Is there a way to tag team nights whilst breastfeeding?

[sociallydistained]

I'm due very soon and hoping to EBF. I have a next to me crib and also am not opposed to co-sleeping. Whatever works really but I had settled on the idea I would be doing every wake up in the night to breast feed but my partner wants to help in anyway he can.

Wondering what everyone does when ebf a newborn and how to maximise sleep for me especially in the two weeks my partner is off on paternity.

I did nearly everything in the night. We only ever changed nappies if they had soaked through which was only for a few weeks. Sometimes DH would take over settling DC1 after a feed as he could take ages but mostly DH would sleep the night but get up at 5 and take DC away so I could get a chunk more in before work or longer at weekends.

When DC2 came DC1 was just under 2 and gon back to waking a lot so the tag teaming was us taking one child each.

I used a haaka pump to collect milk while feeding, and that gave enough for one expressed bottle. After the evening cluster feed at about ten I would go to bed and my DH would stay on the sofa with DS and give him that bottle and bring him up and settle him in the next to me at about 12.30/1am. This was the only stretch DS would do in the cot and would generally then sleep until 3am (after that wake up he would only sleep in arms) DH would usually go and sleep in the spare room and then when he was WFH he would take him for another hour or so at 7am. I would definitely recommend introducing a bottle early as long as breastfeeding is going well, my DS had expressed milk in a bottle from 2 weeks and I fed him for 16 months so it didn’t affect breastfeeding at all!
Good luck xxx

In my experience - 3 ebf DC - your DH can be very helpful fetching you drinks and snacks (yes at night), cushions, winding baby and then being the person they sleep on in the morning so you can shower/whatever.

Hopefully by 2 weeks you'll be confident dealing with nighttime stuff and have worked out what you need/want next to the bed.

Try to learn to bf lying on your side asap - all of mine did self service by around 4m with cosleeping, though dc2 still needed to be help upright after due to reflux 🙄

An automatically closing flask for hot drinks is good (camelback do one). And get a big waterbottle that you can work with 1 hand.

My DH says that his priority was making sure I didn't have to move (because you're nearly always feeding in the early days) so trying to anticipate things that might be asked for. Also he can help with bf "aim" and latch a lot.

I fed the baby while dh slept and then passed the baby to dh and went back to sleep while he resettled.

I struggled terribly with dd1 and doing things "by the book". With DD2 I co-slept and bf'd her to sleep. When she woke up I'd roll over with her, plug in the other boob and go straight back to sleep. No nappy changes or burping. It won't work for everyone or suit everyone, but for me and DD2 it worked really well.

Thank you, all some good ideas here and different ideas on what could work. My partner is better at early mornings than me and as someone said, going out for a walk etc with baby early so I could catch up seems like something. He really would do anything that works which puts my mind at ease.

When he goes back to work he starts really early AM (varies but sometimes leaving before 4 for example) so that's another hurdle but someone said they went to bed early and dp had baby and bought to bed much later, so things like this are helpful advice.

I've been a nanny for 17 years, lots of newborn experience but clearly not night feeding or survival mode. It's new territory 😬

I found the best thing was to let dh get a good nights sleep (It didn't make sense to me for both of us to be tired) and then he could help me in the day more. Often that would mean him taking the baby from about 6am(ish) for an hour or so before he went to work. This would allow me to start the day with some rest. He'd also take the baby after work and let me catch up on a bit of sleep too. Most newborns sleep better and for longer when being held, so him taking the baby and holding them while they napped often guaranteed me an hour and half's rest.

My DS pooed with every feed to begin with and if I'd done all the feeding, burping and changing I basically wouldn't have been able to get back to sleep at all between one feed and the next in the first few weeks. So DH took him as soon as he was off the boob and did all of that so that I could get a bit of sleep before the cycle started again!

I didn’t think there was much point in both of us being tired - one thing that may oh did tho was get up after the early morning feed so I could get a couple of good hours sleep every morning - did mean he had a few weeks of 4.30/5/5.30am wake ups but I defo appreciated not being up that early!!! Both just went to bed fairly early the first few weeks.

I found it really helpful to do a morning feed but then give baby to DH and get another couple of hours. Once I was up, I found it really hard to nap in the day, but if I just did a feed and roll over I could sneak some extra hours in that way.

Kept that going for weekends once he was back at work.

Also, once you can express, DH can stay up to do a dream feed about 11ish whilst you get a few early hours in.

@Hapimummy

Yes definitely! When my LO was a newborn her Dad would get up with her when she woke and change her nappy (this helped to wake her up a bit more so she had a good feed, if I didn’t change it first she fell asleep as soon as I held her and wouldn’t feed!) then bring her to bed and I would either sit up, feed her, then put her back in the next to me, or just pop her on the boob and go back to sleep depending on how tired I was! I found the getting out of bed the most tiring! Honestly I found breastfeeding at night so much easier than formula would have been - I didn’t have to trek downstairs to make bottles while baby cried or stay awake to do the feed!

Just an FYI on FF for what you’re saying to other mums - you don’t have to trek downstairs to make bottles at night. We bring a sterilised bottle and a bottle of readymade formula to bed with us for our baby. It’s very simple :-)

Never could work any tag team for us, no matter how the baby was fed.

If the baby was awake, there’s not a chance I could go to sleep. Often I couldn’t sleep when the baby was sleeping either.

They’d be in the house. Moving around and making sounds. I couldn’t sleep through that then or now no matter how sleep deprived I was/am.

If the baby was sleeping, I’d be on alert for when they would wake up. And sleeping babies can also be really snuffly and loud, which would also prevent me sleeping. Any tiny motion from them and I’d be on hyper alert thinking they were going to wake up.

But even for my bottle fed baby, if they were awake I was awake, sure someone else could feed them but that didn’t mean I would be asleep.