Leaving DS for two nights with daddy!

[Jode82]

I have a 6 1/2 mo DS who I spend pretty much every waking moment (well, his not mine) with and now I'm going away for the weekend for a close friend's hen party. I'm absolutely freaking out (silently). TWO NIGHTS WITHOUT MY BABY!!?!

Part of me is really excited about going away on my own with the girls and letting my hair down but mostly I'm scared about what's going to happen while I'm away and how I'm going to cope without him. Dh is very nonchalant about the whole thing which just makes me worry even more because I feel like he isn't taking this seriously because he doesn't realise what I have to do in a day. Or maybe it'll all go TOO well and it'll expose me as being rubbish and lazy and unable to cope?

Help!! Am I being paranoid or is it normal to feel like this?

Totally normal!! My Ds is 2.5 and I've not left him
for more than 1 night and have all the same worries... Dh thought I'd really lost it last time I had to go away for night and I made him inspect all the window catches so I was sure he could get Ds out if there was a fire - pfb!!

Had to go to a hen wkend when he was 4mo, I skipped one of the nights an only went for 1 night, I still missed him so so much - didn't
help that he was ebf and I was in absolute agony as couldn't express
enough (not v practical on a hen do!) and he wasn't keen on taking ebm from a bottle.

If you're not keen on leaving him can you just go for the 1 night?

normal, and totally great that you are doing it.

ds will be fine.
dh will be fine.

have a great time!

i recommend doing this once a month or so. it's important for dh to get some 1 on 1 time with ds (for both of them).

i just used to express like crazy. it was all fine. many's the time i've sat in the loos expressing to be more comfortable. tipping it down the sink is a bit of a pita, but fortunately i was a bit of a milk machine.

tis just as important when you get two or three kids btw. dh needs to experience the sole responsibility and juggling aspects

DS is weaning at the mo, I've never been able to express so we have emergency supplies of formula powder (I'm taking a manual pump just to relieve the agony). He takes the bottle fine so not too worried about that side of things, but sometimes he just can't get to sleep and so I end up bf to get him to sleep (I know it's a bad habit but it works!) and if he's upset that I'm not there, then his source of comfort isn't there either.

I know it's his dad and he should be able to handle things but I'm just not convinced! He keeps trying to instigate self-soothing without really knowing or looking into exactly what it is and I'm worried he's going to bodge his way thru the weekend!! But he needs to learn how hard it is I guess so I'll just have to see.

I was supposed to be going off just one night but DH persuaded me that I needed to go for both and that I should make the most of a girlie weekend. that was before DS started teething though!!

Relax and don't be selfish.... his dad will look after him just fine. Won't look after him exactly the way you do, bodging will happen, rules will be broken & something might go wrong along the way but you will return and find they are both all in one piece. It's why children benefit from having a few parents and from being cared for in a wider family. It's healthy for them to experience different ways of being looked after.

Totally normal to feel it but go and enjoy it! It will be great for baby and Dad, I am surprised at the number of selfish women who never let their DH have the exclusive time that they enjoy themselves. Imagine how you would feel if he was the SAHD and he wouldn't let you enjoy time on your own with the baby for 48yrs. Relax and enjoy.

absolutely let them muddle through. they will benefit hugely from it and your baby will be fine. DH will find his own way through and they might start developing their own little "things" and games. as exoticfruits said, imagine if the roles were reversed! Have a great time

oh god, having read your last post you need to go and leave them to it. ds will learn that there isn't only one way to go to sleep (being cuddled and bf by mummy). don't you hand him over to dh of an evening anyway?

they'll both be fine. it's up to dh how he parents, and he will only learn by trial and error - just like you did. he hasn't had enough practice to have developed any skill yet, so about time he did.

if you got knocked down by a bus tomorrow and needed a week in hospital, it would be really useful for him to have had some experience of looking after his own child 1 on 1, than trying to learn how to do that and worrying about you...

it's a necessary skill for dh, so let him get on and develop it.

Don't worry about bf-ing to sleep - it's not a bad habit and it won't be too hard to break (a lot less hard than a dummy, for example). Self-soothing doesn't really happen at this age if they're fussing (though a few very rare babies are happy to be left from an early age, it doesn't sound as though your DS is) so make sure your DH doesn't plan to just leave him to cry.

Other than that, your DH will cope. But don't expect the house to be tidy, the fridge to have any food in it, the washing-up, laundry or ironing to be done. Most DHs I know can just about cope with the baby but with literally nothing else. No multitasking skills!

Totally understand you not wanting to be without your LO. My DS stayed at my sister's last night and i woke up at 6am missing him terribly, even though he's not normally awake until 7.30! Just having him in the house and hearing him snuffling occasionally on the monitor is lovely.

But it will do all three of you good. Your DH will learn, as mine did, that it's not quite as easy as men tend to believe it is. Just ask for lots of picture texts and updates while you're away and enjoy yourself. You'll be fine, as will your DH and your DS!

