Arguing about getting up with baby during the night

[Sunflower2023123]

We have a 4 week old baby. I get up for all night feeds during the week as partner works full time and is up and out the door early for work. Partner has a couple of times now offered to get up for feeds (formula fed baby) when it's a Friday night... this always ends up in arguments! Partner never gets up when baby actually stirs, I ALWAYS have to wake him and tell him and he takes ages to the point the baby stirring turns into full on crying and he always tells me to calm down. He does not seem to grasp that we must get up quickly as longer baby is left the more distressed baby gets. This also means the more distressed baby has become the longer it takes to get them back to sleep. Partner is also bad for getting up going to toilet first etc and asking me to hold the baby whilst he does this.

I often wind up getting up to "help" which results in me doing most the work. I also think it's unfair asking me to hold baby etc whilst he sorts himself out, when I get up in the night I don't disturb him at all and I also get up as soon as I realise baby is awake.

AIBU to expect him to get up ASAP with baby and not ask me to help? The whole point is to give me a chance to sleep for one night. I'm at the point I'm tempted to tell him not to bother helping as the arguments aren't worth it and I don't end up sleeping well anyways because I get so worked up after it all.

Sleep in a separate room, on the sofa if you have to. If this doesn't work out then you'll just have to accept defeat and take a lie in instead.
Men don't have the same chemicals as us when it comes to nurturing a newborn. They're more able to sleep through noise and Mother Nature doesn't keep them on the same high alert.
I always did the night feeds and my husband gave me lies in on a Sunday for as long as I wanted and did most of the care during the day.

I feel for you OP !

My DS is 10 weeks now and I was in exactly the same position

As pp mentions , I just did/ do all the night feeds as I would wake anyway BUT I then got DH to do the early morning feed before work ( normally around 6 am) so I could at least sleep in.

See if he will do that plus the ( 11pm or similar) at least then you can have a 3/4 hour sleep each side of the night

It honestly does get better once they go a little longer at night so it won't be for long... hang in there ♥️

Do not give in and do it all. That's exactly what he wants you to do. I'm sorry, I absolutely can't stand men like this who either refuse to pull their weight or do it slow deliberately in the hopes that you will help/take over.

Don't put up with it. Stop jumping in to help him, let him do it and he will soon do it quicker when he realises it's up to him to settle the baby and it takes longer the longer he leaves it.

Every Friday and Saturday night go sleep in a different room and let him handle the nights. He’ll figure it out.

^^This.

I don’t agree with posters saying just let him off night feeds in exchange for something else.

Doing all the night feeds is the thing that can most lead to maternal mental ill health, worsen PND etc. It’s the bit that is depressing and gruelling. Having a nap in the afternoon whilst he goes for a nice stroll with the buggy does not even things up. Having him take some night feeds so that you can then have the lovely stroll feeling more refreshed is much better.

I say that as someone who is a big night owl by nature too

On a separate note what are you going to do when little one isn’t going to be sharing your room @Sunflower2023123?

When DS was a little I did all the night feeds as BF, but in the first few weeks DH used to get up and settle DS once he had been fed as could take some time to go to sleep and I could then get more sleep. So possibly hormones made me wake up but once I knew DS was being looked after I could sleep, so even if we are hard wired to wake up it is no excuse that a man can’t do something once awake

Sp OP gives in - he gets what he wants?

Women have such low expectations of the people they’ve chosen to raise a child with. It’s really very sad.

Don’t give in or he will never get used to night wakings and you will end up doing it all for years to come. It’s only 4 weeks in so he needs chance to get used to keeping an ear open and he will learn to respond quicker if it is him that has to get the baby back to sleep. If you can’t sleep on the sofa then maybe wear earplugs or something, try to pretend to be asleep so he can’t ask you for help.

We are going to move house after he is 6 months old (we rent so don't have to sell a house and buy another etc)

The mention of mental health and PND is what concerns me, as I had a bit of a breakdown midweek at 2am one night due to sheer exhaustion from not having slept for days. Partner realised I was in floods of tears and took over the baby and sent me to bed. However it should not take me getting to that stage for him to realise I need help with nights sometimes! And this is what frustrates me more is that literally 3 days later he has forgotten all about this when it comes to it being "his" night and helping me out.

I'd also like to add to that the bit about the afternoon nap and the nice stroll etc. For as long as I can remember I cannot for the life of me nap/sleep during the day! No matter how tired I am I physically can not drift off into a nap!

