Night shift with baby that won’t sleep in cot

[Bexlou2]

Hi all,

I am new mum and my partner is going back to this week, what would the best to divide the night? So we both kind of get some sleep. My won’t sleep in a cot or Mose basket.

I did the nights then I was on maternity leave. Husband helped at weekends.

Can he have baby for afew hours when he gets home of an evening and on weekends so you can relax / catch up on sleep?

I wouldnt let him do nights if he was working all day

My husband did either the first part of the evening, ie I went to bed early and he brought baby up at 10/11 or the early morning eg he got up at 6 and had baby until 8ish. But generally while I was on May leave I did the nights.

Have you tried different options to get them sleeping as well so you can get some sleep? Mine hated the Moses basket but did sleep in the cot bed. They hated being swaddled but we had little sleeping bags from day one. I also had a white noise machine.

My baby is 14 weeks and won't sleep in crib or Moses. This is what works for us: I take baby to bed at about 8pm and feed to sleep. Partner takes baby downstairs at about 9 so I can sleep. Brings baby back up to me at about 12:30 and I co sleep the rest of the night. Partner sleeps in the spare room. My baby doesn't sleep brilliantly - wakes every couple of hours for a feed.

My partner has a very intense and stressful job that he simply couldn't do if he was being woken every 2 hours through the night, so this routine works for us. Good luck OP.

Have you tried safe co sleeping? CoSleepy on Instagram is good for tips on this! It saved me x

On Mat leave I did nights during the week as DH had to work and it didn’t seem fair for him to have a disturbed night when I could doze with baby during the day. However, he pulled his weight on weekends and the evenings so I could catch up on sleep if needed but, for me, dozing whilst baby slept was usually enough.

I’m on May leave at the moment and I do the nights as my DH is working full time but he does one night a week at the weekend to give me a break.

We shared nights when I was on mat leave as looking after a baby at home is similar to a full time job except you don't get breaks. It's hard when they're tiny and want to be held and you're terrified of falling asleep with them. I fell asleep breastfeeding in the early days and ds went blue and stopped breathing (he was very tiny though and I think this is far less common for normal size term babies.) It just taught us to split nights until he was about eight months and I felt ok having him in bed again.

I'm sorry, reading that back it sounds frightening. I'm sure that won't happen to you. Just emphasising need to both get sleep

Co-sleeping saved us. My first wouldn't settle in a cot or moses basket at all. He literally woke about every 20 minutes and I became so tired I started hallucinating. It took a little time to figure out how to breastfeed lying on my side, but once we got it, it meant that I could just semi-wake, pull my top down to feed, and go straight back to sleep while he was still feeding. He also slept for longer stretches (a few hours at a time) when he knew I was close by.

Have you looked in to safe cosleeping? It's worth making your sleep environment as safe as possible as if you are exhausted the chances of falling asleep with baby accidentally are higher.

For us partner did late night and early morning and then slept the block in the middle. There was no dozing in the day for me with baby as they only slept on me or in a moving pram or car for almost 2 years(!).

I don't agree with the 'men need their sleep when they're working' line. Like women recovering from birth and caring for a new baby isn't work. There are also scientific studies showing men need less sleep on average than women. Yet here we are expecting women to do full day shifts with no breaks and function on 2 hours sleep.

We did similar to @Wrongsideofpennines , I tried to let DH have a good block in the middle but I needed some sleep too! Start going to bed as early as possible, as in DH gets home, have dinner, then one of you go to bed for a bit (8ish? 7?). If you can extend "night time" to 8pm to 6am for example that gives you 10 hours to share with DH and you could get 5 hours each in theory! If you can get baby down somewhere that would obviously help, DD would sometimes go in the moses basket next to the sofa with my hand on her for a couple of hours, which I could do while sleeping on the sofa. We also coslept a few times (DH got sent to the sofa).If baby will take a bottle DH can do one of the feeds to give you a bigger block at some point too. You also don't have to do the same every night, one of you might feel better than the other at any given time so that person can hold the baby for a while!

This is only relevant if your baby never slept, and you genuinely got through on 3 hours sleep a night. Even so, most sensible women who decided jointly with their partner to have a baby think that working 21 hours a day nonstop while their partner does 8-10 and also gives baby a bath makes for a miserable exhausted hallucinating woman and is deeply unfair.

My DH worked 9-5 and I was responsible for the baby 9-5. He worked from home so no commute. Outside of those hours, we shared everything at least 50%. In fact, he did much more of the night over all. Looking after a baby is also work and one you need to be rested for (unless you genuinely have a baby who lets you nap when they nap in the day I guess - mine never did!). You need to be adequately energised so as to not fall asleep with the baby, to prepare milk (if FF) safely, to transport baby safely etc. Also, like many men I think, DH needs less sleep than me and I needed to recover from pregnancy and birth.

My little one hates anything that isn’t us holding her. Which kind of our fault, but we just wanna divide the time over night, so both get sleep and not burnout lol,

You need to sleep train OP. Sorry. You are both busy professionals and need rest, with everyone in their own bed.

You don't 'need' to sleep train. In fact you can't sleep train a newborn. Every baby is different but most newborns will wake regularly throughout the night because they are hungry and their bellies are too small to hold enough milk to keep them full.

Also babies are programmed to want to sleep near their parents because this makes them feel safe. It's obviously very hard for the parents if the baby is also waking regularly but there is nothing 'wrong' with a baby who needs this. It's completely natural and normal and evolutionarily sound.

OP, if you want to you can side feed and co sleep safely as others have said and it will make things much easier on you. It saved my sanity.