AIBU to be confused: some couples don’t share a bed/room with their when they have a new baby?

[Raye7]

Today i discovered some couples don’t sleep in the same bed when they have a new baby (and the dad/other parent doesn’t help through the night). It’s not something we have done or even considered.

Does your partner sleep in the same bed as you, if you have a newborn/baby who wakes in the night?

Why do people choose to do this?

(obviously i know i am being unreasonable - people can do what they want - posting here for traction)

Why do people choose to do this?

Why do you think?

1. Men can't breastfeed
2. The father might have a job where being tired could be dangerous - air traffic controller, train driver, airline pilot, heavy machinery operator, any kind of driving
3. Why should both parents be tired? It doesn't make sense. The non tired parent can support the tired parent.

DP has just moved back in to our room as 9 month old has just moved out into his room. This worked well for us, I would cover all the night feeds (breastfeeding) and all the night wakes, sleep regressions etc and had the monitor for our 3 year old, so would occasionally get up with her too. But then come morning DP would get up with them both, take 3yo to nursery and look after baby whilst working from home so I could sleep. This way we both slept just at different times!

My husbands job involves a lot of driving, I don’t want him to have to do that exhausted. He sleeps in the spare room on weekdays and would be back in our bedroom when the baby goes into his own room at 6months. He stays with us on weekends.

Snoring. That is all.

We both at times slept int he living room separately while the other slept in bed with our son who was and remains a terrible sleeper. I'm talking awake for an hour every hour for years. Sleep is necessary for survival. I've been with my husband 20 years, we love getting into bed together, pre kids we slept tangled together naked every night for over a decade. Any opportunity we get we cuddle up in bed naked still. Yet sleep comes first. I've just been in my son's bed for 2 hours reading while he eventually got to sleep (with the help of melatonin and 2 hours trampolining this evening) and now I'm in beside my 4 yr old who is afraid of the dark this week so wakes for a scream once or twice a night. My husband? Where's he you ask? He walked the dog and cleaned the kitchen while I did that. My children have no interest in daddy at night unless they have a nightmare then apparently he's the stronger safer parent. 😂 Anyway it's not a sign of anything other than being blindsided by the effects of sleeplessness I think for most peopwl

With us it started because my husband needed a proper sleep because I was on mat leave and he was working. But that became a regular thing and he never ever did “shifts” or took the kids in the morning. A selfish oaf, frankly.

DH had a very demanding job and was out of the house from 6.30am to 7pm which included over 3 hours of commuting and I was breastfeeding so it made more sense for me to be the one up at night. I did all the night wakings for the first year on weekdays.

DH and I don’t always sleep in the same bed because he has spells when he snores like a tractor.

When DD was little she’d occasionally come into our bed, take up an inordinate amount of room, and DH or me would sometimes slope off to the spare room.

I don’t really see the issue, it’s just practical.

I didn't really have an opinion, but what I didn't plan was that I actually really. loved having my child in my bed!

Which is a good thing really, for years pretty sure no one finished the night in the bed they started in anyway 😂

I am not sure i believe the stats sometimes. How large is the sample size and what do they define as exclusively breastfeeding. At my 6 week check, I said I was combo feeding even though combo feeding meant my dh giving him a bottle of formula once during the week I was in hospital (he had jaundice and needed more milk to flush it out) as well as an occasional bottle if he took ds out so I could get a few hours snooze. I said combo feeding cos in the few days before the check out, I had been fairly sleep deprived so dh fed him 1 bottle which he mostly refused to drink so it was back to my boobs.

I exclusively breastfeed otherwise for weeks and even up to 2 months and ds is now 7 months . And everyone in my nct group mainly breastfeed and take 1 year maternity leave. In nw london. I see lots of mums breastfeeding as well.

Me too! I even sort of loved the annoying stuff like the kicking or this weird thing DD would do where she liked shoving both hands under my body which was quite painful with her little pokey fingers.

She's 15 now but once in a while will want to come and sleep with me when she's sick or has a bad dream and she still does the hand shoving which is even more painful but makes me feel nostalgic.

I wasn't fussed either way, as I had DD to take care of (and I needed sleep, too), but I suspect he realised that had he complained, I'd have shrugged my shoulders and said 'Well, the living room floor's that way>>>>' - he wouldn't have fitted on a two seater sofa.

As it was, she slept for 4-5 hours in one go from very early on, so I was getting enough sleep to function and he never immolated himself at the workshop, so I think he managed well enough on more or less the same amount of sleep as me, with possibly an extra half hour once I'd got up with her in the morning.

