Night working OHs, how does it work for you?

[MyDaydream]

My OH works nights, and I might be very premature in asking this, but long nights spent alone make me wonder how will it work? I'll be taking 6 months maternity, when DC will go to nursery full time.
OH leaves for work between 6pm and 8pm depending on shift, and gets back at around 5am, he works 40-60 hours, can be up to six days. I keep thinking of scenarios for when baby is here, and usually they add up to me doing a lot of looking after baby my myself, as he'll be away for bedtime and night feeds, but asleep during the day. I worry more for when baby will be in nursery, and there will be times we won't see OH at all as we'll be getting in after he's left for work.
I've discussed it with him, but he's very much a "it'll all work out" kind of person, whereas I like to have some kind of outline of a plan in place to rest my mind, because obviously I know it'll all work out, sometimes I just don't see how. I'm just looking for other people in a similar situation to let me know their routines, and how much time OH spends with the children.

i'm guessing you haven't had a dc yet? If you are planning on bfing then it will make little difference in the early days imo. You would be doing the nights really anyway. Cosleep i say!
If you do bf you'll prob spend the evenings cluster feeding so get your dp to make you something you can eat one handed for tea, before he goes to work.

I can't really answer about the nursery time as i work p/t.

For me one of the advantages of when dh does evenings (every few weeks) is that he is more inclined to do housework before going to work than when he gets back!
He gets back in the late evening after bedtime (unless that has gone tits up) but as i bf i cosleep with ds and so have never wanted dh to get up with him. I'd already be awake, would have to wake dh who would have a harder time settling him than i would so it just doesn't make sense to me.

maybe have a chat about the division of labour to put your mind at rest. Eg could he stay up for a bit when he gets in to get the lo ready for/to nursery? Jobs he will take on during the day. Eg prep tea, put washing out etc . He needs to realise that if you are doing the baby care you will not be able to do much else. He might not want a formal "plan" but maybe a discussion like this will help put your mind at rest?

I've been wondering about this. Dp will be doing occasional blocks of night shifts, starting the baby's due date . Main concern at the mo is how I'm going to keep DD1 quiet for him to sleep though!

earplugs.

dh has just finished a post which involved some nights.
he would come in at 8ish, go straight to sleep, and when the babies were small we agreed that i would wake him after 6 hours sleep, as that would be just about enough, and certainly more than i ever got. as soon as he was up he was in charge of the dc to give me a bit of a break. i never felt that i needed to keep the dc quiet as dh slept like a log when on nights, but we did used to go out a lot. even to mil's .

I work nights and only sleep for a max of 5 hours between nights then get up for the ds's. When they were little I worked weekend nights, dh had the boys overnight and in the morning while I slept then I saw them all afternoon, evening.

Now they are at school, I take them to school, sleep while they are at school then collect them and spend all after school with them until I go to work at 8:30pm.

DH sometimes works nights. I also work PT and we have two DC. Usually he comes home around 6.30am and we have breakfast together briefly then he goes straight to bed unless they've given me a bad night in which case he'll take them downstairs for an hour or two while I catch up. This means he's usually up around 3 and then goes to collect them from childcare which saves us a lot in a month compared to if they were there until 5 or 6pm. We then eat together and he helps with bedtime before work. It's fine. Oh, and earplugs!

DP can't sleep without his earplugs anyway - dormitory days!