Is this a fair childcare schedule?

[RookieDad777]

Hi Mums,

This is a new dad speaking. I'm having a hard time agreeing to a childcare schedule with my wife, so looking for perspective from mums out there.

We have a 3 week old son and my wife went through a very prolonged labour and c-section. She is still exhausted from the journey.

I'm back to work as the sole earner. Unfortunately we have little help available in terms of family.

This is the most practical schedule I could come up with. My wife hates the 4 am start and insists I give her 2, 3 more hours to sleep.

Wife:
Sleep: 10 pm - 4 am (6 hrs)
Childcare: 4 am - 7 pm (15 hrs)
Free time: 3 hrs

Me:
Sleep 4 am - 9 am (5 hrs)
Work: 9 am - 6 pm (9 hrs)
Childcare: 7 pm - 4 am (9 hrs)
Free time: 1 hr

I would love to get feedback!

Thanks.

See this has moved to childcare from Aibu

Well I do hope that posters here use the appropriate tone of deterrence and push to be the best posters they can

I had an emergency c section for twins in January - home in 2 days and driving in 2 weeks.

Driving without insurance then? Its always twins.

Please be a better poster. 99% of parents on here offer extremely useful advice with an appropriate tone. You should endeavour to do the same

Nothing like a bit of tone policing to up the ante.

If this is real your wife is still recovering from significant surgery and doing most of the childcare. When all is said and done you are simply sharing some parenting of your own child and finding, like every other parent, that its exhausting in the early weeks. Not sure what your exalted "sole earner" status has to do with anything. Her still being in recovery from significant surgery iis rather more relevant.

What is her view of how things are working on this schedule?

@C8H10N4O2

You can call insurers and tell them you are driving before 6 weeks

@C8H10N4O2

I had an emergency c section for twins in January - home in 2 days and driving in 2 weeks.

Driving without insurance then? Its always twins.

I was driving after two weeks. I’m not commenting on the authenticity of the PP. I was just really lucky and felt fine and we live in a village on a huge hill so I felt very trapped.

You can call insurers and tell them you are driving before 6 weeks

Maybe things have changed but when I had abdominal surgery each time the insurers wanted me signed safe and fit to drive before they would cover me within the standard 6 or 12 week recovery time. In neither case was the consultant inclined to sign (I assume due to their own liability).

Honestly it has changed c8

I agree that it wasn’t a helpful comment though.

@C8H10N4O2

I had an emergency c section for twins in January - home in 2 days and driving in 2 weeks.

Driving without insurance then? Its always twins.

I had twins in December. I cooked Christmas dinner for 4 twelve days later. Bloody idiot. I have the photos to prove I do indeed have twins but you'll have to take my word on the fact I was a bloody idiot who should have taken it easier and not been so pig headed

There needs to be some flex here. The baby can’t be awake that much.

What happens at weekends?

OP is your wife on mat leave or does she not work. Having a baby (early in my case) was a real mental adjustment going from working to motherhood in a day or so let alone a rough delivery. Given you are wfh this seems a great opportunity to roll with the punches.

Feels like a lot of posters are either being deliberately obtuse or had very different newborns. Clearly the OP isn't trying to make the baby fit a schedule, he and his wife have a rota for who is on call, doesn't mean they are awake and staring at the baby on their slot.

Pretty much all of my NCT friends and I had something like this in the early days. What worked for us was splitting the night into 9pm to 1am and then 1am to 6am. The first shift was always a bit easier so the person working (we split the maternity leave so that was my DH first and later me) took that. We then also gave each other a full night off at the weekend. That was pretty common amongst our group of friends. Also common was the DH staying up till 11pm or so with the baby and then also taking over from 5/6am but the mother doing the middle hours.

I remember crying after our NCT 3 month meet up though when I realised that we were the only ones still doing this and everyone else just talked about "the night feed" in the singular

And all the sneering comments about "it's not manning a phone" "where's the flexibility" - just winging it really wouldn't have worked for me on night wakings because I would have then woken every single time, I needed to know whether it was my job or not to sleep through it or wake up appropriately. Might be fine if you have the sort of baby who is only up once or twice but mine were up basically every 1-2 hours.

@MattyGroves

And all the sneering comments about "it's not manning a phone" "where's the flexibility" - just winging it really wouldn't have worked for me on night wakings because I would have then woken every single time, I needed to know whether it was my job or not to sleep through it or wake up appropriately. Might be fine if you have the sort of baby who is only up once or twice but mine were up basically every 1-2 hours.

