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I'm not sure whether or not it is fair... I think it's reasonable M-F. I'm not sure that he should get that extra day!

In any case, I do think it's doable. My LO is 18m and I have done every night/early morning wakening except for maybe 2-3x since she was born and I went back to work at 3 months. There were extentuating circumstances, but it was manageable, especially when I was on maternity leave.

My sister did most the the night awakenings, but her husband went to bed early and would get up early (9 or 10) and do the 5am and 7am wake ups before he went to work. So that's a other idea.

I think its a good idea to plan it out, but also keep in mind that every couple and baby have to find their own groove once the baby is here. We had plans to split things 50/50, but since EBFing has worked out really well for us and my son struggles with bottles, I've done all the MOTN wake ups, and I don't see the point in my husband getting up for those. In the mornings, so far (bear in mind my son is only 3 months old so its early days yet!), we have both woken up and hung out with him in bed. He usually wakes about 7 for the day, and we usually hang out, chat, feed, and doze until 9 on weekends, 7:30 or so on weekdays at which point my husband lets me shower while he watches the kid, and then he gets ready for work and we drive him in together. Its a nice little pattern we've fallen into I think it will probably change when my son needs more stimulation as an older baby, but we'll adapt! And thats the thing I've realised most since having a baby - the planning beforehand is useful in that you know where yourself and your partner stand, but once you're a 3 person unit you can rewrite the rules as many times as you need to! Good luck

Depends on your kid and how you can deal with being on night duty I think. My lo has been a good night sleeper since we got home from the hospital. She usually gives me 5-7 hours per night at least with 2 wake ups to feed.

What we do is go to bed early together. I feed her and get her to sleep from 9-10 then we sleep. I wake up and feed her around 2-3 and my husband sleeps (he works I don't right now ). Then I put her back down and she wakes up to eat around 5 or 6 and I feed her. Weekdays I then hand her off so I can shower before dh goes to work. Weekends I put her back to sleep.. Which only works maybe 1/3 of the time. If she wakes up dh takes her and let's me sleep until her next feed.

I handled the MOTN wakeups until DS was night weaned. I was a SAHM and DH has a very stressful job so I was fine with it. He would usually get up with him on weekends and let me sleep in for a while and, in the beginning, he would often stay up later with DS so I could go to bed earlier. I haven't figured out exactly what we will do once #2 comes around as it will depend on whether or not I go back to work.

I think this is an okay plan as long as your DH doesn't treat it like a hard and fast rule that he NEVER has to get up with baby those days. My DH works 10 hour days 6 days a week, so yeah, I ended up doing almost all of the night wake-ups and on his day off we would take turns with who got to sleep in.

But in my opinion there HAS to be some flexibility there. There will be some nights where baby is up for hours and hours and you are just completely mentally and physically drained and are going to burst into tears if you have to get up one more time or stay up any longer. And whenever one of those times did occur, all I had to do was wake DH up and say, "I really need you," and he would immediately get up and help so that I could try to sleep. And sometimes what was supposed to be his sleep-in day would end up being mine because I just really freaking needed it. And if I had to argue with him for that or he'd tried to tell me that it wasn't his night to be up with baby, it would have been hell on our marriage. So having a plan is okay, yours sounds fine and it's great that you're thinking about it in advance, but you should both understand that there absolutely must be some flexibility in the early sleep-deprived months.

It sounds like a reasonable plan, but remember that things change and you will have to find a groove that works with your specific baby.

I sah and Dh works pretty long hours at a moderately stressful job. I also EBF. So I have handled almost every motn wake up, except on the really bad sleep nights when Dh would try to sooth her without feeding. It didn't make sense for him to get up with her usually since all she wanted was the boob anyway. The trade off for us was some
Mornings if she woke up really early Dh would get her an play with her until se cried to be fed, then he would bring her to me in bed, which would sometimes buy me an extra hour of sleep. Now that she STTN usually he gets her in the morning and brings her to me, but she eats right away.

On the weekends we are usually both up with her anyway, even if I try to let him sleep or vice versa, but it's fine since he STTN and sleeps until 6:30 most mornings.

So in short I think it's a reasonable plan but you will need to be flexible.

At 10 months you should be fine, but this all depends on your LO. I think it's way too early to decide on a schedule for wakeup duties since you really don't know what will be required of you at this point.

My LO is 9 months old and STTN, the biggest inconvenience honestly is that he wakes up so early in the morning. If we go to bed early it isn't an issue, but on the weekends we always decide ahead of time who will get up with him the next morning. If you're splitting up night feedings while your DH works full time I think it's fair for you to take most of them, but no human can remain sleep deprived for too long, so he will have to help out at times to give you a break. It makes more sense to take this one day at a time.

