Would you get a night / baby nurse?

[Newarea]

If you could afford it / it was free.

I think in theory I’d love it but in reality I’d feel guilty. Contemplating this as I head into another long newborn night!

YABU - no
YANBU - I would

Your partner couldn't help due to age so you called on parents to help, who I presume are older than said partner?

women are built to deal with that, if we weren't

You’re misinformed and angry. You believe there’s a biological difference in women that makes them able to withstand sleep deprivation? 😆

The thought never crossed my mind when I had dd, I do t think I even knew there was such a thing...... I thought it was just a case of grinning and bearing it haha!
Interestingly, I learnt that in Taiwan it is usual practice (although it is private and does cost) for women to go to a sort of convalescent place post birth where midwives/nurses/caretakers are available 24|7 to help with baby, allow mum to sleep, all meals provided and i think women stay for about a month - it's regardless of how the birth went, not at all related to having had a traumatic birth, PND or anything...... We are perhaps having babies in the wrong country 😂

@Couldntgive2hoots

this!

women are no better equipped to deal with sleep deprivation than men are.

your internalised misogyny is really showing

@Newmumatlast

exactly! If your partner struggled due to age, surely your parents would struggle even more cos presumably they are a fair bit older than him?!

Of course it's only women that you judge. 🙄

I’ve been mocking @Couldntgive2hoots becauae I think she’s mental, but actually, I’m never not shocked by the hateful shit I read on here, aimed at other women.

Yeah I’d prefer someone to look after my house than breastfeed my baby.

I loved the feeds and managed to stay rested when feeding through the night

He struggled with the constant day in day out. I called on my parents a handful of times to watch the baby for a couple hours while I slept. They weren't being called on, nor in the home, day in and day out. So yes older but absolutely possible for them to help whereas my husband was worn out from the relentlessness of it more so than with our first.

Nope, see above

How much help were you expecting from him that he was worn out and your even older parents drafted in?
Was he allowed to abdicate completely due to his advanced age??

No. The tiredness was rough, but the nights themselves were good for bonding, and breastfeeding, and I'm glad that I breastfed. It wasn't easy for us and I'm proud that we pushed through and made it work for us. DH stepped up, too. He did the night-time nappy changes, he put DS back to sleep when I'd finished feeding, he kept me company sometimes, he made sure I had snacks and drinks. He coped with the broken nights and limited sleep a lot better than I did, generally speaking.

I'd agree that help with the house, or a couple of hours in the day now that he's a bit older, would have been brilliant though.

Lol I forgot how amusing mumsnetters can be.

He isnt of advanced age but is older than me by a decade.

He was worn out because newborns are tiring. I was worn out. But I coped better I think due to age (first time he coped the same as me) and I need little sleep.

I was expecting him to do as close to the same amount of being awake as me given we were both off work. But as I was breastfeeding, not the exact same.

My parents assisted because unlike my husband and I, they didnt have a newborn day in day out so though older they could cope with the odd couple of hours or so here and there to allow us to sleep. Usually my husband and i would tag team sleep but he struggled more with our second baby and needed more sleep hence the assistance.

I'm not sure why people are finding it so hard to understand that it is inevitably tougher for someone in the home 24/7 than someone who isnt and therefore my parents, though older, couple manage the odd shift to relieve us.

I'm also not sure why people are derailing the thread by focusing on my apparently advanced age husband (hes not yet 50 ffs and my parents are mid 60s so not elderly lol) rather than my point which was that I didnt need paid help because I was fortunate to have this assistance but had I not, perhaps I wouldve looked to other assistance to enable us to sleep.

Can we just normalise the struggling of parents of either sex, of any age, income level, background etc during the new born phase?

There is no harm in admitting it, and needing and being willing to pay for help. It doesn't mean you don't love your child or are a bad parent.

I am not sure why so many women on this post need to do other mothers down, how can we ever readdress the gender imbalance and fight the patriarchy we all face, day in day out, whether we perceive it or not, if we cannot allow other mothers to discuss what they found / find challenging about motherhood, and how they coped with it.

Haters, just have a day off, actually have a year off.

I did. I had terrible post natal insomnia and needed someone to take the baby overnight so I could drug myself and sleep a couple of nights a week . Baby was FF fed. DH did plenty of nights as well. Whilst it was helpful I hated the whole thing because it was admitting that I couldn’t cope with my own newborn. But I was concerned the insomnia would tip
into PND or psychosis. the night nanny had strong perfume and sometimes got our baby’s name wrong. But it did leave me able to parent 2 kids in the daytime. Cost £140 for 10 hours 4 years ago.

I LOVE my sleep like noone I know, I was that baby who slept through immediately from birth and my go to defence if anything is tough is to sleep. I find sleep deprivation with kids SO hard BUT I still love 4am snuggles, me and my baby feeling like the only people awake in the world. As long as I'm getting a reasonable amount of sleep spread over 24 hours I love babies at night.

It when I have to set the baby down and do other shit I get annoyed.

I have a lot of maternal instinct, I was also lucky to be able to afford a maternity nurse twice a week so I could be well rested to take care of my baby. These two things are not mutually exclusive

I don't think so but it's been a long time since I had a baby so I can't really remember the nights.

all those going on about bonding and enjoying the baby cuddles. No one really wants to be cuddling a baby at 4am. Because
a) there are enough hours in the day for cuddles and more importantly b) you wanna be asleep
at 4am, it’s a biological imperative!

^ but if you have other children sometimes the middle of the night cuddles is the only time you can genuinely just be focused on your baby with no one else's needs to meet. It's a special time I think.

I'm in the 'wohldnt want a night nurse' camp HOWEVER, children's sleep varies wildly, my eldest at 5 was and remains the worst sleeper I've ever experienced, way longer wake windows and shorter sleep than peers from day 1, so difficult to put to sleep, for around a year he'd sleep for 45 mins and be awake for an hour on repeat all night. It was so hard. I still wouldn't have wanted a night nurse but that's because my husband held him from 11pm to 2am most nights as he'd wake if put down because it meant I got 1 window of sleep. I wouldn't have survived otherwise. A single parent with a child like my son and no support? I can't even imagine.

People need sleep and experience vari es so wildly. My youngest had much more typical sleep patterns aside from regressions and things and that's what I'm thinking of when I talk about 4am snuggles in a cosy living room watching Netflix.

I find the whole “you do things differently to me, I’m going to tear you down” mentality on here really hard to swallow sometimes.

There’s some really bad threads at the moment. This one, the one where the poster’s husband laid into her friend for having a nanny for her second baby, the ‘C-section is not a real birth’ thread…

Why do posters feel the need to write poison to other women, purely because they choose to do things a different way?

Why the “if you can’t enjoy cuddles with your own baby at 4am you shouldn’t fucking ‘breed’ and should have got a cat instead,” vitriol?

It’s really, really demoralising and sets women back so much.

@Hellaboring yep it's disgusting and backward

The amount of posts that are taken down speaks volumes

There's no way we can break this patriarchal system if we cannot even have empathy for each other's experience of motherhood

I hope this thread gets taken down.
A lot of it is just jealousy tbh