Night wakings - do you split them?

[PumpkinPie2013]

Just wondering what happens in other houses (though obviously everyone is different) with night wakings?

We have one, 7 week old ds. I'm on maternity leave at the moment, DH works full time as a teacher so Mon-Fri. He works in a college and currently has two early finishes a week - one lunchtime and one 3pm. He does 2 private tuitions each week but this is his choice - we don't need the extra money.

So, I do all care of ds during weekdays (obviously!) And think it's fair that I do the night wakings sun-thur as DH has work.

However, DH used to do some wakings on the weekend or bring ds downstairs around 8am one day so I could lie in but over the last 3 weeks this has stopped.

He does some daytime care on sat/sun but I still do alot.

So now the situation is that I do pretty much all daytime care of ds and all night wakings. Luckily ds is a good sleeper and since Christmas will go to sleep around 8pm waking only once at around 3am then back to sleep until about 7am.

I do all the housework, cooking and shopping plus I'm doing an online course (started before I was pg).

Don't get me wrong, dh adores ds but I'm starting to feel he could do more round the house.

It just bugs me when he says things like 'the washer's finished' i.e. it needs emptying and hanging up. I feel like just saying 'is it?'. Or 'what are we having for tea?' Like he can't possibly think of something.

Don't even know what my rant is really

Just feel I'm doing more than my fair share at the moment.

As I say, DH is generally great and loves me and ds but he seems to be forgetting that jobs need doing!!

He'll have no choice on Saturday though - I've booked a hair appointment

How do you organise things in your house?

We split night time wakings religiously taking it in turns. Even when I was breastfeeding if it was DH's turn he would go and get the baby, bring him to me and when I'd fed him he'd take him back and settle him.

DH was very good and I probably didn't appreciate him enough at the time.

XP refused to do any night wakings ever. Hence the X part.

Some of that would really annoy me.

The obvious reply to "The washer has finished" is "why are you telling me that? What is supposed to happen now?"

And then he'll have to admit that it was code for "take the washing out of the machine and deal with it" - or he'll be too scared and he'll do it himself

Asking for further information is always a good one. If only to watch them squirm

My kids are older, they are teens now, but we've mostly played the sleep game re who is getting up. Whoever can pretend to be asleep the longest and most convincingly wins and the other has to get up

If you aren't happy with the way things are split - tell him and tell him to start doing what he used to do because it isn't fair to just opt out of it.

I do all the night waking with 2 dcs. Dh is a surgeon so for obvious reasons can't be sleep deprived at work. He does give me a lie in on a Saturday morning. Unfortunately he doesn't wake when the children cry out at night so it is pointless my trying to get him to do a weekend night. Whereas I am wide awake at the tiniest whimper from either of them.

When I was on mat leave, DH went to bed later than me, so did a dream feed before he slept (about 11ish) and then joined me in bed. I did any feeds after that (usually 4am). Once DD dropped the 4am feed, he still did the dream feed as he likes to go to bed later than I do.

DH also does pretty much every Sunday morning and I do Saturday, so we get at least one lie-in a week (although I tend to use mine to do the food shop, but that's my choice!)

Every couple will differ on how they split things depending on both parties. In our house we share the night wakenings in that we both get up when the baby is awake. I'm on maternity leave and my DH works full time, but both our boys were windy babys and took a lot of work during the night (I bfeed, and if its just bfeed then sleep, I do this myself, but if its bfeed, wind, walk around for two hours carrying my heavy lump of a baby before sleep, DH gets up to help!)

Housework/shmousework - I do cooking, laundry and try to keep my kitchen surfaces tidy, the rest is a mess. DH will also do laundry and if I cook, he does dishes (no dishwasher sadly).

If you're not happy with your share of the burden, you need to discuss it with your partner - there is no normal here, some women do all the stuff on mattie leave and are happy to do so, others (like me) have a partner that shares everything 50:50, it's how our relationship works and we're both happy with that (although we'd really just like DS2 to sleep through :-D

Whatever you do, don't stew on it and then explode one day when he doesn't do something really insignificant - sleep deprivations makes any niggles much worse, so best to discuss it when you're feeling calm and not made irate by one of his 'off the cuff' comments about housework.

Your DH should be doing weekends for you so you can get a rest. There's no reason why he's the only one that's deserved a rest. Tell him he needs to do more around the house too.

If my DH told me the washer had finished, I'd tell him to empty it then! Bloody cheek! Sounds like he needs to do more. Have a word with him.

