Worried how we'll cope with baby

[dragoncrochet]

I'm approaching the end of my first trimester and it's starting to feel real!

I'm starting to get really worried about how we're going to cope with a newborn, even though we both (me and DH) have wanted a child for a long time and are 100% committed.

My DH has a chronic health condition which makes him very tired, and he needs more sleep than most. We don't have family support nearby - our families are great but they live at the other end of the country, and we don't even have a spare room for them to come and stay.

We have friends but we wouldn't really feel comfortable asking them to come round and take the baby whilst we sleep.

I'm getting worried that I will end up falling asleep with a newborn on me/ getting into dangerous situations because the reality is that I will have to do most of the care by myself, especially at night, because DH just can't function without his sleep.

I wondered about hiring someone to help but I don't know what to even look for or how much it might cost, has anyone done this before?

Does anyone have any other tips?

Yes, start researching night nannies and post partum doulas in your area.

It's likely to be pretty expensive

This sounds tough. You can absolutely hire night nannies, I don't know how it works but it may be a good option.

The one thing I wanted to say was that although it is safest for bb to sleep on their own sleep surface, if you think there is a risk of you falling asleep with them it is much better to plan to co-sleep safely than to co-sleep accidentally and dangerously. So I'd suggest you consider looking up the guidance on safe co-sleeping and see what you think.

You'll be surprised how you just manage OP.
DD1 was born in 2020 peak covid. We relocated overseas when she was 8 weeks old then had about 13 months without seeing family or friends, no support nearby, barely allowed to leave the house and no classes or baby groups etc.
I still wonder sometimes how we did it without killing each other but we did.

She's now 4.5 and I'm pregnant with DD2 - now all the worries are back with how on earth we're going to manage with 2!

That sounds very tough @sel2223 - congrats on your pregnancy though!

A lot of people are telling me we'll manage but I'm not sure people really understand the impact of my husband's health condition. If he was in good health then I wouldn't have quite the same level of worries, but there is just no way he's going to be able to do a lot.

Thanks for the tip! I'm hoping not to co-sleep but I will definitely look it up, better to be safe if we do.

Bless you OP, if budget allows then a night nurse could definitely be the answer.

Millions of single mums do it all the time. You just get on with it, you’ll be fine

If you have a good routine with your DH now, you may be surprised at how your baby will fit in. You may have a contented baby or a baby that doesn’t sleep. My first hardly slept at all at night, which I strongly believe was down to me going to bed late whilst pregnant as with my second, I went to bed at 9 every night and when he was born, straightaway he slept from 8pm and night feeds were quicker also. I won’t lie first couple of months are awful, but they don’t last forever.

Hpnestly it'll be fine. You adapt. I was alone from newborn (no family help at all).

You will survive but if your husband can take the baby while he is awake and you can get an hour or two of extra sleep that way, then do it. You have to be prepared to sleep at any opportunity basically! But babies do sleep a lot just not always at night. With my baby the first maybe five weeks were the hardest and then he started sleeping for longer stretches so hopefully you'll have a good sleeper and it's only that first month that is really challenging. If you have friends who would even just sit with the baby while they sleep during the daytime so you can have a proper nap, take advantage of that - so when baby is also sleeping/they don't have to do any baby care if you wouldn't want to ask that of them.

I know it’s not the same, but because I breastfed I did all the nights alone for the 9 months before we introduced a bottle. My husband did get up in the nights with us at the start but we soon decided there was basically no point as I had to be awake to do the feed anyway. I caught up on sleep during the day. Also, somehow you do just cope on much less sleep and more broken sleep than you ever envisaged you would. If your husband is able to help during the day, then you could nap then to catch up a bit. You’ll find a way to cope that works for you OP, and the newborn stage is short too, although it can feel very long while you’re in it.

My husband never did any night shifts - he would have but it helped me more to have him awake in the day time hours. When the babies were young I went to bed earlier, napped when they did and didn’t let other people’s expectations (oh not slept through…oh you are going for a nap…) to bother me. Breastfeeding changes your sleep so you sleep less deeply but wake more easily - I bed shared safely and those early months were a lovely time. If I looked at my sleep schedule now I would be horrified doubtless!
Like me, you will find your way and be fine.

This. I wasn't with my partner when our first baby was born. I had no help whatsoever. From anyone. For a long time. You survive.
I went weeks without sleep.

As other posters have said, you will absolutely cope. It's hard to understand before you have children, but you do go into survival mode and just get through each day during the newborn stage.
My husband has to take a lot of medication at night, which means he falls asleep quickly and is then really difficult to wake up. The way we work it is I go to bed early (around 8 or 9pm. He does the 10pm feed, takes his medication and then I take over for the next two feeds and he then has her for the first early morning feed around 7am. That way he's still fairly in his routine and isn't affected too much by lack of sleep. Our baby is almost 3 weeks old and we have two other children and this is what we've done with all of them.
The night feeds don't last forever and whilst it feels like it's never going to end it does and before you know it they will be sleeping through. Try not to get ahead of yourself and create scenarios of how it's going to be before they baby has even arrived because they might be completely different to how you imagine.

