Fair sleep rota (newborn)

[ScionTheFox]

We have a 3 week old baby. She does not yet sleep more then 1.5 hours at a time so I’m quite sleep deprived. She is BF but I pump at my husbands requests so he can help with night feeds.

He works and starts at 6am so I do all of the feeds Sunday to Friday with a view that he will help on a Saturday night so I can catch up on sleep.

I am really tired and I’ve had real trouble with my scar opening up this week from all the getting her in and out of her crib so many times a night.

However tonight on his night he has passed out on the sofa so my only opportunity for a night off has left until next week.

AIBU to be annoyed.

Definitely sounds like pumping is a waste of effort.

Have you tried safe bedsharing? It’s life changing. Eliminates need for lifting to help you heal, and generally babies sleep far longer stretches when they are snuggled up to you. Lullaby trust Safe Sleep Seven is a good guide.

Usually the most fair division of labour is for the partner to do all housework and cooking, make you a packed lunch and prep dinner, so you can spend the day BFing and napping.

We split the nights, I would go to bed early and DH would do until 1-2am, then he'd go to sleep and I would do until the morning. The nonsense about the working parent needing sleep so the other parent has to suck it up, makes my blood boil! You're looking after a human, arguably it's more important that you're rested than someone doing a job unless that job involves protecting lives.

And he is the baby's father, you need to put baby in the spare room with him and sleep. He might not wake as easily as first, but it will literally never change if you don't trust him. It does go two ways - gotta let dad figure it out too.

Might be a good idea to change your arrangement to do shifts.

We have a 9 week old who only sleeps on us. (Reflux).

I go to bed at 8pm and get up at 1.30am on a workday. My DH then goes to bed at 1.30 and gets up at 7.30am, or later if he is wfh. At weekends I sleep a bit later until 2/2.30am. Your DH needs to do more.

We split the nights, I would go to bed early and DH would do until 1-2am, then he'd go to sleep and I would do until the morning

This is exactly what we used to do, it was the only fair way. Being at home instead of work doesn’t mean you don’t need any sleep.

I also support this set up. That’s what we did with our first and it allowed me to get rest before the night shift and it also felt fair. It’s also very possible considering your partner gets in at 2pm.

Unfortunately, if you’re breastfeeding, you’re not going to be getting 8 hours of sleep anymore. You might be lucky and have a baby who is able to sleep through on breastmilk, but realistically, it will be a while.

Those first weeks are absolute torture. Went through it again recently with our second who is now 2.5 months and I remember thinking this is why sleep deprivation is an actual method of torture. I cried from the exhaustion. But it does slowly get better!

Do shifts each night, so both of you get a chunk of sleep. We did 3 hour shifts.

I have an eight day old baby. We co-sleep and I exclusively directly breastfeed. During the day DH cooks, does the dishes, entertains our toddler, does the shopping and holds the fort while I nap in the afternoon. This is the type of support you really need from your partner. As a previous poster has explained, not feeding at night will be harming your milk supply and undermining breastfeeding.
I know it’s hard adjusting to the lack of sleep with your first baby, and 1.5 hourly feeding intervals are particularly short, but this will pass and you’ll be so happy you stuck it out breastfeeding when you don’t have to get out of bed and prepare a bottle at night. You may find that once you’re doing all the night feeds that your body starts to produce more milk and the feeding intervals become longer.

Absolutely.

I'm feeding a newborn at the moment. Many many times when the baby wakes me up at night I am 'groggy' and every molecule in my body wants to go back to sleep.

But a baby needs to be fed so I get up and feed it. If I'm worried about falling asleep I put the light on, drink cold water, watch some crap on instagram.

Imagine if women decided they were too 'groggy' to feed babies at night. Then human race would die out.

He's being selfish. Google 'strategic incompetence' OP

I take issue with this. It’s true what you’re saying about hormones etc but she’s doing it one night a week to avoid going completely insane.

