What help does your partner give you at night?

[Annie105]

Interested to know as I'm currently so exhausted and don't know why my husband can't see it even though I tell him.

He sleeps 5 nights of the week in the nursery on the bed in there while baby sleeps in his crib next to me in our bedroom. He has a stressful job and leaves early in the morning and sometimes makes it home for baby bedtime but usually not. When he does get home I usually cook dinner too. I do all the housework too during the day.

To be fair to him he does a lot more at weekends and sleeps Friday and Saturday night in our room with me and usually does a night feed. He also does weekly shop on Saturday and abut of housework,

I've tried telling him I need more help but it's like he thinks because I'm on maternity leave and he is working that I'm supposed to be this exhausted. I'm starting to cry all the time and little things are really upsetting me like him leaving his breakfast dishes in the sink and staying up late watching crap TV and then complaining he is tired!!!!!

We do alternate nights. One of us sleeps in baby's room on a twin bed to tend to night wakings while the other gets the master bedroom to sleep sound for the entire night. Its the only way for us.

I have done all the nighttime stuff with both our DC. If there's enough going on that they wake DH (eg one of them's poorly) then he helps but otherwise he sleeps through.

In the evenings DH cooks for us, shares the bedtime routine if he's home in time, and catches us up on whatever housework can't wait till the weekend if I haven't managed it in the daytime.

At weekends we split the housework and depending on how knackered we each are he has a lie in and/or I have an afternoon nap.

With the first two I was bf, so when they woke up, dh would go and get them. I would feed them while he went back to sleep, then I would elbow him in the kidneys and he would take them back to bed, change if required, and resettle. I would go back to sleep. Sometimes he failed to settle them, so would bring them back. I would feed more and wake him up again. It worked reasonably well and was pretty close to 50/50 parenting. Dc3 was unable to bf and so was ff. For the first 6 weeks I pumped though so we could bottle feed ebm, so dh did all the night feeds while I pumped. For various reasons we had to feed her as much as possible during the silent hours, so we had to set alarms.
And subsequently, he has always been much better at mopping up barf and changing beds during the night hours.
Until all three were 7 or so, I left him with them for at least one weekend a month, so he was responsible for the whole shabang.
He's their parent. I don't think of it as helping. He does his share of parenting. I am not doing his share as well as my own - my children have two parents.
To use the excuse he is busy at work is an excuse, unless he drives for a living or operates heavy machinery and there would be a safety implication. Dh had extremely tough roles during the baby years but ultimately it's not relevant. No one will die because daddy got up to feed the baby. To pretend otherwise is to yourself a disservice in terms of setting up unequal parenting roles from the start. These are then cemented until the point the woman wakes up and remembers that feminism is an actual thing. It's very easy to slip into the domestic role, and much much much harder to get out of it. Too many women think they are exemplifying some domestic goddess mummy icon, and actively preventing their male partner from doing anything (oh, he's terrible at x, y or z so I have to do it all) instead of starting out with the expectation that it matters not if he is crap - he is an adult man that needs to get on with it, which will improve his skills no end.
Tiredness is a new parent thing. Not a mummy thing.

Pontification I can't wholly agree with what you say.

If a woman is off for maternity leave, and the husband is working (or if the woman is a SAHM), then surely it makes more sense for her to do the majority of the nights?

The feeding is often the easy bit so you left your husband doing the bit that often takes the longest and is the hardest. That doesn't seem especially fair to me.

I am a SAHM (formerly City professional), my job is looking after the family, my DH's job is earning the money, so we can eat and live! Both are as important as each other.

I think often on MN it is expected that unless your DH is a brain surgeon he should be awake half he night, but it's important that my DH doesn't lose his job, so yes 'no one will die', but it would make our lives (all of ours including the DC) extremely hard.

I consider myself very lucky. My DH took 6 weeks paternity leave (he owns his own business, so was able to do that - normally, they're only entitled to 2). During that time, he got up every time during the night to bring DD to me for feeds. Although, DD only ever woke 2 times maximum during the night, and most nights only woke 1 time.

He's been back at work for 2 weeks now, and now he doesn't get up during the night. DD only sometimes wakes up for a feed at night now, and often will sleep an 8-9 hour stretch which means neither of us has to get up.

He was particularly helpful during those first few weeks when we were trying to get breastfeeding established. My DD still isn't a big feeder, and we often have to wake her for a feed, otherwise I'll explode. During those first few weeks, she was very difficult to wake and it resulted in a bout of mastitis and hugely engorged boobs. Fortunately DH was sympathetic and tried to make life easier. We've got it sussed now and it's much better.

