Advice needed on how to help husband with what to do with newborn

[JKDcot]

Hi

FTM here to a 6 week old. I am of course new to this and still learning myself. But I can feel that our baby needs a lot of movement to settle to sleep. Walking or bouncing basically.

When my husband takes him he just sits on the sofa or lays in bed and pats him on the back. I tell him he needs to walk him or sway him or move him around. He refuses? Not sure it’s because I’m telling him what to do or he can’t be arsed to get up.

Any advice please? Within minutes of being moved our baby is happier and settles but he just won’t listen to me (husband I mean)

Thanks

Your husband is a parent he needs to be figure this out himself? If he is working and your with baby then he he is always on the back foot. If what he is doing is not dangerous and the baby is just grumbling opposed to distressed then leave him to it.

Do you take the baby away from your husband or let him deal with it? I think you need to let him get on with it and he will figure out as you did what the baby needs, and not step in to show him 'the right way' as you will then end up doing it every night and undermining his confidence at the same time. Though I also think the baby should settle themselves and be put down while still awake.

Just let him do things his own way. Me and my husband have different ways of holding/settling our little ones. He'll figure out his own way of settling your LO - I'm sure if baby cries he'll change tactic. As long as nothing he's doing is risky to baby just let him carry on.

I’m another saying you need to let him get on with it. It’s hard and I remember well those feelings of wanting to take over and feeling I knew best about everything baby, but he is a parent too and entitled to his opinions and experiments on how to do things. Many of the tricks that saved us hassle with kids over the years have come from my husband - massive stereotyping but women tend to feel more pressure to be a perfect parent and can put them self through complicated methods of achieving this.

Ps if you think about it, you are telling your baby that they need rocked to sleep, and your husband is teaching them another way. I’m not saying don’t use movement - he’s only tiny! But babies learn how things go from us.

The most useful piece of advice I was given was ‘Don’t become the expert’. If you are the only person who can get the baby to sleep, you’ll always have to do it! Go and have a long bath and let your DH practise.

Thanks all! Good to hear some perspective. Hard to see it through 6 week fog x