Hellobee Boards

During maternity leave and now that I'm back at work, I handle all of the night time wake ups. With my 1st I got annoyed I was doing it all. I thought everything was supposed to be 50/50. Yeah right. My husband works 12 hour shifts outside alternating a week of nights, then days, then off. He needs his rest for safety reasons. But sure he sometimes wakes up from the noise but I generally handle the baby. He's not even home for plenty of the wake ups!

I've always done the night wakeups. I have long maternity leaves and great sleepers so it's never been so bad that I've needed his help. He is so cranky without sleep that I'd rather handle it myself. It doors drive me nuts when he complains about being tired and then takes a nap, it's not like I didn't watch him sleep all night.

On another note... Can we change the title so it doesn't ask about dead babies. Maybe late wakeups instead of late baby.

I have this rule when I am on mat leave, because I consider it part of my mat leave "job". Both of us have WOH jobs that require a lot of concentration, and are very challenging to do with little sleep. When we are both working, we split it a lot more - he tends to get up early with her, and I do the MOTN stuff. I was doing everything when I initially went back to work, but once I got pregnant again and sick, it was impossible to do.

I did all the wakeups for LO1 until 16 months or so when we weaned. Then DH took one morning per week. LO1 only napped while being worn or in a stroller so i never got a nap.

That pleasure cruise is ending for him with #2 though. Staying home with a kid or two is way harder to do tired than work. I WOH.

DH took a 6 week leave, so when we were both off, we would both get up for most of the wakings. He would do the diaper and reswaddle, then I'd feed. I'd spend a lot more time awake and a lot more time trying to get DS back to sleep, so in the morning DH would get up with him around 7 and feed him a bottle and I'd sleep until 10. That allowed me to get 3 solid hours of sleep.

For the 4ish weeks I was on leave by myself I would try to do the wakings by myself. When I went back to work I mostly handled them myself. I was still BF-ing, and by then DS didn't poop overnight. But maybe half the time I'd have DH either get DS and bring him to me, or take him from me after I'd fed him. It was always great the wakings where DH would put him back to bed, because I'd just lay there and nurse in the side-lying position so I could just drift back to sleep and not have to get up again.

I am not sure how it will all work once lo gets here but while I am on maternity leave I will try and do all the night times if he is working. Once I am back at work too we will have to find some kind of compromise. Guessing it iwll mostly fall on me though since I am BFing.