On the back of a few threads I've seen lately I wanted to write this as a bit of solidarity and support to others, of course there will be many that will vehemently disagree with me but that's okay.
Firstly, if you are the parent of a newborn or very young infant, you NEED to get at least 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep in any 24hour period. If you don't get this bare minimum amount you are at risk of becoming dangerously sleep deprived which is akin to being intoxicated, would anyone think it's okay to look after a baby whilst drunk? Probably not, but there seem to be a lot of mummy martyrs around who wear their long term lack of sleep as a badge of honor.
The brutal reality is that parental sleep deprivation kills babies, every single one of these deaths are preventable.
The "hilarious" talk among mummy friends of how "you're not a mum until your baby has fallen off the bed/ couch/ change table" or the stories of exhausted dads falling asleep with baby on their chest and baby rolls off onto the floor or mums falling asleep breastfeeding and waking up in the nick of time to find baby half smothered under her breast. These situations are not an inevitable part of parenthood or a rite of passage, they are deadly and avoidable.
If you have another parent on the house then there is no reason for one parent (let's face it, usually the mum) to be shouldering the whole responsibility of parenting.
It doesn't matter that babys dad has a demanding job 12 hours a day, so does the other person, if your job is to literally keep a completely vulnerable and dependent human alive then I challenge anyone to store why that is less important than dad being on top form for whatever he does.
What worked well for me and my partner in the early days was he would come home from work, I'd hand over baby and go upstairs to get my 4 hours of sleep, we would then swap and he'd get his hours in then anything we got as a bonus after that was great. Yeah it's not ideal, you end up being a bit like ships in the night but it's temporary. And it means that instead of one caregiver being dangerously sleep deprived and the other getting their full 8 hours, both caregivers are a little less fresh than they'd probably like but both are safe and sufficiently rested.
Maternal/ paternal mental health is so important and so overlooked, it literally changes how your life works, look after yours.
I breastfed my baby, it's fucking hard. It's made harder by people telling you that you should be doing this or not be doing that. The bottom line is that it is a feeding method, nothing more or less, just like formula is a feeding method.
Breastmilk is food, formula is food, they are both equally valid and nutritious choices.
Don't buy into the lactavist nonsense that if you are breastfeeding you have to be the one to get up all night, every night for night feeds. Express enough milk if you can so other parent can give baby a bottle for one of the night feeds, or supplement with a bottle of formula if you have trouble expressing. Nipple confusion is a myth and if baby is offered a bottle/ dummy etc from birth they WILL learn to accept them, some may take longer than others.
If you are steadfastly against supplementing with formula even when you probably should do then you need to check your internal lactavism and ask yourself why breastfeeding is more important to you, regardless of the mental and physical toll , than offering your baby an alternative food.
Same thing with cluster feeding, cluster feeding is not based in evidence. If baby is feeding every 20 minutes, it's because they're hungry because they're not ingesting enough milk- for goodness sake feed your baby, supplement with formula until your body produces more milk. No it won't make your supply dry up.
A last note on the breastmilk v formula debate, in developed countries with access to clean drinking water, formula and breastmilk are equal, neither is superior. You also don't have to justify your feeding method to ANYONE, ever. Don't ever let anyone make you feel embarrassed to BF in public, and don't let anyone shame you for feeding formula. Would anyone care if the debate was to give your child cheese v yogurt?? Of course not, it's exactly the same.