Does your partner / husband help with night feeds?

[charlottexox]

So, I'm pregnant & due in October, and me and my partner were talking about if he's going to help with night feeds. He works and gets up at 6am every morning for work, and said I would need to do most of it at night because he won't be able to function at work (he has a tech job). I was slightly upset, but not sure if I'm going OTT?
He said on Fridays He could overtake since he doesn't work weekends, I don't know though. What is everyone's opinions?

I FF after struggling to BF, we both did feeds and sat together in the first few weeks, now things have settled I do the feeds in the week, but any issues settling DH gets up.
He then does the weekend feeds, with me getting up to help again if issues settling. If I struggle at all, run down/ill he will help out.

I can see why you would be upset if he just expects to not get up, we did have a few conversations around how it would work.
He also may feel very different when the Lo arrives. DH likes to spend as much time as he can with LO as he doesn't see much of her

I EBF for the first 6 months so did all the night feeds, but my partner would still get up if the baby wouldn't settle back to sleep or to do a nappy change so I could just lie in bed and feed.

For the remaining 3 months of my maternity leave it was hard work as his sleeping was pretty bad and it took about 3 months for him to accept being settled by my partner, but we got there!

at 9 months I went back to work, we both do office jobs, I work 3 days a week and he works 5. We split night wakings (every 2-3 hours still at 9 months, its only really now he has hit 1 we are getting any sleeping through or only waking once) so he does everything before 2am and I do everything after.

We get a lay in each on the weekend, and on the days I'm working he will get up with the baby if he wakes early while the other 2 days I get up with the baby.

While I can see it being an issue if your partner does a lot of driving or a manual job its a massive cop out to not offer any help at night just because your going to be sat at a desk all day. Especially if your going to be going back to work at some point because there is no guarantee your child will sleep through before a year (but I pray for you that you find the holy grail :) ) I certainly find my days in the office a piece of piss compared to the days I'm home with the baby and I do a very technical job with lots of pressure!

Well I'm on maternity leave and DH is working full time so it makes sense that I do them... 14wk old is now solely formula fed and sleeps through until 5am almost every night. Often during the evening or weekend DH takes over so I can rest and/or catch up on sleep though. Housework is shared and I do all the school runs for our 10yr old.

I would ignore everything he says now though because it's totally different when baby is here! My DH said he wouldn't do nappy changes but he's so hands on now! Don't worry :)

My DS was ff and both me and dp were up for every feed. We did this for practical reasons though as Ds has feeding problems that can lead to death if you aren't aware of his breathing and sucking speed ect. It was safer to have both watching him than one sleep deprived parent with barely open eyes.
It worked out nicely as dp felt very involved as he didn't in the nicu

Unless his “tech job” involves operating heavy machinery or something like that, his sleep should not be a higher priority than yours. you need to recover from birth and care for your baby.

Sleep deprivation is often part of being a parent. Not just motherhood. Night parenting is not “helping”, it’s parenting. As much his responsibility as yours.

There can be a lot of other night and early morning parenting work in addition to feeding. Nappies, changes of clothes, dealing with leaks and sick, illnesses. Depending on the DC. A DC with reflux for example may require hours of night parenting.

DH did the weekends while I was on maternity leave. Occasionally he’d do one midweek if I was too tired to do it. Once I was back at work, nightfeeds were few and far between but we took it in turns.

IMO you’re off work, you don’t need the extra sleep. Your DH though should take the baby off you when he gets in from work so that you get the chance to relax/have a bath.

It’s understandable that he is worried about sleep, but worrying that he is openly prioritising his own sleep over yours, and seemingly seeking to opt out of parts of parenting.

Keep talking about it!

Many men step up when DC arrive, some don’t but later do, some never do. If yours turns out to be one of the latter two groups, please look out for .

On any given day, look at and observe your H and then in the mirror. If he is energetic, doing his usual things, looking OK, and you are not, don’t just suck it up. If he loves you he will have as much concern for your health and wellbeing as his own.

I went down the road of trying to do it all, 24/7, which contributed greatly to me getting physically and mentally ill and having accidents and near misses that could have injured me or my baby. That was not a good road to go down!

Sleep is needed to get through the day parenting just as much as it is needed for almost all jobs. People who are sleep deprived are more likely to become unwell or have accidents, whether or not they work.

My DC both required night care to age 3!

DH does a lot. DC2 is a crap sleeper and ff. DH would do the first part of the night and then we swapped over. The other would sleep in the spare room to get some sleep.

We do alternative nights now. He has a tech job and manages. I would be a wreck if he didn't help.

I bfed both of mine exclusively so I did all night feeds. I didn't feel exhausted enough to persevere with bottles or pumping and DH had just started his own business, so this felt right for our circumstances. I didn't have dream babies - far from it - but at night all they needed were feeds every 3-4 hours, they rarely cried much in the night so it was honestly ok. Although DH was working for himself, he was under lots of pressure to build the business quickly and I didn't want to add to it but heaping sleeplessness on him too.

Worked for us. It's whatever feels right and fair for you both, ultimately. Now if either of them wake up (which is rare, tbf), it's almost always DH who gets up and deals with them - as I did the nights for so many years.

