Breastfeeding with a night nanny: is it worth it?

[MultilingualMumHack]

We have a DD who will be 2.9 months when DC2 is born. Her eclectic childcare, involving some mums with older kids who need part time hours at our home and some government-paid childminder hours is working well. This includes some limited hours of "mother's help" style housework & basic meal prep. We both work from home and DP is present, but I did all feeds last time, since I was bf; he prepared meals in the day. He is happy to cover meals again and does not want support with this, as he has complex dietary needs which would be hard to outsource. DP does not function well on low sleep (and, though he intends to take at least 2 weeks pat leave at the start and could take more later on/extend the two weeks if we decided this was necessary/desirable for us as a family, he is likely to be managing our never-ending renovation throughout the 4th trimester and beyond, so his lucidity matters quite a lot). Nonetheless he has offered to share night feeds in alternation because I found the previous experience (co-sleeping & on-demand feeding) unsustainable from month 4 onwards and eventually resorted to sleep training at 6 months, the stress of which I would like to avoid by avoiding the sleep props we adopted, due to sleep deprivation in the early days.

Budget could just about be stretched to accommodate 1-2 nights a week of night nanny (or local babysitter filling the role) to ease transition (up to month 5, ideally intermittently, if and when absolutely necessary), but it would be a big stretch considering our other responsibilities and I will need to return to WFH very swiftly to pay for this, which might not be worth it, considering I'll be up [every four hours...?] pumping to maintain milk supply in the early months and thus will be having interrupted sleep anyway. But of course there are degrees of interrupted sleep and any improvement may be worth it...

My question is, for those of you who breastfed (either exclusively and/or pumped + topped up with formula) and were lucky enough to have overnight help, either from family or a paid person, what were the pros and cons of the presence of an experienced person who already knew how to encourage a baby to self-settle from the very start (something I failed at/was clueless about last time)? What arrangement worked best (either feeding, then the helper taking the baby away to do the change/settling; or just waking up to express separately and leaving baby and carer to their "shift"?) Did you end up with lots of sleepless nights even without the baby, due to hormonal shifts and being programmed to wake for feeds? What shift length was good value? Did that change as baby grew?. Would you have been better off with more intermittent support over a 24 hour period to enable you to nap in the daytime instead/ as well?

Re. possible daytime alternatives: aiming to avoid feeding to sleep this time (which was what enabled me to return to work - initially just for an hour or so per day -- within a month last time..), so am anticipating having to watch 30-90min sleep windows pretty carefully, which sounds like a full time job, at least in the early months... Can this occasionally be entrusted to a babysitter who is also tasked with looking after our toddler, or is that likely to result in an overtired newborn/more tears/a slide towards needing more sleep props...? For the record, I'm not against all sleep props and would consider a dummy from early on to help with self soothing/stretching feeds, after a reluctant yet positive experience last time.

We don't unfortunately have family who can help, so I want to book in as much support as possible to avoid being over-reliant on an overstretched DP when it's too late (as our first choice helpers may be booked up), but we're not in a bracket that could cover a night nanny for the whole job and be done with it. I would still need to learn the ropes from the professionals and implement most of it myself. I'm very curious as to how others have managed to make the early months work for them while still being present for older children, and ideally managing to do more than just survive the first 6 months... I really struggled to enjoy this period with my DD last time, which robbed me of a lot of newborn joy and bonding that could have occurred in the daytime, had I been better rested. The happy mum = happy baby philosophy makes sense to me (but I would still feed on demand for as long as developmentally appropriate and would think twice before trying to stretch feeds to encourage sleeping through the night).

I want a system that works for all in the long term and is as balanced and realistic as possible and I know from experience that support can be worth its weight in gold, but whether that should be more day or night (or a flexible bundle of hours spanning both) I'm unsure. Also, to what extent do I need a very experienced maternity/night nurse to help settle us into a routine and then return for occasional troubleshoots during eg. the possible 4 month sleep regression, and to what extent can I patch together a support network using ordinary childcare options? Very curious to hear all relevant experiences. Thank you in advance!

We had a night nanny for 6 weeks after our 3. She did 5 nights a week for us and I exclusively breastfed - she was worth every penny and I would have paid double as she got our babies into amazing sleep routines with no crying and no hard sleeping training needed later on, because they were taught to sleep from the start. For our first 2 she would bring the babies in every 2/3/4 hours when they needed to feed, I would feed, and then she would come and collect and settle and I would go straight back to sleep. For the 3rd, I actually pumped in the day and then she would do one of the overnights feeds with the expressed bottle. By the time she left after 6 weeks, all of the babies were up no more than twice a night.
we learnt great habits from her that set us and our babies up so well for example we always ensured they had really full feeds so even if they fell asleep on the breast we would gently wake them up and ensure they finished the feed. That meant that were able to go 2 then 3 then 4 hours between feeds very quickly as their bellies were full. We did always feed them when hungry though of course, so there was the odd night where they wanted to feed every hour and of course we responded to that.
I do think the consistency was critical though she did it for 5 nights and then kept it up for the 2 nights she was away and then repeat.

@Autumn456 agree.

We had night time help - it set us up very well.

Yes, it is very expensive, but worth it I think, especially if you factor the long term the benefits.

IMO, the nighttime help works best after the first three to four weeks of life. Before that, the infant needs to settle into being out of the womb, and mainly needs to be fed on demand and held as much as possible.

One other timing thing; it may be worth considering having the help a little more frequently than two nights, but over a shorter period. I think two nights a week will be the exception rather than the rule, and so won't really help set a routine in place. It will, however, get you some sleep.

Be really clear with the nurse on what your objectives are - sleep train for infant and as much sleep as possible for you.

When night nurse is there it should be for you and infant exclusively. DH should do all things toddler. Be clear on that!

Good luck.

I didn't have nighttime help, but I alternated breastfeeding with my partner giving formula during the night. I never co-slept and my then-baby quite quickly stopped feeding to sleep. Fortunately they became a baby who could be put down drowsy but awake instead. I personally felt I put in hard yards during mat leave with baby sleep, but then have had a much better time since being back at work than my friends have had.

We were also told by the midwife, like @Autumn456 at the beginning to wake the baby if they fell asleep on the breast. My baby was jaundiced and you need to essentially feed it out of them. The last two feeds of the day were often broken up by a strip-down nappy change to really wake the baby back up and get a full feed in.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. This is so so helpful, as I am just so torn and we only have one shot at it. For those of you who had help or managed to sleep-train early on, would you say that common issues like the "four month sleep regression" affected your babies less/not at all? Or, if you'd had the budget, would it have also been helpful to have maternity/night nurse support with later phases also?