Yanbu.
My ex refused to deal with either dc at night. What he didn't realise was that it meant I got used to doing it all alone......

As far as I'm aware, men do actually have the hormones/chemicals/biology to enable them to look after small babies; they just have to be present, hold the baby skin to skin etc., for those chemicals to keep going (just as a woman does). 'Biology' is too often used as an excuse.
If you're working looking after a newborn all day and through the night while he is only at work in daytimes, there's a huge disparity in the load and it's not good for your physical or mental health. If his job is one where lives are endangered if he's tired (as a baby's is if a mother is tired), it makes sense to let him sleep on week nights then you sleep in another room and he take over at weekends.
Not everyone can sleep during the day while looking after a baby or just to order. I certainly couldn't.

Remember that he isn’t helping you out. That implies that the baby is your responsibility and he can just help when he fancies or when you’re desperate.

This is his baby too and with bottle feeding, he’s just as responsible as you for the night feeds.

He isn’t doing you a favour.

Exactly. Especially about using biology as an excuse.

My husband never struggled to wake up with the baby, he was awake just like I was when it was my turn but then he’d never have left our baby hungry to try and have me do all the night feeds because he isn’t an arsehole.

I am like you in that I cannot nap in the daytime. There are a couple possibilities here. One is that he isn't confident enough at night to do it on his own and is waking you for advice. If this is the case, then since he has now disturbed you several times during his on-duty nights, he should have learned what to do by now and should be independent going forward. Another possibility here is that he is doing strategic incompetence. I.e if he just keeps waking you up to help, you'll give up asking him to do any nights because you'll be woken up anyway. I think it's possible to do strategic incompetence subconsciously. He might not know he's doing it. A third possibility is that he just is a very deep sleeper who cannot wake up and be alert in the night.

I think all of these possibilities are solved by the following: what he needs to do is stay awake during his shift. He should watch Netflix or something. That way he will hear the baby when baby wakes up. If he does this, you probably will not be able to get him to take over an entire night, but if he takes both Friday and Saturday in the deep hours, you should be able to get in a good 5 hour sleep shift in. You'll need to do some prep: over three or four days, record what times the baby usually wakes up in the night. It will change over time but you should be able to get a snapshot. Work out beforehand (privately) which of those times you are best able to sleep. For example, if your normal sleep time before baby was midnight to 8 am, then what you'll ask your husband to do will be different than if your usual sleep time was 10 pm to 6 am. For example let's say your normal sleep time was midnight to 8 am. If baby usually goes to sleep at 10 pm and wakes again at midnight, 2 am, 4 am, then he should be on his shift from midnight to, say, 5 am. He can sleep 9 pm to midnight and 5 am to 10 am on the weekends. You wake him at midnight then you go to sleep. He doesn't wake you until 5 am unless the house is burning down. It would be better if you could go to sleep at 11 pm and be woken at 5 am, and if that's how your sleep cycle runs then great, but I'm picking the most difficult option to show you how it would look.

Definitely go in the spare room if you have one, with ear plugs!

One is that he isn't confident enough at night to do it on his own and is waking you for advice. If this is the case, then since he has now disturbed you several times during his on-duty nights, he should have learned what to do by now

I wonder who taught the OP what to do?

@Sunflower2023123 The bit about him not waking up as fast as you is fair enough, my partner is the same, there isn't much he can do about it and it's fairly common I think.
But the bit about taking his time before the feed and letting baby get upset is not. It's something you learn very quickly when trying to settle a baby back to sleep for hours at 3 am!

The only solution is to let him do the feed on his own and not intervene. Put earplugs on, pretend to sleep, don't hold the baby for him, don't help, just let him go about it the way he wants. He will spend 3h on a single feed and learn not to do it again!

The other option though if that would help you is for him to do the late evening and early morning ones instead of the all night. For us that worked much better in the long run with our first. My partner would do the last feed of the evening (sometimes until midnight/1am), either playing video games or snoozing on the couch with baby sleeping in his Moise basket. And he would take him out of the room in the morning from 6am.
So I was still doing the night feeds between 1am-6am (which he found much harder than me), but I could get a proper sleep before and have a lie-in in the morning (and he would bring me breakfast in bed when I woke up).

Absolutely, was about to say the same. You need to reframe your thinking on this OP, he's not helping you out he's doing less than half of the overnight parenting.