does your partner help with baby during the night?

[sotough]

I am wondering how often most dads of young babies help out with night feeds/settling baby during night.
I am currently on maternity leave with a four week old DD.
Me and DD sleep in a separate room so that DH has a decent uninterrupted sleep. he does the last feed of the day at 11pm; and then doesn't see us again until he gets up around 7.30/8am. Once a week he is willing to do a whole night of feeds (usually one at 2.30am and then 6am.) so i can have a break. He reckons this is more than most working blokes do, when their wives are on maternity leave. I'd be interested to know if he's right about that. I'd like him to do more but perhaps i'm being unreasonable!

my DP did about the same, used to do last feed around 12 and then i used to do the rest

it's our second child, and though i generally don't cope well without a lot of sleep i feel i'm generally managing fine. (he is 12 years older than me and i think is finding it tougher!) We're muddling along okay, and hopefully this won't be an issue for more than another couple of months, if we're lucky enough to find our daughter is a good sleeper.

I do everything at night :( but as DS is bf then not a lot of options really. DH doesnt even stir when DS wakes to feed (2 or 3 times a night). DS is 13 weeks.

Baby has two parents, sure, but only one of them has tits.

The way I see it, though I hate it at the time and am resentful (!) but why should we both be awake at 4am?

I breastfeed too and don't see much point in both of us being awake - I would wake up anyway if dd just needed settling. DH would be willing to help and often wakes up to give me a smile or hug during a feed!
He is not going out to work so takes dd at 7am after walking the dog and I zonk out for 2-3 hrs!!
Whatever works for you is the best.

Lol @ cfc.

I do it all too with DD. DP has to go to work so last thing he needs is to be tired. He looks after the both of us and cooks and cleans.

i did the feeding (being the one with tits) and then handed over the applicable child (have three) for him to change/ settle as required. it drove me bonkers listening to him snoring whilst i was feeding, but for me the re-settling/ changing was the worst part, so it was all fine.

all this 'he has to go to work so needs his sleep' stuff is utter nonsense. looking after small babies is bloody hard work, particularly if they are screamers and don't sleep in the day so you don't get any rest.

parenting in this house means 24/7. not 24/7 for the one with tits and an hour at the weekend for the one with the penis.

that said, dd2 was particularly gruelling as she was unable to feed during the day, so we had to dream feed her her entire milk intake during the night hours. setting the alarm and everything. she was also unable to bf, (was initially tube fed as she was born with no suck or gag/ swallow reflex) so he would feed her whilst i expressed like a maniac. he still managed to hold down a ft job. as did i with two toddlers and a baby with a disability.

but whatever keeps you sane really. and sleeping in the spare room trying to maintain a peaceful night time oasis for the one with the penis would have driven me straight to the 'mothers of small children are at vastly higher risk of mental health issues' stats....

also, you have to remember that the night-time parenting goes on waaaaay beyond the feeding/changing little baby stage...

you will BOTH have to be hands on deck at 2 or 3 am, when the D&V hits your school age children, or you are worried about a high fever, bed wetting, etc.

that was when it was really necessary for us, I think. (my two are 13 and 12 now, so we are out the other side...)

Well I'm another one with husband in the spare room and babies in with me and my boobs. We both work and I am knackered but ds just won't settle with anyone else.
I do remember the seething resentment of bf a newborn while he snored away. However I am on nights next month so that should be interesting......

Oh and I do all the night time checking/seeing to sick children with high fevers, hence being up now despite having just worked 45 hours in the last 3 days as he is incapable of staying awake.
Mmmmmm, resentment appearing again!!

bobbie, a swift elbow in the kidneys cures an inability to stay awake.

Another one here who does the night routines hence why I'm posting now DS is nearly 8 wks but I'm the one with boobs. DH sleeps like the dead so DS would need to be screaming blue murder to wake him. For DD we were both working ft as he had his own business but once that ended I would wake him for help, now he is SAHD he does a lot during day and once I go back to work night feeds will be my quality time with DS whilst I am still BFing. If I wake him he is more than happy to help but no point in us both being up. Luckily DS currently only up once in night for feed anyway so not too bad for lack of sleep.

when I was on mat leave, DH took her from 5am until 8am. He's an early person, I'm a late one so it worked out well.

He's now a SAHD and I'm at work. When I'm home the work is split evenly.

When he was struggling to adapt I did more. Made sure he had 8 hours sleep every night Then when I crashed after he got better, he did everything in the house for a while (bar feeding her, but he would bring her to me and take her afterwards).

She is 11 months now

For both of our 2 my husband did the night feeds and I did the days. He can get back to sleep when woken while I can't. A few nights of absolutely zero sleep makes me interesting to live with.

I am also the one with boobs but DS used to be a right bugger to settle back in bed after night feeds (when he woke in the night I would be up for 1.5-2 hours feeding and settling) and DH has many a time got up to rock him to sleep in the middle of the night. During the 4-month sleep regression, DS was waking every hour some nights and I would have gone completely insane if DH hadn't helped out. DS mostly catnaps during the day (45 mins or so at a time) so I rarely get any rest, and DH always says that looking after DS (who is a very alert, wakeful, energetic baby) is just as hard work as his job, and at least he gets a lunch break etc whereas I get very little respite at all. DH is awesome

Happily, DS seems to be out of the regression now and has also started feeding back to sleep at night so all I have to do is plonk him back down when he's finished so I'm only up for about 40 minutes. Happy days!

Hope everyone that was on this thread in early hours got some sleep!

I didn't get much sleep bobbiesmum :-(

Reading this thread makes me wish my DP wouldn't mind helping out a bit more with DD....

This thread has made me have words!!! I have worked 14 hour days all weekend and been up virtually all night the last 2 nights with sick ds.
My dh is genuinely great with the kids but just can not stay awake at night when he needs to!
Things are about to change!

Nope, even after I went back to work DH somehow had the ability to sleep through DD waking up 2-3 times a night for feeds. Okay, we were BF but towards the end (BF to 14 months, but mixed feeding for the last 4-5 of those) he could have given her the odd bottle.

Now pg with DC2 and I know it will be down to me again. Am planning to put a single bed in DC2's room from the start so that I can sleep in there with DC2, and will not feel guilty about catching up on sleep during the day!

sotough, your arrangement sounds exactly the same as mine was with my DH with DS was little, the difference being it was my idea!

DH at the time (and still now, actually) had an incredibly stressful job which required him to be completely with it and awake during the week, and I personally didn't feel comfortable with him doing anything during the night during the week when he had to be with grown ups all day, stringing together sensible sentences!

Having said that, he always helped out at weekends, and even did night feeds with expressed milk and bottles when I went out for my first "big" girls' night out!

I think what you're describing sounds like the norm, and as long as you're getting support on the weekends, I think it's perfectly reasonable.

My DH worked extremely long City hours (still does) but before DD started sleeping through the night he got up with me for every single waking - he'd check nappy and sing to her and I would feed, when on bottles then he would feed her too. 50/50 all the way - no arguments - and I was and still have chuffed to bits .

still am (typo) chuffed to bits

I do everything for the 18mo (first year, he was breastfed, and currently he's going through an 'only Mummy will do' stage. DH does everything for the 3yo (who wakes up a lot less frequently, but does sometimes.) To compensate for my harder nights, DH gives me a lie in at weekends. And when the 'only Mummy' phase is over, we'll split it.