Any help with night feeds?

[username09643]

Hi all. Just wondering if your partners at all help with the night feeds? DH sleeps in the spare room and has only been in with us about 5-10 times ( DD is 15 weeks old) she is breastfed so we agreed it makes sense for him to get a full nights sleep as he is working however it's really starting to bug me now as he doesn't even come to help when I am unable to settle her and claims he didn't hear!!

Sorry for the rant

Hi, my baby is nearly 6 months and DP doesn’t help with night feeds. He also sleeps in the other room. There is no need for him to help as I literally just feed and put baby back in cot. It also helps if one of us is rested (we have another child too).

It’s possible your DP doesn’t hear - maybe he clearer on what help you would like. Eg wake him and say you tried to settle baby for half an hour, can he walk her now and go back to sleep. I sometimes give baby to DP from 5/6am. Baby is fed and changed but doesn’t want to sleep, he can play or entertain baby and I go back to sleep.

To add my baby is breastfed too.

You could also express milk and ask him to feed baby Friday and Saturday night? You sleep in spare room.

If it’s starting to irritate you I think you need to say something else the resentment will just build and build IME.

My DH has never got involved in night feeds whilst breastfeeding (DD fully breastfed and DS breastfed to 4 months), after switching to formula at 4 months he started doing full nights at the weekend and I went in the spare room. But that wouldn’t have happened unless I demanded it.

It’s harder when you’re breastfeeding but he could do a shift either end of the night, or get up to resettle the baby after a feed if that’s what you need. I think you just have to say what you need and be quite firm with it.

Hey, I breastfed for the first 6 weeks and DH would sleep with us. He would occasionally wind and settle baby back to sleep but majority of the time I would. We switched to formula feeding after baby started having more reflux and now he takes over majority of the night feeds and hands over to me in the early morning. He works from home at the moment so he doesn’t mind, however I do feel guilty but at the same time it gives us both a good block of sleep when it’s split up!

Breastfeeding here and husband sleeps in the spare room (gets up with toddler if she wakes in the night and gets up with her in the morning.) Although he's on paternity still so I'm hoping when he is back at work he will still help out with toddler as I'm often up most of the night with baby! I go to bed early and he has baby downstairs with him then in the morning currently he has both whilst I catch up on sleep.
I figured there's no point us both being exhausted so he get a good 5 hours usually. If I was really struggling with baby I'd wake him bit usually he's just feeding or snoozing on me. With our first he did help out a bit more at night with nappy changes etc but then we could nap during the day of needed - no chance now!!

I'm breastfeeding and we often still do split nights as baby can be settled without milk several wake ups a night as well as me feeding back to sleep 3/4 times. Also there is a lot of winding due to reflux and settling again after to be done so even when altogether he often does this and I go straight back to sleep. He works too but otherwise it would have broken me! Baby is 8 months.

Dh doesn't do night feeds with DD. He sleeps downstairs and gets up with toddler in the morning and if he wakes in the night, I prefer it like this simply because I don't like doing early mornings and am much more of night owl so find night feeds easier.
When we had DS he did night feeds probably equally but as a PP said it's easier with your first child because you can nap in the day etc, DH had a shift job when we had DS so it was easier for us both to get lie ins. If I needed help settling the baby he would come help though, although usually she just feeds and goes back to sleep (I say this now while she's currently staring at me wide eyed and has been for 2 hours🙄)

I’d don’t blame you for being annoyed. Get him doing at stint that helps you get a bit more sleep. With my first DD, (now 4) life was like this and I suffered. Things are different this time around!

My DS (5 months) wakes a lot. Like at least x3 per night. DH does all the nappy changes required over night. Plus he will take him immediately after a feed and settle him at least once a night. We’re both tired but if I didn’t get some help I’d lose the plot. I discovered that sleep deprivation makes me a very angry person and it’s really horrible to feel at the end of my tether to that extent. A bit of sleep and I’m back to my calm and rational self. I’m going to get back into a routine of expressing and then DH will do the first feed of the night with a bottle, hopefully.

Thank you all so much for your replies! This is our first child and OH also works from home and doesn't even help on weekends or Friday nights. I can feel myself getting more and more annoyed so will definitely let him know how I feel.

No. I had twins. Was on ML for 18 weeks. DH was working. I find it somewhat odd that some women insist on division of childcare in the nights when they are not working the next day but their partners are.

First find who was formula feed, we alternated the nights from the start, so he took 50% of nights

Second was ebf after she refused a bottle, so i did so night feeds and most settling, but he would deal with our toddler (who woke most nights), any difficult settling, and he'd deal with them in the morning/get them out to childcare etc, so I could have an extra hour ot two. So a different form of sharing, because of the feeding, but still as involved as possible.

I do all the night wakings as I’m on adoption leave so I can nap during the day, where as he has to work for eight hours, seems stupid for both of us to be tired, seems extremely stupid to risk our only source of income at the moment.