Try to make things easier on yourself. You and DH could make a few big "batches" of food on the weekend, and then have those foods for dinner throughout the week. DH and I had a looot of lasagna and spag bol in the early weeks, as well as quick things like stir fries and frozen things like chicken kievs. Had him do his own washing, so you're just washing your and the baby's clothes. Have him clean up after himself, so he isn't leaving dishes lying around for you to do etc.

Basically, you look after yourself and the baby, and he makes sure he's at least looking after himself so that you don't have to. It doesn't matter that he works full-time; he is still more than capable of helping you out.

Lucky star-
So your job is 24/7 and your dh is 8-5. What crap.
Why should the women do all the nights? Looking after babies is work in the day as well just like going to work.Its not like staying at home and watching TV all day long.

Lucky - no, but both parents should have to learn to be a bit tired, not one exhausted and one happy as Larry. So yes, unless your husband is working in a life or death job in terms of tiredness then of course they should go to work a bit tired if with their own baby. They aren't helping they are just doing what's needed.

My DH got up to do nappies and settling, even though I was breastfeeding. I think saying the person on mat leave should do it all isn't necessarily fair - I had a baby I couldn't put down, so I couldn't nap during the day. As a pp says, it shouldn't be that one of you is on your knees and the other totally fine. It's ok for him to be a little bit tired at work - plenty of women manage it!

As for leaving dirty dishes and letting you do the cooking etc - that shows a lack of respect and appreciation for what your role is right now. You must prioritise leaving him alone to do baby AND chores at the earliest opportunity

But it's not 24/7, let's be a little realistic. With baby 1, it's likely that the time spent feeding is done sitting down, watching tv/reading/on phone. Unless you elect to do so, you could actually spend most of the day on the sofa (illness/other extraneous reasons discounted of course).

Once they get up a bit, it's usual (but of course not always, including my own DS) that they sleep a bit more and don't need nappies changed etc in the night as the norm (again illness etc discounted), so your nights get slightly better and the days are spent playing, reading to children, perhaps a bit of tv, seeing friends etc.

Yes, it's gruelling, in a way that only looking after small, annoying humans can be, but once they have a bed time and are sleeping a bit better it becomes a 'normal' working day (again illness etc discounted).

And no, my husband doesn't work 8-5! If only!! And neither did I, I worked 14 hours a day on an average day as does he.

Of course everyone is different but earning money to sustain the family is very important!!

"Once they get up a bit, it's usual (but of course not always, including my own DS) that they sleep a bit more and don't need nappies changed etc in the night as the norm (again illness etc discounted), so your nights get slightly better and the days are spent playing, reading to children, perhaps a bit of tv, seeing friends etc.
"

Oh I wish my days where spent like that ...
Anyway that's your opinion.

Me and dp do night on/night off.

I lie In Saturday and he does Sunday.

Mine does exactly the same as you plus I have a 2.5 year old in the mix too (that doesn't attend nursery). I'm exclusively BF too so no option to do night feeds. I'm coping ok and attending to everyone's needs but I'd kill for some 'me time'. Even a shower alone that lasted more than 3 minutes would be nice!

I'm with Luckystar - and I think we all need to accept that everyone's situations are different and different solutions will work. My DH is out of the house 8am-10pm and needs to be mentally alert at work so getting him up multiple times a night wouldn't work - I only need to be alert enough to keep the kids alive and fed! We have 2 DC 5yo and 2yo and I do all night wakings. I am a SAHM.

But I don't do any cleaning and frankly very little cooking - hello Little Dish and Cook online. And on the weekends, if he's not working, DH is a fully hands on 50/50 nappy changing cooking going to the park giving me a lie in parent.

My dh didn't do much in terms of nights but that was a decision we made together and were both happy with.

He had a month off on paternity leave and then I felt it was better for him to sleep through and me get up. Then when he got home from work he would take our daughter so that I could rest.

I was breastfeeding for the first few weeks so he couldn't have done the night feeds anyway and I really didn't see the point of him being disturbed too - better that he was refreshed and could help me rest later.

But saying that, whenever I did struggle, if it was a particularly bad night, he would always help if I woke him and asked. No problem at all.

Dd is 14 months now and dh does the nursery pick up and drop offs most days, and he enjoys meal times, bath times etc. I do more but purely because I now work part time and am at home more. But he gets stuck in on days off, and mornings and evenings.

Oh and dh does way more housework than me! He always has done and that's even more the case now.

We do every other night too. But if one of us is particularly tired/has something important the next day then are flexible and have a few nights in a row. We have a lie in each on the weekend usually.

If one of you is fucked and the other is fine then it's not being split properly. Your supposed to be a team.