Yes but you could decide this each night depending on how tired you were, what the working parent was doing the next etc. Was it this regimented?

With a newborn, we preferred to have an agreed pattern, not to keep discussing it every day. Of course if one of us wanted to change it a bit, we sometimes did. No indication that the OP wouldn't do the same. He is just looking for a sense of what's fair and what other people do. We had a lot of chat along these lines on our NCT WhatsApp group.

Your wife has it made re sleep frankly.

My second didn't sleep at night really for four months and my DH slept through in the weekdays, as he had to work and look after the older one (who was struggling a bit as baby was also very unsettled during the day). At weekends he pitched in and he tried to break up his working days to give older one attention and stopped at 5pm to do the bedtime chaos and logged on later and worked until midnight, so I thought he did his bit tbh. I Also had a c section.

I don't think it is actually about the sleep. Because there's probably no way of sorting it so that it feels actually good to both of you. Survival is the aim. For me, I'd have done better with less sleep but sleeping from 3/4am, because my rhythms are more night owl and I struggle to wind down and am better just but that is just me and your suggestion isn't inherently unfair, far from it.

A couple of suggestions

1. Do you have cash spare for some help? In the form of a mother's' help in the day? A couple of mornings of taking both kids out somewhere - local park or whatever - for a few weeks could tip the balance.

1. If it doesn't wear off soon, you may need to investigate causes of the unsettled behaviour. Esp if it comes with mucus nappies, screaming etc. Might be an intolerance. I also found with my unsettled one that cranial osteopathy really helped - can recommend someone in Kent.

Oops! Very old thread!

Hey! I think your schedule is too rigid! What about showering for work, shopping and all sorts when it is technically your turn to look after the baby but you need to do something else now? When I was on the mend I couldn’t even stand long enough to do dishes comfortably. As you get to know the baby and they settle into a routine, it might make more sense to say your partner can do the feed at x o’clock and you’ll take the early morning one so she can get some rest but be careful. My partner said he would do the night feeds as I was on some heavy medication in the beginning, and as things progressed I lightly resented him because all she would do during “his turn” was sleep!

It came up as recent for me and I didn’t check the date until I saw your second post haha. I do hope he got on well as he seems lovely.

If I was your wife I'd be going to bed earlier at the newborn stage, and I don't think I had 3hrs of 'free time' till the baby was quite a lot older. So she could have him till 8/9pm maybe and go straight to bed, that's what I did! Going to bed earlier means the early start not so bad.

But also to be fair she's probably doing night feeds as well before 4am if breastfeeding? Or are you doing bottles?

I think it would be more fair if you had the baby from around 8/9-2am personally

I totally get having a schedule. Our baby didn't sleep much at all unless being cuddled, so we did have to tag team and it makes sense to have rough 'handover' times!

We did me sleep 7-12 and husband slept
12- until whenever he wakes up or had to be up for work. He had the main chunk as he had work and I could sleep in the day (!?) we slept downstairs with baby just until she dropped a few night feeds and it all became a bit more predictable. During the day I had baby while he was at work. Then when he was home we just shared the cooking and any other jobs. I think you need to look at your schedule a bit more. Do you even spend any time together?

I agree with other posters who say you need to go with the flow, but we had a similar discussion. I used to go to bed at about 7pm in order to be able to get up in the early hours. My husband would stay up as long as he could. Our baby wouldn't sleep except for on one of us for the first few weeks and obviously we were petrified of falling asleep ourselves due to all the warnings about sids. It was only for such a short time though (although my husband is still banging on about it and how much he helped 18 months later).

What we did that got the baby settling was swaddle, with a proper swaddle rather than some Velcro contraption. Took a few weeks to have the energy to work this out but it did help. And white noise. We had an app called sound sleeper that played womb sounds. Seemed to work! And lots of milk before bed. Once stump is off, we got into nightly bath routine quite early and are still in it now. We have a great sleeper these days who goes 12 hours most nights and no need for a schedule or any arguments. This too shall pass. Try and do a bit more than you might think exactly fair while she recovers from the surgery and hopefully the baby will get in synch by the time that's over. Sure you've managed a day of work after a night out before, etc, it won't kill you and your employer will understand.