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I'm sorry I have no personal experience, but could you facetime/skype with him during his break? or bring her to visit in her costume during a break time?

That's super hard..... DH doesn't miss out on holidays (he's an accountant and the numbers can wait hahaha), but we aren't near any family. This will be our first Christmas without being able to travel (I'm due Jan 5th with our third baby) and I know it will be hard. With birthdays we have just used FaceTime while doing cake cutting etc.

For Halloween this year, maybe you could do a pumpkin patch with your LO wearing her costume. That way DH is still involved in Halloween-y things, but just not on the day. And, for other holidays, start new traditions! Like open some presents the day before Christmas.

That's super hard though

Could you meet up with him at some point during his shift so he can see her and get a picture of everyone together? My DH is a firefighter and I'm a nurse, so we work holidays too, but I try to go to the fire station at some point on holidays he works and at least see DH. Our LO isn't due until January though, so I don't know what we will do when the kid's here!

DH is a chef at "the happiest place on earth" aka, open 365. If it's a day he's scheduled during the week, it doesn't matter if it's a holiday or not- he works. LO is due in a few weeks but so far we've discussed just trying to make a big deal of it before work (so Halloween we could dress her up and do photos and make it special before he goes in, etc) For holidays like Halloween, Christmas, etc, also we want to MAKE SURE he gets to do stuff with her beforehand- like going to the Disney/Universal stuff, pictures with Santa, decorating the tree, etc. Spreading out the holidays with other traditions you can do when DH is off is a great way to make the holidays still magical!

What everyone else said. I worked shift work my first three years of being a nurse, and when we moved away from family, we just celebrated on my off day.

@Sapphiresun: dh is also a police officer and during Los first (autocorrect had Iraq? huh?) year missed her first Xmas (and eve), New Year's Eve, and took vaca through Easter (yay!) he somehow got thanksgiving and Halloween off. But Halloween was when LO was 6 weeks (fuuussssy!) and thanksgiving wasn't much better although we were glad to be together. We just move things to lore convenient days and do the big get together a a much as we can. It sucks but I'm always grateful he isn't deployed or something worse than at work. Not sure how this will affect things long term yet.

We try to make sure we do something on another day, or at least that's what I plan to do going forward. DH missed P's first halloween last year and he was sad and pissed. But, like you said, she will not remember him not being there last year. But, he does at least get Christmas and Thanksgiving holidays off.