ADVICE NEEDED - What is your sleep routine/night shift?

[MrsRose2018]

Hi ladies,

Just after a bit of info really!

Our first baby is 18 days old and as he won’t settle in his snuz pod/Moses basket yet me and DH currently take it in alternating 3 hour “shifts” as follows:
10pm - 1am: DH up and I sleep
2pm - 5am (time it takes to handover and get me settled and he makes me a coffee/snack): I’m up and DH asleep
5.30 - 8.30 (time it takes for DH to wake up 😂): DH up and i sleep
8.30 onwards - DH gets some extra sleep for a couple of hours or we all get up together

I breast feed on my “shifts” and he has pumped breast milk/bottle for his or a maximum 3oz formula if I haven’t pumped enough that day/we’ve had to use it etc

This is working really well for us right now and are putting DS down to sleep in the snuz pod/Moses basket periodically during the day to get him adjusted (making good progress so far...) HOWEVER my husband has to go back to work on the 3 August and we agree the “shift pattern” needs to change!

Off the top of our heads we are thinking:
10pm - 2am: DH up and I sleep
2am - 6am: Im up and DH asleep

My mum has taken the month of August off work to help out and the tentative plan is she then comes round about 8am when DH leaves for work and just helps out where needed if I need to nap etc

The ultimate plan is that eventually DS will sleep next to us and we just wake up, bottle feed the breast milk and go back to sleep and then DH goes off to work and I’ve had “enough” sleep to comfortably look after DS during the day (i York can dream right?? 😂)

Can I ask what your routine was in the evening? Did you have shifts? If so what were they?

TIA

xx

I feel exhausted reading that OP. Congratulations by the way on your little one. As your baby gets older they will get in a better routine, I remember the sleepless nights when mine were small. I think the way you have it organised wth you and your DH is very good but the ultinate goal is for baby you and DH to all have a sleep during the night. Is your baby awake all through the night and only sleeps in the day?

My advice? 6.30pm draw all the curtains in the house. Your baby needs to adapt to day/night (circadian rhythm). Get a sleepyhead and put it in the snopzpod. Use white noise Swaddle. Once baby is deeply asleep in your arms, try putting him/her in the sleepyhead (you're awake so thei not sleeping unattended - it's about them getting used to sleeping not on you) They will feel more cocooned, keeping your hand gently on their tummy so they know you're there and keep trying. Consider using a dummy when breastfeeding fully established When they wake any time from 5am ish open the curtains to let in daylight (but carry on sleeping if it's your sleeping shift). Your baby is tiny and all it knows is you. It will get better, but the shift idea is the best way to ensure you all get some rest. Make Sure in the day when baby does sleep in the Moses basket etc you sleep. It's a cliché but so important. Sleep deprivation is a killer!

We did the shift thing with our first. Looking back we wished we hadn't because we were both exhausted, so with our second we just kept putting her down. Waited until she was deeply asleep first and we have a sleepyhead.
Good luck. Those first few weeks are tough but it gets better ( I'm only in week 16!)

It does sound like a lot of hard work to be honest. DD didn't sleep till she was close to two. I breastfeed for 9 months so I did all waking, I Co slept and just muddled through. I would try and relax and just accept you'll be knackered for a while, they're only 2 weeks old. You're going to stress yourself out living like this imo.
Good luck!

Hi all,

Im really grateful input but right now we have no interested in changing the shift arrangement!

It's working for us, we are both averaging about 5 /6 hours of sleep a night (albeit a bit broken) so are relatively refreshed for the day, the baby sleeps through the night (just on us) and is starting to get nice and alert for periods during the day! It's hard yes, but he's only 2 weeks, he was also premature, jaundiced and my waters went at 25 weeks so it's been a bumpy ride for us all! We will get/start establishing a proper routine soon!

All I would appreciate right now though is some info on how you managed when your partners went back to work and if you did shifts, what they were!

Thanks xx

Ah if he's sleeping through on you then why not look into Co sleeping? Sounds like he's an ideal candidate for it!

