To still not understand why some men never help with night waking/feeds/changing etc

[TheLadyEvenstar]

But can manage to help in the daytime?

DP can do all those things but NEVER wakes up to ds2 in the night, whereas everytime he even moves i am awake.

Anyone else feel this way?

Dh has a long commute and a long day. It would have been ludicrous to make him get up to observe me breastfeeding.

What are blokes supposed to do - strap on some false breasts to empathise and then fall asleep at work all day just to prove how supportive they are?

That said, dh does get up if ever the dcs have been sick. I hate sick. I just stand there ineffectually and retch.

"It would have been ludicrous to make him get up to observe me breastfeeding."

Well exactly . Since we co-slept, I didn't even have to get out of bed anyway.

Tragically, many women these days have to take responsibility for either a. doing all this childcare stuff, or b. getting their man to do some - their fathers never did, how are they supposed to get into it unless someone shifts the status quo? Either way, the job falls to us.

I wish wish wish I could get DP to engage with naptimes. He seems to think that if the baby needs to sleep in the day she just will. Of course she doesn't. So 7 days a week, I have to put the baby down for every single sleep time, day and night, and I am heartily sick of it. If I don't she will just scream the place down. I wish one day someone would just take the tired baby away from me and do magical things over the cot because I do this 4 times a day and I am shattered.
Without wanting to be one of these mealy mouthed "oh they are only men" apologists, on the whole DP does a lot. but the sleep thing is really getting to me now. Really getting to me. LEARN TO PUT HER DOWN FGS I HAVE HAD ENOUGH. I have to find some other way to say this if it is to have any effect.

"He seems to think that if the baby needs to sleep in the day she just will. Of course she doesn't."

His assumption isn't totally unreasonable - lots of babies do just drop off on a needs basis!

Well my dad's generation certainly were involved in nappy changing and general baby care - my parents have told me this, as have PILs. In fact I didn't sleep before 9 months so mum and dad just used to take turns in walking me up and down during the night.

Why is putting a baby down for a sleep so tiring? You feed them you put them down you close the door and go off and do something else, have a nap yourself. Often they'll sleep in the pram or car anyway.

Wow! Those of you who have babies that they can just put down to sleep and leave are really lucky. If I did that, she would just scream and scream until she went red and hoarse, poor little thing. So she often winds up not sleeping much at all during the day as I couldn't face doing that to her. She'll sleep in her pram, if we have a sufficiently long walk, but only while we are walking, so I can't take her home and just leave her to sleep in the pram. She'll also sleep (sometimes, not all the time) after a sufficiently long breastfeeding session (i.e. 2-3 hours). But the second I put her down somewhere else to sleep so I can get something else done, she wakes straight up and starts crying.

So I think that yes, getting a baby off to sleep is a real skill that is not that easy.

My DH is fab - although i do tend to give him a shove and say 'your turn' if he is a little slow. We both work, we both created DS, we are both responsible. When DS was a little baby i was so knocked out with exhaustion i would sleep through him waking and would have to be woken by DH anyway, so we have always both been used to getting up at night. DS is and always has been a very good sleeper from about 3 months so we are lucky and when he does wake at night we are both fine with getting up as and when.

2rebecca - I am asking in all seriousness - if the baby cries after you have done this (shut the door etc), do you ignore it? For how long?

I am convinced my baby is tired sometimes (often), yet she cries when I put her down and needs help to settle. After she has slept she is all smiles so it has seemed to me that persevering with trying to get her to sleep has been the right thing to do. Is this wrong? Should I a. assume she is not tired and get her up again (while she can't play and cries); or b. assuming she is tired just leave her to cry and hope she finds her own way to sleep?

When we are out with the wrap she will sleep in it or not as she likes. But I am very tired these days and can't pound the streets all day at the moment.

My dp is fab, from day one he did night feeds, changes, the works. He did once say that women are genetically designed to react to babies cries, and men dont hear them as well as we women folk do (think he was trying to subtly say he wanted me to do it every night lol!) So I put the baby monitor his side of the bed and turned the volume to max! He wont mess with me again!

My ex dh though, father of my eldest kids, would never do night feeds etc. I worked in a nightclub at night, and had a morning job too, and was pregnant with baby number two, and he still wouldnt do anything. He claimed he couldnt do night shifts with baby as his job was 'safety critical', not that it stopped him sitting up til 4 am playing computer games. My mum ended up having our daughter for nights while I worked. He was just a lazy sod.

When I talked about dh sitting up with me in the night for b'feeding, it was in the first few months when feeding was pretty hellish. I was usually in tears, dd would be screaming, and she usually ended up having a bottle whilst I expressed, so it was great to have him help with all that.

I didn't find newborn days as easy as mooch around, feed and nap when they do, partly because dd was colicky so screamed alot, and partly because she usually napped on the move. By the time she settled down into a pattern I was pregnant with dd2, and so knackered etc

I have never pressured dh to help out in the night, and I found some of the loveliest moments with dd's when they were tiny was when they were all snuggled up feeding in the night, and I'm glad that dh got to enjoy that too.