Newborn sleep deprivation - sharing the load

[martin42]

We're expecting our first child in November. We were discussing how we would split the night duties - my wife thinks we should take alternate nights, I suggested she takes weeknights and I do the weekends.

The reason I suggested that split is that I'm a developer and I know, from having done a part time degree for the last five years whilst working full-time, that sleep deprivation can have a really nasty effect on my ability to do my job. Having a newborn will be much worse, but I want to do as much for my wife and the baby as I can without becoming incapable of doing my job - although some impairment is going to be inevitable.

My wife thinks it would be unfair for her to do more nights than me. I'd be grateful for any thoughts at all on this.

If she is breastfeeding she will need to do the majority of nights at first. I'm a foster carer and we always have young babies. My DH is a teacher. Generally I go to bed at 9 and he takes responsibility till 2 am, I do 2 am onwards. That way we both get 5 hours of unbroken sleep, and sometimes longer if we are lucky.
It's not, in my opinion ion about 'equal' shares, but about working as a team to get through.

I am BF so it is harder for DH to 'do nights'. So he helps in other ways. When he was on paternity leave with DC1, he would help me settle the baby after a feed - winding, plus DC1 liked to sleep on our chests far more than in his basket! But when he went back to work, we stopped this.

He has given a bottle of EBM for the late feed whilst I went to bed early to get a good chunk of sleep - this did work well.

I am a big believer in shared parenting and equality in the house (well, equality everywhere really!) Both DH and I work FT (when not on mat leave) and split everything 50:50. However, I feel that night feeds in general are the responsibility of the person on leave - part of why we are not expected to work. The working partner can support this bit I don't believe it is fair to them to do 50%. Help - yes. Do half? No.

This time round (DC2 is 7wo) is different because we have a toddler as well so DH does mornings with him (plus any toddler night wakes though these are thankfully rare now).

HTH.

And I totally agree with parsnip about it being important to work as a team and find what works for you, rather than always splitting things equally.

I'd say its very early to worry about this!

However, I'd say on paternity leave take the baby as much as possible during day and night. Labour is tough and rest is needed for a speedy recovery.

While most babies don't have a routine as such by 2 weeks they are usually settled enough between feeds to get a few hours sleep. We did the same as parsnip- DP took dd til 1.30 then I fed her (bf) and she slept til 5, I got up with her,bf and down again til 9ish so we both got a decent amount of sleep. From dd was 6 weeks she was in a routine and I am now the only one who gets up unless I need help ( medicine etc) she's now 12 weeks. DP can sleep through her waking/bf/me settling her again.

If she is off on Maternity Leave then she should shoulder the brunt of night wakings tbh. There are ways you can jiggle them so its not "all or nothing" - she could take herself off to bed at 8.30/9pm, eith you remaining up with baby til 11pm. Offer them a feed and a change and settle them to sleep. When they then wake for the usually 3am feed, your wife will have had six hours sleep. If you then wake with the LO at say seven, a quick bottle and they may go back to sleeo (dd used to do this then we would both wake at nine am).

Reverse it on a weekend.

With all mine as I have EBF we didn't split it 50/50 we did what worked for us. This meant I would go to bed around 9pm with DH staying up with lo until around 11, giving them an expressed bottle and settling them down. He would then go to sleep whilst using earplugs and I would get up whenever I was needed until 6am. DH would then take over at 6am and leave me to have a decent block of sleep whilst he got up and ready for work. He would then wake me up just as he was leaving for work and I would take over. This meant although we were both tired, neither of us were sleep deprived and he would have a clear head for a day at work, and if I was tired I would try and nap throughout the day. Of course if I needed him throughout the night to help settle, give medicine, deal with a poo explosion he would get up, but we worked as a team and I understood his need for a decent night sleep .

My wife is BFing our newborn, and, as mentioned above, this means that in practical terms she is doing all the feeding at the moment.

That leaves the matter of winding, changing (where appropriate) and settling the baby back down.

We have tried a situation where I effectively followed up on her having fed the baby by doing the other tasks mentioned. The pros are that this is clearly less work for her. The cons are that now you are both very sleep deprived instead of her being very sleep deprived and you a little less so.

We next tried a situation whereby she took one for the team and accepted that at night, until she can express enough, she would effectively do all of the jobs while I slept. The expectation being that I would then step up during the day and do everything else. The pros of this approach were that I got plenty of rest and was indeed able to keep the house in order very well. The cons were that I feel it put a lot of pressure on her to handle the nights mostly by herself, and I'm not sure that is much healthier than splitting the problem and both being sleep deprived. I really, really felt terrible for her.

Last night we tried a more mixed approach which was 'a bit of both'. I was there for the beginning of the night and I got up in the early morning with her, but there was a period during the night where I did get a block of decent sleep that has let me function well during the day.

