What is ‘fair’ with a newborn?

[maybein2022]

Currently pregnant with number 3. Big age gap between last child and this one. With both previous babies, DH got very stressed about not sleeping because of his job (not a physical job, not something that involves any kind of responsibility for other peoples lives ie not a doctor, pilot etc and no driving), but stressful. His argument was, because he needed to work, he needed to sleep. I did get that, but both my babies slept appallingly for months and I was literally surviving on very, very minimal sleep. They didn’t sleep well during the day either, so I didn’t get to sleep then. I got on with it, but there was some resentment on both sides, especially when he’d rock up at 10 pm having been ‘very busy’ at work.

This time around, his job is much less stressful than before and he has loads of flexibility over hours/WFH etc which was not an option last time. We are both really excited about the baby, and as the other two are so much older, I won’t be dealing with toddlers etc either. We have also been much better at communicating and I have told him that my worry this time is sleep
or lack of.

So, what’s the Mumsnet view?

YABU: you’re at home, he’s working, you do all the baby’s night wakings and let him sleep through.

YANBU: He should help with some of the night wakings.

My DH has never done middle of the night wakings but will do a late shift ie. I got to bed 9-1am and then I’m on baby duty after and he gets a block of sleep 1am- 7am. This worked well for him as he is a night owl anyway and I found I could function with multiple wake ups if I’d at least had a couple of hours sleep before. Is this something you could try?

Yanbu especially at the weekend.

It all depends on what works for you as a couple. I have a toddler and a new baby - DH sleeps on the other side of the house, but on the agreement that he picks up additional slack - for example he will do more running round for the toddler and take on more housework. We did the same the first time around and it worked well.

5m in and the new baby isn’t sleeping well, but he takes them both out for me to sleep at the weekend and I don’t cook meals or do the shopping etc

DH did 2 or 3 and I did the rest. Whoever got up in the night didn’t get up early.

Weekends he should pitch in and do night wakings. The rest of the time, I think the parent who can spend their day slobbing about in their pyjamas on the sofa if they’re tired should do them - especially since you don’t have any other children you need to be alert for.

I fed DC and went to bed at around 10pm/11pm, straight after the late feed because I knew that on most nights I'd be able to get a good block of 2-4 hours. When baby woke up DH would get them out and pass them to me, I'd feed them then either go to sleep too (co-slept a lot) or would give him a nudge and he'd put them back in their bed for me.

When the baby woke up in the early hours of the morning, usually somewhere between 4am and 5am, DH would feed them a bottle of expressed milk while I slept then they'd go back to sleep until a more reasonable hour and DH would head off to work. On weekends I would have a lie in.

It worked out we were both still getting 6-8 hours of sleep, just divided into two blocks.

You might get lucky and have a sleeper? I had one who went 7/8pm until 7am from day one!

Do you work at all? Are your children at school?

My 10 month old is breastfeeding and still an appalling sleeper. My husband regularly takes turns settling and will do settling after night feeds etc so I can get as much rest as possible. Shifts work well for us. We change the timings depending on what's going on but atm husband tends to do the 2-5 shift as that's when baby often doesn't ask for milk but wakes a lot. So I do the constant re-settling 8-11, a couple of feeds then get some decent sleep. During the cluster feeding phases i tended to do until about 4 as baby usually didn't feed 4-7am.

My DH did shifts. Similar to previous poster. I would go to bed 8pm ish. My night shift would start at 12am when DH would sleep in other room. He got up for work at 6.30He would sleep in room with us if baby sleeping. Wee Ed's Friday night I did all night he did Saturday morning. I had lay in. Saturday night he did all night I did Sunday morning he had lie in.

@Clymene I work, but obviously will be on Mat leave. My other two children are school age.

I actually am ok with having to do the night wakings, it’s (very likely) going to be my last baby and I am a LOT more relaxed this time round. I just wondered what the general consensus was in this situation. I include weekends in the voting!

