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!

In the first three weeks with my first, we sort of broke the day up into shifts. There was the evening feeding, the night feeding, and the morning and day feeding. If one took the night feed, then the other took the next shift and so on. The times were changeable, we had an unspoken agreement that you went for as long as you could, then swapped.

When he went back to work I did the night feeds. He did the last evening feed. We took turns having a lie in at the weekend, and the one who got the lie in did the night feeds.

I felt it was important he got a good sleep because he was up early and in doing a manual job. I did get resentful sometimes, I was pretty tired, however I did try to go on as normal in life, going to bed later and doing a lot more than I probably should have in the days.

I was on my own with my second, single mum. We breastfed and I had a toddler to be responsible for. For the first three or so weeks, I went to bed at the same time my toddler did, and got up when he did, roughly 7pm to 7am. My DD fed several times a night. I co-slept with her when I could, or had the moses basket next to me on the bed when I couldn't. I breastfed lying on my side curled up around my baby, and dozed while she fed. I kept nappies, wipes, changes of clothes and the likes on my windowledge right next to me in hands reach. I never got out of bed. I never felt resentful.

Sometimes having someone around who could help is a lot harder than just doing it.

Interesting thread! DD is 6 months and EBF. She currently wakes twice a night (used to be zero - oh woe is me) and I feed her back to sleep. A bottle would not have the same soothing effect for her, she tolerates it at best. So I do all the nights. Maybe I rough deal reading some of these posts as I think DD would settle without a feed - DP will be trying that tonight!

No. Nothing. Nada. Yes it does annoy me.

I bf DD, but DH has always got up in the night, changed her and then brought her to me to feed. He also often gets up in the morning and takes her until he starts work at 9am so I can get a lie in! He generally copes better on less sleep, but I'm still very glad I have him. I don't think I could have coped with doing everything by myself in the night...

I too bf. I'm on ML.

I do night-shifts mon - fri, dh works days in the week.
I do night-shifts on weekends.
I do all day, all week. DD won't nap in the day so I can't either.
I do the cooking.
I do the house-work.
When I return to work, I'll have that on top of everything else!
I'm stupid! And totally fed up.

All me.

DH 'helps' with really unhelpful comments/'suggestions' when she won't settle

I did everything for the first three and a half years because I didn't want him crashing and dying on the motorway and thought he was more help well slept (he's a miserable so and so when tired (sorry DH if you are reading this - love you really x)). After three and a half years, I still did the lion's share.

OK, I wasn't working, but in hindsight, I was so absolutely shattered and would have been a better parent had I had a bit of sleep. Some days I was so tired I could hardly drag myself through the days . I did get lie-ins at the week-end and whenever he could heop, but sometimes it is that horrible spell in the night when your child won't settle and you are the one in charge that is so draining.

Several years on now and life is so much easier now they are a bit older - so anyone out there going through this, just give it a bit of time .

heop = help

I have a 6 week old dd and am on ML. I sleep in the spare room from about 9.30 til 2am, then DH goes to bed at from 2 til 7.30am. Seems I am very lucky. Cheers!

We shared it for the first two weeks while DH was on paternity (in as much as you can share when BF - I fed, he changed etc).

Then when he was back at work I did everything - appreciate it's different with 2nd/3rd etc when you can't do the 'sleep when they sleep' - but I really feel it's much more important to get a decent night's sleep when you've got to appear coherent to adults and make important decisions than to potter around the house half-heartedly doing chores, singing nursery rhymes and going to playgroup. Separate rooms meant I could pop the light on and read a book while feeding without disturbing him - no point both of you being awake.

Now we're both working we share - not strictly, but depending on who's got a more important day the next day/what DS wants/who got up the night before/is more grumpy...

We've always had a rule that no matter whose turn it is if it all goes tits up (DS really won't settle/sick/poo explosion) then we can call the other in.

While DH was on paternity leave (so the first 2 weeks) he would wake up during the night anyway because he's quite a light sleeper and kept me company, got me painkillers etc while I was feeding DS. Not long after he went back I moved on to formula (I was having so many problems bfing and was so miserable from it all) so I would go to bed early and DH would do any feeds/ settling etc until midnight. After that I would be the one to get up.

Now DS is 3 months old and i'm at uni (only local not away from home or anything) 3 days a week so DH does those nights so I can concentrate in lectures and I do them the rest of the time. It works for us and he does let me sleep in at the weekend which is nice of him. I'd like to say I could return the favour BUT he never seems to be able to sleep in on his days off, even before DS came along. Something that understandably pisses him right off but unfortunately not something I can help with.

When DD was born she developed colic pretty early on (or it felt like that anyway!) DH was fab. Decided I needed a break, sat up for hours with her night after night as he can exist on next to no sleep and woke me to feed whilst she was being BF but when we moved to bottles he still stayed up with her for hours at a time. He did the same when DS was born 14 months later.

