Coping with newborn on my own / no paternity leave

[Wt12]

Hi all

Just after some of your experiences if your DH didn't take Paternity leave / if you were on your own with a newborn straight away

DH is self employed therefore any time off means he does not get paid. We did save up for him to be off for 2 weeks when the baby arrives, however due to an injury he suffered last month where he couldn't work for ages, we had to go into that savings account and use it

Now i'm thinking to ask DH to be off maybe 3 days and after that return to work. I do have 1 dc already so will be doing school runs. How did you feel 3 or 4 days after if you had a vaginal birth? Were school runs/driving/walking okay for you? Were you okay to stand and cook meals whilst you had a 3 day old or is that unrealistic?

Of course if things go differently and I end up with a c section/instrumental delivery then I understand the recovery will take longer

I think it all depends on your character, type of birth and if glove got other children at home.

Personally, I had a quick labour and was doing the school run the next day. DP went back to work the next day too as also self employed and it was fine. I didn't feel I needed help, I have a nice age gap between children so they knew how to help and I was desperate to get into a routine.

I was fine after a vaginal birth - didn't have any choice because DH was deployed overseas . No problems with walking or driving, though I did as little as possible.

I just did the minimum of everything, prioritised the baby and myself, did little else. I'd planned a head so had frozen meals, plenty of baby necessities.

You will have your DH there after work, you'll be fine. Plenty of new mums do it without a man . Best wishes !

Will he be able to be home for bath and bedtime? Also if he can stick around in the am to help get ready for school run that will help enormously.

Assuming a VB, I’d choose 6/8 weeks of help at those pinch points over 2 weeks of him being at home all day.

You’ll be okay OP. You can cope if you have to. My DH is also self employed and due to extreme bad luck was only able to take two days off work for my second DC and I had a C-section and my eldest was only 19 months old.

Get as organised as you can beforehand with lots of easy meals in and just take things steady.

Thank you all for giving me positivity!! He will be gone from around 9.45 till around 7.30pm so could definitely help with the morning school run. I have a few frozen meals and will do some more this week!

And yes he will be home for bath and bath (if not then hopefully wont be too bad as dc is in a routine timing wise)

Guess it wont be too bad afterall :) just got randomly nervous today! Thanks all x

@Nosleepforthismum oh my, well that's definitely put things into perspective. You are right when you've got to cope you just find a way to do it regardless