every night so I could go to bed early then Friday and saturday night feeds. We each had a lie in sat or sun

We did night on, night off even when he had work. Sleep deprivation was too much for one person to take alone. Plus I had two babies at home to look after in the day which in my opinion is harder than being at work. I can't wait to go back to work! Luckily they both mainly sleep through now but it's usually me that goes in now if one wakes up.

I did, my husband works a job where he needs to be fully focused so needs the sleep or else we probably would have done a night each. He would get up and make the bottle for me though while I changed DD's nappy and settled her then he would go back to sleep.

I am a sahm and my dh works full time. He does 3 nights and I do 4. I don't think it's fair for him to have the weekend on night duty both nights. We split in during the week and both took a turn during the weekend. Dh is very hands on and he actually wanted to do it so I didn't argue lol

DH did loads.

He works a shift rota so it's maybe a bit different.

In the end it's about what works for families. I do think though that it seems women are often expected to do everything in our society- leading to women doing too much after cs, and I wouldn't be surprised if it contributed to pnd.

Being sleep deprived is grim.

Anyway he took 2 weeks pat leave 2 weeks hol so a month for each child. While off obv he did loads. I had a CS each time so that covered most of the 6 weeks you're supposed to take it easy. If you've got a toddler it's really hard not to do things you're not supposed to do.

I BF but he'd get up in the night bring me the baby. If they cried but not hungry he'd cuddle them down to sleep.

When DD1 was tiny she would scream from about 10pm to 4am and we took it on turns to stay with her downstairs so the other could sleep. While he was off obv.

I also had pnd with both and so he looked after me carefully.

In the end it's up to the family. I do know lots of men who 'work late' openly saying it's to avoid bathtime/ bedtime though.

I suppose in the end I think lots of men could probably do more. On other threads on here it seems like they just don't see it as their 'job'. And someone else will do it so that works fine for them iyswim.

Dh did the 9-10 ok one and I did the early hours one . I believe that is fair because he needed to work and pay the bills .

My first two were bottle fed, my second two breastfed.

First DC, DH did the last feed, around 11, then I did any night feeds. Second DC, I was really ill after his birth, so DH did all the night feeds for me, till he was about five months and slept through, bless him. Third DC, he gave him a bottle about 11, then I BF during the night. Fourth wouldn't take a bottle at all, so it was all down to me, but my DH was usually up with number three anyway in the spare room, so we probably had equal nights sleep.

My DH has always been a hands on Dad, he reckons I had it much harder than he did going to work.

We concluded that looking after 2 kids all day was harder than working an office job. DH did one night during the week and one at the weekend. I think he also did about 25 days out of 30 nights during a period I was unwell shortly after birth of DC2 despite working. I did have to ask for the mid week help but not the help when I was ill. Unless he’s flying planes/performing heart surgery then everyone should be allowed to get some sleep.

I breastfed during my mat leave but when my husband took over on shared parental leave my daughter was bottle fed and as I was working I would usually do a late night feed and early morning feed but my husband would do through the night. When I finished work of an evening I would take over childcare while he had a rest before the night. At weekends we would share.

DS1 - DH is happy going to bed late so he'd stay up and deal with DS until the 11/12 feed during the week and that would let me get until 2/3am uninterrupted (prem so was on 3 hour feeds at first). From when DH finished work on a Friday we just alternated each feed.

DS2 - far less rigid routine as not prem and he slept through from early on but we had a similar plan. It didn't quite work that way as he didn't need the same number of feeds so I think I did more of them but DH sorted DS1 for breakfast etc if DS2 was sleeping beside me.

I bottle fed DS and we shared night feeds even when DH was at work. Once DS dropped feeds DH would do like 11 and 5 or whatever and I’d do the middle of the night one. And we’d swap that at weekends.
He was soon down to just the two though so we’d then just alternate.
I could never nap when DS napped as he was a difficult baby.

As far as I’m concerned both we were both ‘at work’ during the day so when we were both in the house it was fair game.

Better to have two mildly tired parents than one on their knees with exhaustion and the other fully rested.

My husband did Friday and Saturday nights. He only works Monday to Friday and often our son barely slept in the night.
He slept through before I went back to work or we'd have split it 50/50 like we did with our eldest.