First time mum with newborn - sleep deprived

[Newmum99653]

Hi,
I guess I’m just here to get some reassurance…
I am a first time mum with a new born and I’m struggling with the lack of sleep. I’m surviving and that’s fine but to my DP I’m an emotional angry wreck at times and I feel so guilty for it.

I just find myself snapping at him a lot more than I normally would and I feel terrible for it. I also know I’m only doing it because I’m exhausted. We share the nighttime feeds 50:50 at the moment but I can’t sleep through his feeds as I’m a light sleeper. I also don’t seem to be able to “sleep when the babies sleeping” because there’s always things going on.

My DSD came to stay this weekend (the first since having our baby) and I just found the whole thing so overwhelming, particularly in the heatwave which resulted to me resting in our bedroom for 2 days with the baby as I wasn’t really functioning enough to be around people and have conversations. This meant I was not only doing the sole looking after of baby in the day because our house was too hot to take him to any other room, but also my 50:50 at night as well. Along with this we had a couple of baby health scares so had hospital trips too. I just feel like I wasn’t able to be present for DSD either which was probably pretty obvious.

Stop feeling guilty.

I agree you need to reset your expectations. Your job is to feed baby, change baby, recover your body, and sleep. DH can do the rest.

A shift system will give you a longer block of sleep. In the day, when baby sleeps, do 10 mins of jobs if you absolutely must, the rest of the time lie down. Your body needs rest to recover.

This is exactly what we did and what I was coming on to suggest! Also instead of taking turns with the feeds, do shifts so you both get a chunk of sleep.

You need to either split the night so you sleep 8pm-4am and the other does 4am-10am or he needs to take baby down first thing in morning or out in pram in afternoon for you to sleep

Just wanted to say a huge thank you for the advice and suggestions
and to PP’s have said I agree I am my own enemy with the burn out currently as I can’t switch off so will find new ways of managing this.
I think the shifts rather than turns sounds a lot more helpful in terms of allowing us both to recharge.
We also had a health visitor come over today who advised that our 2 hour feeds are not helping with the burn out so we will be increasing quantity when feeding to hopefully give baby longer sleeps