YANBU. But as well as Saturday night, can't he take over when he comes home a few times a week, so you can get a decent stretch of sleep in from, say, 3pm to midnight?

You need to split nights. Hes not doing enough.

You need to be able to sleep every night, even for a stretch. We did 7pm-midnight and then midnight-morning.

Freeze the milk, I always froze mine. Build up a supply

If you're in a position where your scar is opening up, unfortunately for him he's going to have to pick the baby up for you every time and be up as much as you for the next week.

you need to share out the nights - even if DH is working. My DH would stay up and do any feeds until midnight then from then onwards would be me.

I would go to bed 7/8 PM to have a decent solid chunk of sleep before taking over.

if your scar is being affected by lifting your baby, is it worth looking into co-sleeping so that you’re not having to lift them as much. You can lie on your side with a boob out.

it’s scary at first but read the lullaby trust guidelines and it’s totally fine.

I havent read through all the comments but if you breastfeed-cosleep. I have 5 children under 10, youngest 8 months, I have breastfed and coslept with all of them since birth and dont know what lack of sleep due to a baby is, they sleep like babies, literally,after a quick feed and a cuddle and since you wouldn't be getting out of the bed and could side feed lying down fall back asleep instantly.

Why you letting your husband butt in and make things complicated for you, bottles were never part of the evolution- baby gets sleep hormones from you and you release morerelaxin hormones when you are breastfeeding allowing you to also fall asleep faster. No way i would be pumping middle of the night lol.

This wouldn't have worked for me. It was far easier for me to do the nights and just co sleep. Him getting up would just have resulted in us both being tired and grumpy because he'd clump about and wake me up anyway.

DH picked up more of the housework so I could rest in the day a bit more and would take baby out in a sling between feeds at the weekend so I could have some silence.

That is the arrangement in our home too, it really doesn't make sense to mess with supply and pump at nights and wake everyone up in the process.

Breastfeed-cosleep- baby carry= happy/rested mum and baby.

Get him to take over from 3pm until 8pm weekdays while you have a sleep. 1pm until 10pm on a Saturday and Sunday, or something that works to give you a break until sleep times are longer

I would 100% recommend cosleeping. I wish I'd realised it was an option earlier! Get a sidecar cot.

Personally I'd rather he took the baby during the day on his days off/afternoons when he's home so I could go back to bed - having to wake him up when you're already awake is rubbish for everyone. But otherwise the shifts suggestion as above is a good one. But he needs to take it seriously if he's going to do it.

Why is he only doing one night a week? Does he work 6 days?

Either way, he should be doing from early evening - midnight ish, so you can go to bed early and get a block of a good few hours sleep.

Why are you not sleeping for the chunk of time from him getting home to him going to bed?
Him gettting 8 hours and you never getting more than 1 is patently ridiculous.
He can reduce down to 6.

I'd only be pumping if it was actually helping you.

Is it convenient for you to pump? If not, I wouldn’t.

Welcome to life as the default parent. I would strongly suggest setting boundaries on fairness from the very beginning otherwise your husband is going to get used to not pulling his weight. It's already extremely uneven with him taking just one night a week but to miss his night because he's tired and can't be bothered to wake up is very selfish. He's relaxing in the knowledge that you, as the default parent, will sort everything out. Could you imagine just going to sleep and assuming someone else will take care of the baby without a second thought?!

If he finishes work at 2pm then either he needs to take baby so you can nap, or he goes and naps and then takes baby during part of the night. There's absolutely no excuse for him not helping out more.

Also consider is pumping really working for you? I would pump once a night so my husband could give baby a bottle but it was so draining and was actually no break for me because instead of feeding baby I was spending ages pumping so it wasn't like I was catching up on sleep or anything.

We did this and I honestly rave about it. It gave me enough core sleep to both be able to cope and actually recover. It also meant that on some occasions we each got a longer stretch if the baby had been awake a lot for the other ‘shift’. It also meant that I used to just get up rather than be up and down out of bed which made me feel worse.