Anyone up feeding?

[Cupcakes123]

I'm up with DS, 3 weeks.

Made the mistake of waking DP up for help as am just so tired but that was a huuuuge mistake, he has no patience with the baby at all and gets angry with him. This only happens at night, which is when I need help the most.

Baby and I have now relocated to the living room and left the idiot to it, his need for sleep is obvs much greater than mine

How are you doing this morning? That sounds very frightening for you, that he gets angry with your baby. Can you talk to your health visitor about what's happening?

Baby is perfect, I am knackered!

He's said sorry, he knows he was wrong, he would never never ever ever hurt baby but he needs to get used to him waking up at night and that he's going to have to help me out.
I think a night time agreement is going to have to be made which allows for us both to sleep. I don't want to spend my maternity leave sleeping all day as I'm up all night with DS.

Sorry I don't mean to be shouty and ranty!

Glad you're ok. I agree, you need to have a calm conversation during the day about it, and work out a plan for night wakings. Is your DP at work during the day? I have always done all night wakings, because I breastfed and my DP needed to be vaguely rested for work in the morning. Other couples have different solutions - perhaps you could go to bed early and then take over from eg midnight. Or he could do the weekends to give you a break.

The nights will get better very quickly - your baby is still learning to tell night from day at the moment. You won't spend your whole mat leave asleep, I promise, so do try to sleep when the baby does.

And do talk to the HV - even if it's just to have someone to rant at.

He goes back to work on Monday, the original plan was he would do the last feed at midnight, baby is bottle fed, and then I would do the 3 & 6 (and all the ones in between!) He gets up for work at 8 so this should be enough sleep for him.

He's a night owl and I'm better at getting up so this seemed like the best plan but he seemed to have forgotten this agreement so he needs reminding

I also do 99% of housework so I was finding having baby all night and then keeping the house clean/tidy a bit much. So instead of sleeping was sterilising bottles/doing washing/cleaning the kitchen etc.

It'll all work itself out I'm sure, my DS is the absolute love of my life, I couldn't love him anymore if I tried and think he's amazing but it was definitely an adjustment when he turned up. I 100,000,000% do not mind getting up with him, he's a tiny baby and doesn't know any different but wish it wasn't just mummy on duty overnight. Even a quick cuddle or an "are you ok" from my DP would make the world of difference to me.

Thank you for your messages, it's made me feel so much better x

Your plan sounds good - I hope you can get your DP to do his share. He needs to do his share of the housework too, but really, don't be cleaning anything that isn't actually a health risk. You are supposed to be sitting down watching telly and getting biscuit crumbs on your baby's head.