I found my DH really irritating in the night when our babies were tiny. Sleepless nights are utter torture, I don’t want someone talking to me, just see to baby and pray to go back to sleep. I breastfed first and mostly bottle fed second, if it makes any difference. If DH got up, I’d wake immediately to cries - probably before him anyway.
Watching him sleep while I fed and changed and shushed and patted gave me the rage. I was much happier and calmer sleeping separately - my second child slept so badly, just sleeping anywhere was my priority and we co-slept a lot. I had no patience for a baby and a man in my bed.

I can't see the point of sharing a bed with a snoring partner when you're cosleeping. I did it, but if I had it over, exH would have been banished to the couch.

I think some people just like sleeping with their baby, and what’s wrong with that? As long as a couple is making time for sex and intimacy at other times, it should be fine. If you can only have sex at bed time, then you’re not using your imagination!

Separately, only 55% of babies are breastfed at all at 6 weeks old, so I think the primary reason is new mothers wanting to be close to their newborn (surely this is not a surprise?) and not because of EBF.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/breastfeeding-at-6-to-8-weeks-data-for-2024-to-2025/breastfeeding-at-6-to-8-weeks-2024-to-2025-statistical-commentary

We do this and at least one of us is fresh the next day instead of both of us knackered. If I do nights my DH lets me sleep in. So we both function well. In all honesty I prefer to sleep alone.

We slept in the same room but I preferred to do all the night feeds and changes as like
@ReadingSoManyThreads, I loved having that alone time with my babies.

I’m a lighter sleeper than DH so would wake up when the baby first stirred and bring them downstairs to bf. Magical times in the early hours with DD and then DS, I felt so close to them. 😍

This! 🙌

This. I breastfed so DH couldn't do night feeds anyway. He also snores so everyone got a better night's sleep in separate rooms. Only having one sleep deprived parent meant we got on better and didn't get divorced due to my grumpiness! Also DH drives long distances for work so it was also safer for him to be well rested. He still helped when needed at night time, I just shouted if I needed him.

Pretty simple there was no room for DH with twins and a toddler all being bf, besides the way I saw it he got sleep and then came in around 6am and scooped them all up while I got 3-4 hours sleep without them so made the nights feel shorter knowing 6am was coming around lol..now the twins are 1 and the 2 hubby arranged work shifts so he starts 5am is home for 11pm and does same thing will take them all and I get sleep onwards...it all runs much more smoothly if you get sleep and work well together

Do most people co-sleep with babies now?
I'm just curious.

DC1 is 17, almost no-one I knew co-slept then, we were told we'd inevitably suffocate our babies. DC1 is a terrible sleeper, still.

DC2 is 2, I think almost everyone I know now co-sleeps, from newborn to toddler age so far. It never occurred to me to do this, but DC2 was a champion sleeper from the off and fine sleeping alone. Less keen now the Fear of The Dark has crept in.

I'm not sure if it's normal to the people I know to co-sleep, or it's just the widely done thing now?

What age does co-sleeping stop? Is it hard to get them in their own bed when the time comes?

Absolutely no judgement either way, sometimes I realise my parenting is out-of-step with the new normal because I just do what I did the first time. I'm curious about whether I've been old fashioned!

With respect if not sleeping in the same bed is the thing that killed your sex life it probably wasn’t that great to start with. I always imagine the people who can’t fathom sleeping in separate beds only ever have sex after bedtime in bed with the lights off or I really don’t see the issue?

We do generally sleep in in the same bed now unless baby is waking up a lot, in which case my husband will go in the spare room so we can take turns if we need to, we also did this in the early days. I’m certainly a lot more up for rampant shagging if we’ve all had a decent sleep, be that from co sleeping or whatever method.

We had separate rooms until the baby was able to go into its own room. I was up breastfeeding several times a night which DH couldn’t help with, and it doesn’t take 2 to change a nappy so I didn’t see any point in us both being sleep deprived.

Usually I went to bed early while DH did the evening bottle feed so I could get some sleep. And then he had more energy during the day to go to work & to do stuff in the house. Win win..

Dd was a pretty good sleeper from the start and rarely disturbed dh.

Ds was a different matter entirely and was a really light sleeper. I found it easier to sleep with him in the spare room for a few weeeks until we world things out. I could relax more as I didn’t see the point of both adults being awake most of the night, especially as dh had to work. Much preferred know that he could sleep (and then be able to look after us more during the day if we’d had a rubbish night!)

My baby is 14 months and we’ve been in separate rooms (in various combinations) since he was about 6 weeks. I want to pull the baby in to bed if needed and go back to sleep with him without moving between rooms. This way we all get better sleep.

We mostly slept in the same bed after having our first but he slept much better and was sleeping through by 11 months. Our second doesn’t sleep well and still feed at night, and our oldest now tends to wake around 2 and want company!