I do night feeds during the week when partner is at work but during the weekends my partner will be 'on nightshirt' we call it 😂
I still end up waking up at the weekend when she cries and being up when he's feeding her so quite annoying but partner does do his bit to try help

In the evenings after work he will be the one to do the feed before bed and then cuddles her to sleep. This passed weekend though DD slept right through the night Friday, Saturday and Sunday which meant partner got off with any night feeds - typical!
Back to a 4am wake up call yesterday and this morning though for me

@username09643

Thank you all so much for your replies! This is our first child and OH also works from home and doesn't even help on weekends or Friday nights. I can feel myself getting more and more annoyed so will definitely let him know how I feel.

Oh yes this would upset me! He should be helping with nappy changes, winding, rocking etc. And maybe take them down when they wake it the morning so you can have a bit extra.

Send him this. There's loads he can do. raisingchildren.net.au/grown-ups/fathers/getting-involved/breastfeeding-partners-can-help#:~:text=Although%20you%27re%20not%20breastfeeding,baby%20or%20massage%20your%20baby.

Definitely speak with him if it's bothering you. Different things work for different people to be honest. Our baby is 7 months and I've done all the nights so far. When I go back to work we will be sharing them. I don't personally see the point in both of us being awake and therefore tired, and as I'm not working I'm happy that the tired one is me for now! But as I said, different things work for different people.

I would say it depends on what your baby is like whether your DP should be helping you. My baby always settled back down to sleep easily after a breastfeed and I didn’t see the point of waking DP to help with doing a nappy change or winding when it only took me an extra 5-10 mins on top of the feed anyway. Had my baby been harder to settle, I would have probably been waking DP up for support. I say this in past tense as baby sleeps through the night now- hopefully yours will at some stage too!

Also depends on what you both have to get up and do the next day, ie work. Once I finish maternity leave and am no longer breastfeeding, I will absolutely be expecting help from DP in the night if baby wakes and we are both working the next day, but at the moment I’m not working so DP gets to sleep!

My baby is BF and I do all the night feeds (several) however DH does nappy changes (just one a night now) and if I’m ever struggling to resettle her and I’m exhausted (rare) I’ll wake him to take her for a bit. While there’s no point in us both being tired, it isn’t fair for one to be struggling or absolutely exhausted, and I don’t think getting up once in the night is massively detrimental to someone working the next day. I mean, when I went back to work after having DD1 I managed fine and was still feeding a few times a night.

@istandwithukraine

No. I had twins. Was on ML for 18 weeks. DH was working. I find it somewhat odd that some women insist on division of childcare in the nights when they are not working the next day but their partners are.

Dh wants to help at night because he considers me having a baby all day work! Ours has never done more than 20 minute naps so not like I can catch up during the day. I breastfeed but express and leave a bottle in a thermos next to the bed for them then we switch at the second feed

Why wake him up to change a nappy though which takes 2 minutes when you are already awake from doing the feed - it's like you have to just make a point that well I'm awake so you should be too

And depending on the job your partners have (or you had before ML) being at home with a baby is not "work" in the same way

It wasn't so much that I insisted on help with night feeds, but rather that DH and I wanted to take care of the baby as a team. Even though he had to go to work in the morning, we both had to function!

I slept 10pm-2/3am while he bottle fed her, then we swapped and he slept 2/3am until morning while I breast fed her. We did shared parental leave so I was at home with her for the first six months while he worked FT, and he did the second six months while I worked FT. This arrangement was in place no matter who was working FT.

We have an agreement that my husband does until 0100 and I do any feeds from 0100. It doesn’t always work though - we can be in bed and he genuinely won’t wake up.

He also sleeps in the spare room a lot - as we figured it wasn’t worth both of us getting a disrupted night.

A few times our DS has woken and either of us haven’t been able to settle him, we’ll go and wake/ask for help from the other.

My DH will also take our DS on Saturday mornings so that I can get a lie in - if he’s not helping out on weekends, you do really need to have words on sharing the load. I totally understand the resentment it can build.

The one thing I will say is that it took time for my husband to really bond with the baby. It might be that he doesn’t yet feel that connection and that’s why he’s reluctant to help. As our DS has gotten older and more “interactive” he’s much more interested.

Try and have a conversation with your DH when you’re not overly tired and try to come up with a plan - it might not always work, it might still involve you kicking your DH out of bed to do his share and sometimes you might just end up doing it anyway but you definitely need more balance.

We had an early shift and a night shift. So 10pm to 1am and 1am to morning. But we bottle fed so it was easier. That meant we both had a solid block of sleep of sleep each night which made things manageable. We also night weaned as soon as we could see it was possible so very quickly we were doing a dream feed before we went to bed around 10.30pm, then we were done until 7am ish. Everyone copes differently with broken or lack of sleep. You have to work as a team to get everyone through.

Mine helped, but i FF. We didn't really have any structure to it though, if baby woke we just got in with it. He did do more pacing up and down the bedroom with baby in arms though. He was also working full time, mixed shifts throughout the week

My DH didn't do any night feeds for the first 3-4 months as baby would only settle if breastfed. I could never express very much. We started combi feeding at around 4 months and so he would do all the nights on weekends, worked for us

Now she is 7 months she has a feed around 10pm which he does and another 4-5am which I do so we both get a good chunk of sleep.