Goodlooksandcooks Give yourself a break and put DD in nursery for one day a week. At least it will give you a chance to have a bath and sleep without being interrupted and it will do DD the world of good to meet other people.

Although my DH fab most of the time, durng busy periods like lambing and harvest I have to do everything regardless of how many times I have been up in the night or other crises!

ds2 is 14 weeks and bf. Dh slept with us for the 2 weeks he was on paternity leave whilst we established bfing, then de-camped to the spare room. however, he sees to ds1 if he wakes up and is "on call" to take ds2 for me anytime from 5.30 ish onwards if I have a bad night. I don't have to do this very often now, but I did during the first couple of months. He also did all the cleaning before bed so I could just go up at 8.30/9pm. He will still do this now at weekends, not so much in week if he is working late. it's good team work for us - no point you both being awake at night, and I am happy to avoid sex for the time being!!!

With ds ( dc1) I did all the night feeds (ebf) I would wake him up if I couldn't settle him at 530/6. With dd he stayed up and gave her ebm at 11pm so I could go to sleep at 9pm. TBH they both gave up night feeds between 2 and 3 months so it wasn't for long .

My husband does all the night care for the kids (except bfing, obviously, but when we stopped co-sleeping, he would bring me baby and then put them back to bed). Now my DCs are all in their own room, he goes to them if they wake up at night and gets up with them in the morning.

My husband does most of everything actually . We both work from home now, but I used to do a lot more work out of the home so he's always been their main carer (much to many health professional amusement).

I exclusively BF both my DCs so DH was unable to help with feeds.
I slept in a separate room with each DC for 4 months and then returned to sleeping with DH.
He never got up in the night for either of them.
I thought this was fair to allow him to sleep properly so that he could work in the daytime. I am lucky enough to be a SAHM.

He helped a bit during the day with DD, but I changed his first nappy for DS when DS was almost a year old!

OP, your DH does more than mine! We have a 9 week old DS who wakes up every couple of hours and believes 5am is an entirely reasonable time to start the day. He also refuses to nap in the day. My mum often tells me gleefully that I was like that till I was about 3.....

I do all the night get ups, 7 nights a week. But, as others have said although DS has two parents, only one has tits! There doesn't seem to be much point in both of us getting up just for the sake of it. I am on mat leave for 12 months, and hope to bf for the whole of this time, so realistically I will do all night get ups for the foreseeable future. DH works from home three days a week but does an insane commute twice a week (2.5 hours each way) and I would be scared for him to drive this far if he had not slept properly.

To be fair to DH, he does feel guilty that he gets uninterrupted sleep (he also often gets a night in a hotel a week, as he is away with work!). It works well for us - at weekends, DH gets to spend time on his own with DS whilst I try and bank some sleep for the coming week.

Looking after a baby is hard work but it is also pretty brain dead work - you can do most of it on auto pilot if its been a particularly bad night. There's no way I could have done my job on the little amount of sleep I get now, and I wouldn't expect DH to do his job on 3-4 hours kip a night.

It's tough, but if you are bf you just have to suck it up!

All me.

i am a stay at home mum my DDs are 7, 6 and 4 me and DH have always shared the night feeds as we FF. even now if they are ill we take it in turns to get up with them, DH also helps with cooking and housework and works FT.

Four weeks?! manic cackle I did the first five months being the one with the boobs. DH helped thereafter when it was wakings when I didn't want to feed DS. At 17 months he did the bulk of the night weaning settling for which I am eternally grateful. I don't know how people bottle feeding cope with nights. I just used to pop DS on, doze off and then pop him back in the cot about half an hour later when I woke up again. BFing gives you those amazing get back to sleep hormones.... and no godawful trek to the kitchen.

We both share, if I did everything overnight I'd be an absolute mess. With dd1 I thought as I was a SAHM I should do baby 24 hours and dh should do work. That could not have worked for us, I need alot of sleep and fortunately he needs very little. Staying at home with kids may not be mentally taxing or paid but its still a job and particularly when you have a older child you need to have had some sleep to be able to cope with them! Having said that with our newborn dd2 we're both shattered!

I think it so depends on what the two of you are like. I've done almost all the night stuff with both our DC, but then I cope pretty well with not much sleep. DH copes atrociously if he doesn't sleep. Personally, I would FAR rather he was reasonably fresh, cheerful, and happy to muck in with all the daytime stuff (which he does, brilliantly), than that he shared the nights but ended up grumpy and exhausted the rest of the time. But it really depends on what works for you.

Hmm I have 3ds I see to all their needs.
DH has changed a few nappies and occasionally dressed them and plays lego with them now oh and he loads/unloads the dishwasher, I still get up in the night with them and do all the household stuff, and I'm usually grumpy from sleep deprivation I've had 4 1/2 solid years of it.