What we did was I went to bed at 8 and DH would give DS a bottle at 11pm ish and then both come to bed. Then DS would wake about 3 and I would feed him. We also had an afternoon snooze shift on days when we were both at home. One of us at 3ish and the other whenever the first person woke up. It kept us both going! The white noise tip is a good one too. We got an adult white noise machine in the end and we are still using it now (DS 23 months). Congratulations and good luck!

My baby is 5 months and just coming out of the 4 month sleep regression. I exclusively breastfeed and she generally only settles with feeding so I do most of the overnight wakings. My partner had the first 6 weeks off work but when they went back we decided to split the mornings. So they do 2 week day mornings and one or both weekend mornings, anytime after 6am. Gives me a few extra hours in bed. I swear she only wakes up super early when it's my turn though!

Can I ask what your routine was in the evening? Did you have shifts? If so what were they?

With a newborn:

Daytime - me doing all of this, DH at work
From 7am-7pm (ish) repeating cycles of

• Wake
• Breastfeed then wind
• Nappy check / nappy off floor time / tummy time until first upset (around 5-15 minutes)
• Into swaddle, top-up breastfeed
• sleep

Wake and repeat, over and over again

Evening - me doing all of this while DH sorts household and older siblings
From about 7pm-10pm (Or whenever I go to bed)

• Clusterfeeding breastfeeds with naps between

Sitting on sofa for a good 3h without moving. Baby constantly either breastfeefibg or dozing.

Night - Me, DH has work the next day so needs to sleep
10pm - 5.30am

Baby swaddled, with dummy, in sidecar cot. Any wake up =

• undo swaddle
• Breastfeed until asleep
• lift to wind on shoulder
• redo swaddle
• reoffer breast (While swaddled)
• Dummy in as lifted to shoulder for final wind check. Baby will fall asleep on shoulder
• lowered into sidecar cot in swaddle with dummy (to make putting down easier)

Early Morning- DH
Any wake up from 5.30am onwards, until I get up 7.00/7.30am

DH has always got up early with our children, every day (So he never has a lie in). Gives me a few hours extra sleep. He gets ready for work in this time, while also looking after baby

A bit early in the establishment of BF to be pumping/ bottle feeding really. Especially in the overnight period which is essential to sort supply.

And it can change a lot in a couple of weeks so it might not really need to be thought through this much. But yes, we roughly did shifts during 4th trimester. Except I went to bed even earlier than that, DH brought DS for a BF then took him away to wind etc. Handed over by about midnight, i did 6 hours or so then got a couple more hours while DH walked dogs with DS in carrer etc

And DS was a crappy sleeper, he really was, but at least got to lying beside me type levels by then

Hi @MrsRose2018, congratulations on your baby! I remember seeing your post when your waters broke early, as I also had PPROM back in November. I'm so glad that everything worked out well.

When my husband went back to work, we wanted to ensure he got a 6 hour stretch of sleep (give or take) so we did the following:

6.30pm He would get home from work, we'd have dinner together

8pm-11pm I would sleep, husband would give baby a bottle of expressed milk or formula at 10.30ish

11pm-5am I would be up and down during this time to feed and to hold baby upright after feeds as he had bad reflux at nights. Snatched some sleep for an hour here and there if baby was able to be put down (we had good and bad days, thankfully behind us now)

5am-8am Husband would look after baby and get ready for work while I slept

One thing that really helped was to meal prep as much as possible at the weekend so that we had boxes of stew/pasta bake/curry etc ready to cook each evening, so that minimal time was spent on cooking or washing up on weekdays and we could all spend some quality time together before I went to sleep at 8pm.

This arrangement lasted a few months, until we were out of the newborn stage and were able to implement an earlier bedtime and baby was able to sleep in cot (though never for long stretches but that's another story)

Congrats on your new baby! We did a shift system, but the opposite way round as I'm a night person and DH is a morning person.

Something to consider is that you'll be alone with the baby from 2am till whenever your DH get home, I found it much easier to wake up and face the day 'fresh', then have DH around to break the monotony before I'm alone again.