I don't know that there is a simple, axiomatic answer to this problem. We have a very young newborn and I feel like every night is a learning experience.

Maybe a lot depends on looking at how your partner is coping and trying to find the right balance.

One on one off doesn't sound like it'll work, because there will always be one over-tired grumpy parent and with the best will in the world it's bloody hard not to get resentful when you're that knackered.

DP would take over our (ebf) baby from 3/4ish in the early days when he would only sleep on someone's chest. He also took full responsibility for all housework and cooking so that I could concentrate on ds, which took pressure off me and I felt I achieved something if I managed to cook dinner, or load the dishwasher. At weekends he'd take ds our for as long as possible (starting with 20 minutes to the park and back as that was the window between feeds in the very early days!) so I could have a long soak in the bath.

I found that my instincts kicked in. While the theory of someone else taking ds for a while was great, in reality I found the idea of even dp taking him for more than an hour really hard. So, I would suggest that rather than "tit for tat" sharing you divide all the jobs into two and have your own areas of responsibility.

DP's are bath time, breakfast (he'd bring me mine in bed while I did the morning feed, then once ds weaned would take him down so I could have an hour or two extra before he went to work), housework and evening meal. Any housework I manage with ds around is seen as a bonus, although tbh I was getting a fair bit of the day to day stuff done by the time he was a couple of months old. However, it helped us stay civil to each other to know that the other partner would uncomplainingly pick up the slack iyswim.

Congratulations. My ds will be 2 this coming November, it's a good month to be born in

I think having a set plan now is setting yourselves up for failure! Having a newborn is like having a mini tornado that poops everywhere and sicks on everything!
DS is EBF and during the first few weeks (ie paternity leave) I went to bed at 7pm with baby and he got up and helped with the nappy changes etc but couldn't help with bf-ing so I found it annoying more than anything!
However DH used up some of his annual leave and took Wednesdays off for about 12 weeks and would get up in the morning and let me lie in and on Sundays, this helped me keep my sanity!
Just wait until baby is here, offer to help her as much as you physically can and let her sleep whenever she can/wants!

I think you do need to bring getting more night time sleep than your wife while she's on maternity leave, as she can catch up in the day when the baby naps. Your suggestion of taking over at weekends sounds fair to me. Or ThinkIve's suggestion.

Good luck with the birth.

tumble bwahahahahahahaha! Fine in theory but many many many parents have babies like mine that would only sleep in the sling! I dreamed of being able to sleep during the day! Sleep when the baby sleeps only works if you have one that will happily go hours in a moses basket - something like 5% of them, IME!

My kids dad is a much better sleeper than me, he could fall asleep on a washing line, once im awake im awake and i can't sleep through the day at all. He would go to work come in bath and feed the baby then go to bed at 8ish, i would stay up till 12am feed and settle and go to bed then he would get up and do the next feed at 3ish and go back to sleep then i would get up on the next feed 6ish so we both had plenty sleep. On a weekend he would do the night feeds and sleep through the day and i would take the baby out. Worked for us

I breastfed both mine so I do the nights - DP does a couple of hours first thing in the morning though.

I sleep when the baby sleeps in the day in bed with them Purple despite them not sleeping in a moses basket.

My dd is 18 months and dp has never done a night feed. She was ebf every 2-3 hours for the first 14 months and recently has started sleeping most of the night provided she can sense boob is close. He doesn't wake up and never has and if he did he would be bloody useless. He does give me the occasional lie in but still takes one weekend day for himself too!

Regardless of your plans acknowledge your wife is going to be tired. More tired than she ever knew was possible and be kind to her because sometimes the biggest help for me was him not moaning HE was tired and acknowledging that I probably was the most tiredest person ever, giving me a cuppa and patting me on the head.

Disclaimer: he isn't horrid he just can not function on no sleep and is also a developer

DH would bring home a quick dinner, feed me and I'd go to bed at 7:30 whilst he entertained the baby, bringing him only for short feeds. From Midnight, the baby was my responsibility and DH would get 7 hours sleep.

By 7am we'd both had at least 7 hours even if mine wasn't consecutive.

The biggest and most significant help was the fact that I co slept. If you put a single bed on the side of the double you can sleep there with baby and mother in double.

My DH also thought he could avoid all week night duties as he had to work. It took me passing out from utter exhaustion one evening for him to realise that was a little unfair. Looking after a newborn is also work, and it is relentless. You don't get a coffee break, or to pop out for a sandwich. You are on call 24/7.

The compromise we came up was he did the last feed of the day at 9pm (I expressed a bottle), and settled her for the night, meaning I could go straight to bed after the previous feed, and sleep until the next wake, usually about midnight. That extra bit of sleep was a life saver.

My husband does evenings until he goes to bed around 2:00am, and I grab it from there until he gets home from work the next day. I try to give him some time after work to have some down time to himself, unless baby has been particularly fussy/clingy. But since she settles better with me I have her most of the time. Which is fine, I stay home with her so I can catch up on sleep during the day when she naps.