Thanks for the responses so far. I like the idea of the shifts- DH goes to bed very late anyway. So maybe what would work is me sleeping from Saturday 9-11pm and then taking over and at least that way I’d have had two hours guaranteed. (I couldn’t go to bed earlier as we all eat together as older kids eat with us and eldest often not home until 7 pm)

Not sure where Saturday came from. I meant sleeping 9-11 pm each night.

We went with a mixture of split nights he did until 1am then slept till 8. I would do all day then sleep 7pm to 1am. At weekends we each took a night and a lie in. I bit

Sorry posted too soon. We each had lie in and to be fair both kids were good sleepers early so I know we were lucky.

Depends what times work best for you as a couple. DH took 2 weeks paternity then 2 weeks leave so no worries about work in that time. He'd do 3 hour 'shift' in the evening which I'd use to get some sleep in (I later used this to go out to a craft group!), so I'd go to bed about 7, he'd come to be about 10pm, having just fed our baby, then I'd deal with feeds after that.
I also had a 'night off' a week in the spare room - the safe sleep guidelines say they should be in the same room as an adult, it doesn't have to be the mum. Combi-fed baby which made this possible.

He should be taking over everything except the night wakings.

All meal planning, all shopping, all cooking, all laundry, all cleaning and it needs to be done properly, not leaving a tip for you to get around to in a few months. Also all admin including children's appointments and dealing with school paperwork, etc.

That will give you time to recover and get through the newborn fog.

Don't let him get away with feeling sorry for himself.

@mathanxiety really?! I would never expect this in a million years… I did all of that last time… since being pregnant this time I have passed some of the cooking of dinners over to him, and I expect that might carry on when baby is here. But other than that I’d expect to keep doing everything on your list!

Mine also did all the laundry, and cleaning and cooking for the first four weeks. Once he was back at work (out ten hours a day) he carried on doing all the cleaning and most of the laundry and I resumed cooking.

Shifts for us too. I used to go to bed between 8-9 and sleep until 1 am then DH would go to bed & I’d be on baby duty. Then he’s get up about 6am so I could get an hours sleep before he left for work

I should add that we are lucky and have a cleaner once a week.

You have to do what works for both you and DH. Not just what works for him. I'm sure there is some middle ground, like some posters here have said.

Whenever my DH did night feeds, he would take ages to fall back asleep, flop about, sigh, restless etc literally until the next feed 3 hours later. So it worked better for both of us that I did the nights as I could fall back asleep fast. And he would wake up with the baby, at crack of dawn, and do the full morning shift whilst I'd sleep and come downstairs at 11am or before he had to head off to work at 8.30am.

Our deal was that I did all night wakings but DH had to do a lot of the support work (house cleaning, cooking etc) along with his paid job. It worked well.

If your DH is going to get his sleep then he will have plenty of energy to support you with other jobs!

I've breast fed both DC and saw no point in dh waking to 'help' for that. I don't need anyone to pass me the baby, I was fine to get on with feeding on my own with a Kindle. Cleaning, cooking, washing was far more useful.

A lot depends on how good a sleeper the baby is.

My first was appalling. I was getting barely any sleep, and that was often on her bedroom floor trying in vain to get her to sleep in her cot. DH came home for lunch one day, I went for a nap... and he couldn't wake me when it was time to go back to work so he took her with him... to a meeting. Where pretty much all of them had a baby or toddler so were all sympathetic. He made sure I was getting sleep after that!

The point being... its easy to say the Dad has a job. But the mum is responsible for the safety and well being of the baby, which she can't do if she isn't getting any sleep. You both need rest.

I collect with my second. She was a worse sleeping but it kept me sane. Often toddler would join us too if DH was away.

I do all the nights as I’m breastfeeding. My husband does all the jobs I don’t want to do basically like laundry, food shopping, putting bins out etc. He’s a chef so works crazy hours.