4 kids, Husband leaves for work at 5.30am. Obviously he has useless nipples but he's always settled them back to sleep after a feed once they're past the falling back asleep on the boob phase. This usually involves taking them downstairs and rocking them back to sleep. I felt guilty for a while...not now though. As he says our jobs are equally as important and we both made them. He doesn't understand men that don't help!

Throughout the working week I do all the night feeds even though our kids have been on formula since birth, my husband is up at 4:30 every morning for work and is in a laborious industry so I don’t want him risking his safety on sleep deprivation. However he gets home around 4pm most days so he takes over the dinner/bath/bed routine while I cook dinner and on Friday and Saturday’s he’ll let me sleep in until 9-10am and do the morning shift when the kids wake between 5:30-6:30am. It’s a good balance. I think it’s just about compromise really.

I expressed night bottles from the start with my DS and then switched over to formula at 2 months. When it was still every feeding time every 3 hours, I would do the 8/9pm one and go straight to bed - if baby was fussy we'd wrap him in his sling, if settled, he'd go into his cot and my husband would watch his shows then until 12/1am when the next feed was due and put baby to bed after. I would do the 3/4am feed then again and DH would go to work as usual in the morning. It worked for us, neither of us were exhausted and felt both contributed equally.

*ds, not "it" still feeding!

We had bottle fed twins who were very slow feeders. We fed one each so were both up every night regardless of DH going to work (a doctor).

He used to do a late feed because he's a night owl and I'm a lark so I'd happily go to bed at 8pm and he'd feed at about midnight then go to bed, I'd always be the one getting up. One time in literally the whole time
If two kids I asked him to get up as I was so shattered and he came back to bed, her screaming still, saying 'I'm too dangerous to hold a baby as I'm too tired' I never bothered again!
I asked him to take my DS to the toilet at 4am as he was on the door side of the bed and he refused TIL I said ffs be a parent .... and he did it!
Other than that he's a great dad but shit if he's Tired ... I'm a bit of a coper and get on with it

Plenty of single parents go back to work and manage doing night feeds whilst holding down a demanding full time job.

You both need sleep, looking after a baby is not easy and sleep deprivation makes it worse. I would look at how you can both maximise your sleep, so can you go to bed earlier in the evening and he do any feeds during that time? Then, could he also do a feed in the morning to allow you to sleep? It's not fair of your partner to just state that his sleep is the priority, you both need sleep.

I only ebf for 3 weeks as it wasn't going well and I needed the help. He would sit up with me though as he was on leave then. My husband does the last feed around midnight every day and I do any wake ups but it's usually just a feed between 6-7. One day over the weekend he does the 6am feed.

Twin DS were FF only. For the first 2 months I did the majority of the night feeds for 5 nights a week plus a night nanny coming in once a week (until they slept through at 4 months old) and DP doing a night every week too. It was only fair because he was earning the money. Once I returned to work (at 2 months) and he took over he did all the night feeds and I never did another!

Baby is 4 months and i do them whilst she is breastfed otherwise i would have to wake up anyway to pump! We alternate putting her to bed at 7pm then she only wakes up once anyway around 4 or 5.

DH does Fri and Sat nights. When we're both back at work, we do week-on/week-off.

DS was ebf and started refusing bottles at around 8 weeks so I did every night feed until a year when I night weaned him. DH sat up with me in the first few days when breastfeeding was hell and the baby had no idea of night from day and he paced and settled him us much as I did while he was on paternity leave but once he went back to work I did everything unless there was a significant issue like a nappy explosion and bedding change required. Unfortunately I couldn’t catch up in the day as DS had to be moving up nap (sling, car, buggy) at one stage I was so exhausted I definitely wasn’t safe to drive. DH did his best to help but DS just screamed at him so I could only sleep if DH actually took him out of the house - not fun for anyone at 1am.
I went back to work when DS wa 9 months, he was still bottle refusing and reverse cycling so I was up at least 40 mins 2 or 3 times a night, I was on my knees.
At a year I night weaned him (drastic measures, went away with work for 3 days!). It didn’t help him sleep through but from then on he’d settle with DH if they coslept so we alternated nights and still do (DS is 20 months and still wakes at least once although occasionally now that’s 11pm so we get it out of the way before we are sleeping!). I desperately hope for a baby that sleeps through sooner next time round!

Yes he did, with both. DC2 is 3.5 months now and he did most of the night feeds as I, for some bizarre reason slept through her waking, and he refused to wake me up.

DS was BF for first 4 months but DH still helped out with a night feed as I expressed a bottle a day for him to do a feed each night. It was the first feed of the night that he always done so sometimes I would go to bed early and DH would just stay up until that first feed as it wouldn't ever be that late. On the odd occasion when I was totally zombified then DH would grab a spare expressed bottle and do an extra feed.

Once he became exclusively FF then we tried a few different ways to split the night feeds. Currently we work on the basis of alternating who does the first night feed which is often the only night feed. We have also been very lucky to have a few runs of no night feeds.

I should add when DH is on nights then I obviously have to do all the night feeds but then DH will do the next run of nights exclusively. We do really split it.