PurplePidjin Do you have a boppy pillow or something similar? Mine's clingy too. I stick my daughter in a boppy and plop her on the bed next to me and we both crash for a while. She feels cuddled next to me, and she's in a large, firm pillow so I don't accidentally roll on her.

Currently up and bfing almost 3 month old ds, whilst dp snores. What works for us if for me to do all night feeds and changes and he gets up early and does breakfast (we have a 2.5yo too) and entertains them both till he goes to work and I sleep in.

He will take over in the night if I can't settle the baby or if I'm at the end of my tether and always takes care of whatever the toddler wants at night.

What really helps is that on the days he's working from home or doing a half day he'll take both boys out so I can have a rest (theoretically). Oh and he makes sure I have a drink, dvd boxset and my kindle nearby for when I'm feeding at night.

with dc1 I did all the night feeds and all the day feeds as he was a bottle refuser. I went a bit doolally on sleep deprivation, particularly as dc1 could do nights of sleeps lasting less than hour . I was up 9x in the night.

With dc2 we learned our lesson and introduced a bottle from 4 weeks. We both go to bed at 9. I do all the feeds until 6am (about every 90 minutes) And then dh gets an elbow in the ribs. He takes the baby and offers expressed bm in the morning. The toddler wakes and is breakfasted some hours later and both are brought to me around 9.

That does give me only 3 hours uninterrupted sleep each night but so far that is working.

I don't think 50-50 is realistic and one night on one night off would actually make you more tired. It's better to get into a predictable night pattern that you can sustain long term. I find I got MORE tired once dc1 slept better because at least when you know you only get 50 minutes sleep blocks you seem to plummet into a deep sleep much more quickly (and probably hormones help you cope, too).

As others have said - I think it's about working as a tea am so that although you're both tired you both avoid being completely sleep deprived!

Again, I'm EBF and our DS feeds very regularly at night - every 1-2.5hrs. And like lots of little babies he sleeps most happily in someone's arms!

I go to bed at 9ish and DH sits up cuddling him until midnight - bringing him up to me for feeds. I.'me then on duty for both baby and out toddler until 6.30/ 7am. My DH is then on duty until he leaves for work giving me an extra hour or so.

I'd suggest you wait until the baby is born and then come up with the best plan for you.

"With all mine as I have EBF we didn't split it 50/50 we did what worked for us. This meant I would go to bed around 9pm with DH staying up with lo until around 11, giving them an expressed bottle and settling them down. He would then go to sleep whilst using earplugs and I would get up whenever I was needed until 6am. DH would then take over at 6am and leave me to have a decent block of sleep whilst he got up and ready for work. He would then wake me up just as he was leaving for work and I would take over."

This kind of set up is quite common. It will also depend how your baby is during the day - if baby can't be put down and naps for 20 mins at a time vs solid naps in basket or bouncy chair when your DW can at least sit down.

We did similarly to thinkihavebeenhacked We had a lot of problems with BF in terms of production and hence latching, and the position of 1hour express, 1 hour feed, 1 to rest then repeat, was not really tenable position.

DW would go to bed early I would do as late a feed/cover as possible sometimes 11-12 I can get by on low sleep due to mispent computer gaming youth. She would do middle of night and then i would do the next early one and change etc so she was sleeping from 9-3am and 5-8am. i live very close to where I work.

She didn't seem to be able to sleep in day when the baby sleeping. We also did "daddy takeover" lol where I would do all friday eve to lunchtime and saturday eve to sunday lunchtime to give her full "sleep"

DW friends DH seems bit of a dick as they bottle feeding (couple months old), and he expecting her to do everything in week as hes "working"

You may find that for the first few weeks it's a case of "anything you need to do to get by". Ds would only sleep on one of us for the first week or two so we slept in shifts of 2-2.5 hours in between feeds. When things settled down and OH went back to work, I did all of the nights. DS is mix fed so needed bf but also being woken up every 2-2.5 hours would really have effected OHs work. There were days when I could barely count money let alone do a good job at work!!
Oh did try around the house though. One of the best things you can do is take the baby out to let her have a proper rest. I think you'll find it difficult to do alternate night-one of you will always be grumpy!!

Here's what we done, it may be of help, it may not.

While my wife was on maternity leave she did the nights when I was at work the next day and I did my days off. When she went back to work I'd do them when I was off or on lates, she'd do them when she was off and when I was on earlies. In short, you'll try this and that and if none of you are too selfish, keeping score etc you'll find something that works which may mean one doing slightly more than the other.

Well sleep deprivation can lead to anxiety disorder and women after pregnancy may suffer from postpartum depression. So you need to manage time very well and help your wife to avoid depression and any sort of health problem.