My DH always got up at weekends and let me have a lie in. He also even now DS is a toddler will go to him during the night if he wakes. We take it in turn.

Oh, it's all very well him adoring DS but he needs to pull his weight with the care and housework. Else effectively you're on 24/7.

We don't do all the splitting business or web really treat the toddler stuff like a chore to be quite honest. I work 2 days, DP works long city hours and whoever wakes up does te night stuff (sometimes I spring up, sometimes he does, not generally an issue, unless one of us is ill or something then the other will defo make sure they sleep next to baby monitor). DP does cooking a he likes it, I do tidying cos I like things to be sorted, both do laundry when when we think it looks overflowing and neither does cleaning! (We have a cleaner). As for getting up on weekends, we all just lie in together with toddler eating a brioche in bed and playing until one of us goes and makes some coffee basically. I think all the dividing of chores religiously leads to resentments like you describe. But that's just us. And our child is 19months, not 7 weeks, so not as chore like. x

I did the night time feeds when our twins were little. I would go to bed at 8pm and he would do the 11pm feed and then I would do the night and early morning feed.

They are 15 months now and we take it in turns to get lay ins on the weekends (he works on Saturdays too) I get every second Sunday to lay in and he gets up with the DC.

My God have we argued over this! I wish we hadnt but sleep deprivation and a baby can make anyone a tad resentful / petty at times! I have always admired women who do everything without begrudging their partner. But often when this is the case I find nothing is black and white. They may do eveything for the baby , but have a cleaner and get takeaways every night, or have their mum up their road helping them everyday etc etc.bor go to the gym for 2 hours a day and leave baby with dh or mil! im not sayin all women who do 'do it all' alway fall under one of these categories... But generally speaking it seems ti be the case! Me and my dh split things as fairly as poss. He helps out when he cam with our dd -and as men go he is a great dh. However i generally do all housework, washing etc etc plus i do not have much help from family and i work part time. I think if you are resenting your dh its best to resolve asap :)

Just want to clarify; dh is very hands in with our DD. I am lucky, but he is more so. He will look back knowing he has played a vital part in nurturing our DD.

Hi op dh and myself both teachers. We have always shared the nightwakings between us, although sometimes ds wants me specifically (he's 3). We have 2dogs which dh walks twice a day everyday for an hour, so he is up at 6 seven days a week, however he has always done weekend wake up, as he loves the relaxed time with ds, and it allows me some sleep in time. Our housework is fairly equally split, although washing is only done by me !! But dh hoovers every morning so no complaints really!
As already discussed by others you and your dh need to BOTH be happy with the division of labour, and you don't sound too happy with the current situation. Time for a chat? Congratulations on arrival of dc

We take turns at the weekend for one of us does the night and gets a long lie friday/sat the the other sat/sunday we have had rocky patches of him not doing enough when DS was at his worst sleep wise but to be fair we were both exhausted and would fight over an extra 5 mins sleep. Unfortunately DP is crap with housework so I need to tell him what needs done or he wouldn't do it, he does do things when asked so I think it's more a case of just not thinking rather than expecting me to do it.

I don't think you have to share every single thing, but overall there needs to be a balance. If it doesn't feel fair, something needs to be talked about and changed.

DH doesn't do night wakings because he cannot stand being woken up at night. I cannot stand getting up early. So I do the night wakings (DS1 sleeps through now thankfully, but DS2 wakes 3-4 times a night) and DH gets up in the morning and does the whole morning routine while I get a lie-in for another hour.

I did all the night waking as Dh was driving for a living.

We've been doing night wakings for 11 years now, and more than that still to go (youngest child has medical condition). We split the night wakings based on who is feeling least tired/ill at bedtime - that person gets charge of the alarm clock and the night checks!

It did take us 3 babies to get to an equitable, trust-based system though - dc1 I did the lot, dc2 we argued and resented each other, dc3 we finally figured things out .

In the very early days I did all the night wakings - I was bfing and there seemed little point us both waking up.

However DH did all the domestic stuff (and I mean ALL) - he emptied dishwasher, did laundry, cooked dinner etc. He did it all before/after work and at the weekends. DD was a terrible sleeper at night and would only nap in my arms or a moving pram, so I found it difficult to do much in the day beyond getting dressed and getting myself lunch (and not even that some days...)

Once DD got a bit older and could be put down more in the day (but was still a terrible sleeper) we did split shifts at night - I went to bed early and DH gave DD a bottle of EBM, then I took over from midnight/1am ish.

Now she has stopped waking in the night nearly so much (only when ill or teething) - I generally do night wakings but DH does early mornings.