OMG definitely go - I went to my friend's Hen for 2 nights when DD was about 6 mo and I had a great time. DH was more appreciative of the amount of work that goes into a baby when I came back (he had counted the hours he spent with DD and was so glad to see me home )

Also re the BF to sleep thing - as a PP said he will learn that tehre is a different way to get to sleep. I have a friend who is very AP to the point that any nights "out" have to be in someone's house where she can bring her DS because her DP can't possibly settle the baby back to sleep (the baby is 14 mo ). I feel sorry for her DP that he doesn't have that time with his son but each to their own. I think it's very healthy for a baby to be able to settle with more than one person myself.

octavia, i think your dummy/ bf to sleep analogy might be based on personal experience. it was a lot harder to break the bf cycle for the two out of three of my dc's that were bf, and we removed the dummies with no hint of protest.

and the multi-tasking skills develop with practise. if the dh isn't left solely in charge, he won't get to develop those either. dh here is more than capable of looking after all 3 dcs and cooking a roast dinner, getting the laundry on etc. he might have struggled the first few times i left him to it, but so did i when he went back to work and i was left with a newborn or two/three.

practise makes perfect. give him the chance to learn. otherwise you run the risk of alienating him from those very tasks and then whinging on here in 6 years time about how useless your dh is and how you never get to do anything because he can't be left with the kids.

fathers are adults, and just as capable of childcare and domesticity as mothers. given the chance. i've lost count of how many women on here have insisted on doing all the baby care from tiny because it's so special, and then find out they have effectively set the tone for the rest of their parenting/ married lives. it's very sad.

As everyone else has said - GO!! Have fun! It's a win win situation - you have fun and relax whilst the other person who knows and loves him best looks after him. I left DD overnight for the first time at 5 months with DH (my works Xmas do some distance away with hotel paid for by the company - and a champagne reception!) I had an amazing time (although had to pour the extremely alcoholic bm away that I expressed at 2am in the hotel room on my return from the do...DH was worried that I would do myself an injury whilst drunk with electric breast pump )

of course he's going to bodge his way through the weekend - isn't that what we all do on pretty much a daily basis? :o

i've lost count of how many women on here have insisted on doing all the baby care from tiny because it's so special, and then find out they have effectively set the tone for the rest of their parenting/ married lives. it's very sad.

I find it very common and very sad. They both start as a couple with no experience of babies and they should be learning together and yet the mother suddenly becomes the 'baby expert' who has to tell him what to do! Apart from bfeeding they should be interchangeable and every mother ought to go out from the start-even just for 30 mins and leave him to cope without handing out instructions-he is an equal parent. I find it so selfish that the father never gets the time alone because the mother won't let go.

you can see why and how it happens, though. it's perfectly understandable - suddenly the woman doesn't have any external life outside of the family and so clings to the fact that she can be an expert in this particular role to ensure she still has some worth and power, she has been completely reduced to 'mother'. to prove her worth she has to diminish the expertise of the partner, who often does still have an external life - kids aren't the be all and end all of his existence. so the woman gradually take over everything child or domestic related, and exclude the other parent. (and then moan about it down the line)

i'm not dissing sahm or sahp btw. or mothering. been there, done that. (still doing that!) but even at home full time i am only half of the parenting team, and make sure that dh is the other half, and just as competent. not just a bloke who happens to live in the same house as the children.

this infantilisation of men has to stop, really.

agree with the last few posts

every time I read a post on here about a father being clueless because he's never been alone in charge before, I remember how clueless I was when they first put that tiny bundle in my arms

and yet noone suggested I shouldn't be allowed to leave the hospital in charge of a baby, noone checked if I had worked out what to do next, the assumption was that I would have

I was terrified when I left hospital-I had never been in charge of a baby. DS was just as capable as me. He does things very differently but this is all to the good to learn from the start that there isn't one way. Sometimes I itched to take over as in 'how can you put that jumper with those trousers!' but I kept quiet-he was doing it and it was up to him. If you are not there they cope-if you let them and don't give in to being called back, feeling good because 'only mummy can do it' -if given time 'daddy can do it' too.

dh plaits the girls (really long) hair and puts it all up in buns for ballet too.

sure they asked for me to do it at first, but he's more than capable. and it sends a really important message to both our daughters and our sons that parenting is a job that can be done by both sexes. sometimes you have to think about what messages you are inadvertently sending to your toddlers.

Men let themselves get sidelined-they are told they can't do hair so they never try. I have DSs so I have never done hair-I would learn.

parenting is all about the learning

you're just never sure what you're going to have to learn next!!!

Very true-and it never stops!

So true about the terror leaving the hospital! I am v grateful to our best man, who had a baby 6 months before us, and when we went to visit him took DH to one side and said 'get stuck in straight away - they don't break and Notyummy will be knackered after pushing the baby out, so you need to do the bathing/nappy changing whilst she rests.' DH would have probably have worked this out for himself, but watching his best mate (very alpha male - fighter pilot in the RAF) doing the lions share of the childcare for the newborn definitely helped. It culminated in me being so useles at changing nappies that the first one I did (when dd was 6 days old ) I put on backwards. We too can be infantilised . I did get better though.....