To think that your husband gets up in the night

[JennDi]

As the title says.

Interested to see how many husbands get up if their baby / child wakes up during the night (once they are older than two months)

YANBU - my husbands shares the nights and gets up regularly / or at least some of the time

YABU - my husband doesn’t do any of the night waking

My husband does 100% of the night wakings for our 1 year old and has done pretty much since little one joined us at a few weeks old. Our 3 year old is up very early and occasionally wakes in the night so I focus on them. My husband also took the equivalent of maternity leave. He's a totally equal partner when it comes to parenting.

Rarely when I was mat leave. He would stay up and do a feed wake up at around 1 am. and would always do early Sunday morning so I could catch up on some sleep.

Now I'm back to work, he does 3 night per week and I do 4. I am not back to full time work where he is.

He does do the majority of school runs, nursery drop offs and pick ups, week night dinners as I have a longer commute. He also does 4 out 7 bed and bath times for both kids, plus laundry and other chores when he's wfh and in the week.

It's actually probably 45 (me)/55 spilt over the week, taking everything into account.

I bf and couldn't be bothered with the continual pumping so I was always up for feeds, when ds was tiny and feeds took longer I would take him downstairs and remember watching Rosanne reruns that seemed to be on every night (20 years ago!) and when he was a bit bigger I would just bring him in bed and half snooze while he fed.

dh would take over for any nappy changes. A serious up the back poonami would be a team effort!

Both my babies slept through from 11/12 months. Before then I was on maternity leave and breastfeeding. My husband was working a very demanding and stressful job. I wanted my husband to sleep for work and I wanted to breastfeed, without pumping - so for us it was a no brainer. I did all the night wakings. Once I was back at work the children were sleeping through.

Mine never did anything at night. They are 4 and 3 now. I think he has got up maybe once or twice ever. No mitigating reasons, both of us work. He's just lazy. It's one of the reasons we are now splitting up.

And one didn't start to sleep through reliably until 2.5. stopped bf at 15 months. Even now there's the occasional nightmare or wet bed. So plenty of opportunity!

I'm a SAHM to a 2.5 year old and we alternate who is getting up each night. We always have shared that, even when I was on maternity leave.

We see me being a SAHM as a job like his, so we share all tasks 50-50 outside my husband's working/commuting hours.

I do all the nights. Baby is 11m at still wakes 2-3x, I’m breastfeeding. DH gets up if the baby wakes anytime after 6am. Works for us at the moment, but might change when I go back to work.

@Coffeerum because if they are both working it should be shared and who ever has the riskier job IE surgeon or HGV driver or driving the furthest or on faster more dangerous roads they should get more uninterrupted sleep.

If dad is the only one at work as mum is on mat leave or he is the only one with a job that puts him or others at risk he should get the rest and take over on non work nights.

Yes my husband did as I couldn't breast feed. He was gutted when she dropped her midnight/1 am bottle. He still gets up to comfort her during the night if she has had a bad dream.

I breastfed and was at home. He doesn't have boobs and was out at work, so it made sense for me to do all the nights. There was no point in both of us being awake. He would do other things, like baths and bedtime stories, sort the other kids out so I could take baby up and get an early night (as co slept), cook dinner when he got in from work so I could just sit and watch tv and rest.

3 kids. DH and I have always taken it in turns, literally every single time. In the early days with newborns we were both up as I pumped whilst he fed from bottle (babies never latched).
We are both of the opinion that nobody deserves more sleep, working or not working. He has a very responsible 6 figure job, and functioned perfectly fine!
Why should a sahm get less sleep? I don't get it.

When he was off work at the wkends yes we would take turns but not when he was working.

He wld try and do the last late feed at 11pm and I'd go to bed very early like 9pm. So least I cld get a solid block of 4-5hrs before having to get up again or 2-3hrs if she wldnt settle back down after the feed 😭

My husband is a morning person and I’m a night owl. Our plan is for me to do nights and him to do mornings before starting work so I can nap.

Maybe a random question but why do all the breastfeeding mums actually get up? I never did just hauled the baby in with me, fed them back to sleep and popped them in the cot next to the bed. Sod physically getting up as well for no reason

I was exclusively breastfeeding mine so it was always me. When they stopped breastfeeding at 2 and a half my DH would do any night wakings

I do all night wakings, DH does all mornings. This has always worked for us. We have 3 kids with various disabilities so we have several night wakings and the kids are generally up for the day anywhere from 4am.

It’s not really about that though if you’re beastfeeding directly - zero point in my husband watching me sleepily feed baby, it makes sense for him to get up at five and let me lie in! Sounds like you had a great system that worked well for your family but breastfeeding directly changes it because only one person can do it. Fair play to you for pumping at night though - I did it for a few weeks and it’s way harder and a lot less sleep than directly feeding !

My ex never did, he refused. He was kicked out by the time baby number 2 was 4 months old.
He saw his working sleep nights as essential and his days off sleep nights as essential. Never did a night or a morning. He's not seen them in 15yrs.

When I was on maternity leave and he was working I would do the feeds during the week and at weekends we would share them. When I went back to work I would go to bed early and DH would usually do a feed before coming to bed, then if DD's woke I would get up with them, however this was rare because I would wake up early usually before they were ready for a feed.

My DH is terrible at nights. It takes a lot to wake him so I rarely saw the point of waking him after I was already awake as I wake easily and I’m a bit of a night owl. It worked for us though because he is good at mornings and would get up while I slept in and quite often I’d have a nap while he got dinner ready. So I don’t think it’s necessarily about having 50/50 at night, but if you miss out on sleep at night he should be facilitating you have rest/sleep at other times. Of course, it’s very hard to reasonably discuss all this when you are sleep deprived!

She is working on mat leave, that is work its just unpaid work in the house so you wrongly think it's piss easy and she deserves unequal rest.

When he comes home and during the night they are both on the clock for arenting duties and can do their share of night waking.

I

It was always me while on maternity leave and breastfeeding. DH couldn’t help with feeding and had to go to work the next day. Once we were both working it went 50/50.

Women actually need more sleep on average than men even on just a daily average with no pregnancy or post birth being a factor.

Being pregnant, giving birth, recovering from birth and breastfeeding all require sleep for optimum function, a mother's quality of sleep should be at the forefront of the families mind and priorities.
MH issues are exacerbated by lack of sleep. Raising a baby is hard work, stop excusing men from parenting duties at night because they work outside of the house.
These attitudes are what men use and abuse to get away with not being even half decent parents that do their share.

Just stop it.

Breastfed so all me. DH did however bring me breakfast in bed every morning and that has stuck even 7 years down the line so I think I’m winning 🤣