Honestly I agree with this.

You can also look at local childminders who will often look after your cabby for a few hours when baby is a bit bigger (like 3m + ) and their rates are v reasonable.
that only really works well if you aren’t EBF though

I’m pretty pro co-sleeping, but one thing to be aware of is that if he’s a very deep sleeper due to his illness, it’s probably not a good idea to have him and baby co sleeping. It’s why they don’t recommend alcohol and co sleeping, as you’re in a “deeper” sleep which makes it more dangerous. I too think you’ll be fine. I did the nights with all of mine, DH takes baby in the morning. Congrats on your pregnancy!

If your husband is eligible for PIP or a personal assistant if disabled then look into that. Use the PIP to fund housework etc if dh cannot manage it.

Otherwise just buy in some extra help child care or housework support.

Buy yeh you buy in support thru your income or if dh eligible he gets relevant benefits like PIP or personal assistant support as a disabled person

When I was about 16 weeks pregnant my DH started having seizures brought on by lack of sleep. I was horrendously worried about managing alone. I exclusively bf in the end so baby was with me a lot anyway. DH always took baby 8pm - 11/12 to let me have a chunk of sleep and he slept the night. Yes I was tired but it got better, and worse and better. Her sleep is still all over the place! We had separate sleep spaces so we could sleep well in our allocated sleep times. I would also recommend you look up safe coaleeping, not because I'm saying CO sleep, but when I was tired I would set up the area so it was safe for baby if I fell asleep accidentally. My midwife and health visitor were both clear it was better to try and mitigate risks if tired and that a lot of accidents happen from accidentally falling asleep in an environment not safe.

You need to spend much more time in bed than you think. DH works evenings and I used to feed the baby about 6-7pm and go to bed with the baby in a bedside cot next to me. I woke to feed the baby and went back to sleep again, which sometimes works out well, but babies be an be grizzly and difficult to settle so sometimes you are up for a few hours at a time. If you are in bed 12-13 hours you have a fighting chance of getting 8 hours of (admittedly interrupted) sleep. I would take a sandwich and biscuits and bananas to bed because I would wake up hungry too (breastfeeding can make you hungry). I completely understand why couples where the dh works a day job don’t want to do this but your circumstances are not ordinary. If you only have one bedroom then set up somewhere such as a mattress in the living room for one of you to comfortably sleep away from the baby. If your DH needs eg 9 hours sleep then he needs to look after the baby up to his bedtime and again when he wakes up so if he is sleeping 9pm to 6am and you have gone to bed at 6.30pm then he has the baby until 9pm and again when he wakes up (if baby wakes up) at 6am which means if you have been up with the baby 4-5am you may be able to sleep until 7 or 8am. What you can’t do is all the evenings, all the nights and all the early mornings (and all the days) yourself - well you could, single parents do, but DHs sleep can only be prioritised during his necessary sleeping hours and he needs to facilitate your sleep during his waking hours.

I breastfed so my husband never got up at night, what's the point of both being awake.
You'll be fine.

Definitely look up cosleeping. I said I wouldn't do it but I ended up cosleeping for a year. I breastfed and had baby in bed with me. I would often go sleep at the same time as baby! My husband didn't lose any sleep as he slept in the spare room!

Honestly, you cope. I don't understand posters who say their DH took the baby 8-10 pm or whatever because my baby cluster fed every evening and then colic hit around 6-8 weeks where he just cried and cried and cried. He has reflux which means he feeds but cannot be put back down to sleep either. He's 4 months and I've had an average of 3-4 hours of sleep a day.

The hardest bit is not coping, in my opinion. You cope. You will be fine. The hardest thing for me was to let go of my dreams of having nice loving snuggles and for maternity leave to be a nice time. Once I accepted it's just a horror show, I will be fat and in pain and sleep deprived for a long time, I felt better. Let go of expectations set up by social media. Babies are horribly hard. But you just hang in there. You will genuinely be fine.

You don't need to co sleep if you don't want to OP, you'll manage regardless.
I EBF and did all the feeds day and night, I never co slept for a single minute.

(Ex emergency services and seen it go wrong too many times despite the best intentions of knackered parents)

Yes, agree with this. People online LOVE to suggest co-sleeping as a solution to all problems but it really isn't.

It's risky.

Sleeping on one side all night can be uncomfortable and painful on your hips (especially if, like me, you had PGP in pregnancy, which doesn't 100% go away instantly after birth).

If you're a light sleeper, having a tiny wriggly baby sleep next to you won't actually allow you to sleep.

My baby didn't care whether he was in my bed or not, he still cried.

The 2 friends I have who are adamant co-sleeping saved their sanity in the early days, are now losing their mind as they're still co-sleeping 3/4 years down the line.

If it works, that's great. I just wanted to support this previous poster because I find a very frustrating piece of advice.

You'll be completely fine. My husband doesn't do any night wakings (because he has a risky, physical job, not because he's a lazy arse) and it's very manageable. We also don't have any family/friend help either.

Lots of single mums manage just fine too, of course!