I am not one of those awesome moms who could handle it all by herself! LO would poop everytime he nursed early on, which necessitated a diaper change and them being rocked back to sleep for ages. Eventually I got so sleep deprived DH had to help. I would nurse and change the baby, wake DH up, he would rock. That lasted until LO would nurse to sleep around five months. But by then motn wake ups were short, not one plus hours. When we wanted to start night weaning him, DH would go in to give him the paci.

I work 3 days a week, and for me at least, being at work is sooo much easier than being at home if it's been a rough night. Probably completely different for your DH, but don't underestimate how hard SAH can be. You will deserve breaks and need help too!

I don't have as much experience yet as the other posters, but can say that it's just hard to know until LO gets here. My DH also has a demanding job and gets home pretty late in the evening.

Although it's too early for us to be on a definite schedule, I've learned that SAH with a baby and trying to keep everything together at home is no less demanding than a tough WOH job! You quickly realize that it goes on and on and there is no break from it all. I think we are happiest when we're able to split up the nights, like I take the first and last feedings and he takes the middle so that I can sleep uninterrupted and wake up early or vice versa. It was when we unintentionally stopped switching off that things got a little dicey!

I did all the MOTN wake ups when I was on mat leave and DH worked. I nursed him anyway so I would just do the diaper change too. Now that we're both working DH goes and gets T and changes his diaper and brings him to me in bed. I'm ready to nurse him and just nurse him side lying and all 3 of us go back to sleep until it's time to get up.

Most of the time his wake up is around 4am which is when DH gets up for work so DH basically sleeps all night anyway.

The first two weeks we had to wake her up every 3 hours to eat at night. So if she went down at 9pm, we'd have to feed her at 12, 3, and 6. (I pumped so he could help). We literally switched off feedings. Not sure I could have handled it on my own! *

At two weeks we got the go-ahead to let her sleep up to four hours and let her wake us when she is hungry. Now the routine is that I feed her and put her down at 10pm (at which point we also go to bed). I get up at about 2am to feed her again and pump; DH gets up at 6 to feed her before work so I can sleep until 8. We are both getting about 7 hours a night which is great.

* I should note that LO is still pooping at every feeding, so getting up with her requires at least one diaper change in addition to feeding her, and sometimes a change of pajamas, too.

I think flexibility is the important thing. The proposed schedule might work great for you both, but I would go into it with the understanding that it might need to change, too, There's no telling until LO arrives.

I SAH and DH works fulltime.

I usually nap in the late part of the night - from about 10 to 12. DH never falls asleep before midnight, so he feeds G pumped milk if he wakes up during this time and takes care of him.. G would wake again around 2-3 am. I would feed and change and put him back to sleep. Then he'd wake again around 6 and I would feed him then pass him to DH and go back to sleep. DH changes him and puts him back to sleep then gets ready for work at 8.

So I nap, do one full wake up, then one feed. DH handles the first wake up, then gets about 6 straight hours of sleep, then does a half wake up (change and put down)

I think it will depend on your baby. If you are nursing, you might as well be the one to get up...but if he's taking a bottle, maybe your dh can get up one time on particularly bad nights.

We did every other waking, but had a baby who slept pretty well. At the beginning, he would go to bed early and if stay up late, then he'd do morning. That might be an option for you too...

I was on a long mat leave and did all of the night wake-ups and the mornings, and had DH look after her for a couple of naps every weekend. She is EBF so it made sense from that perspective but also I could be a SAHM on little/no sleep, he could not do his job on little/no sleep, so practically speaking that was the best choice.

It's definitely great to talk through your expectations, hopes, fears, etc. but once LO arrives, it could change. I was adamant that I'd EBF and take all the night wakings but lo had medical issues that required EPing for a few stretches and some formula supplementation so suddenly DH, who thought he'd be off the hook (which we both felt was fair since i was on mat leave and could and did sleep during the day too) got thrown into figuring out bottles and warmers and pump parts and formula!

Our best routine, until I started EBFing, was he'd get home at 5:30, we'd eat dinner together and I'd go to bed around 7. He'd tidy up the kitchen, wash pump parts, prep bottles, etc. and hang out with LO until he was ready for bed, which was usually 12-1am (LO watched a ton of the history channel during this time but oh well, it's about surviving!) and he'd bring LO into our room and LO would usually sleep until 2 or so, depending on when DH fed him the last bottle. DH was going to be up anyway and LO slept a ton in those early months anyway, so snuggling on the couch watching tv and heating up an occasional bottle wasn't too taxing on DH after working all day. And I got to sleep from 7-2. We settled into this routine at about 4 weeks and I just made sure I pumped right before I went to bed and as soon as LO finished his bottle around 2 and it worked out. But, it was far from what I imagined when I was pregnant!

@Mrs tartan: whatever works for your family is best!

My husband had a three week paternity leave and spent the whole three weeks waking up with me in te MOTN. Once he went back to work, I did all MOTN by choice (WAHM but on maternity leave). I slept on the couch for about 12 weeks, also by choice. After we transitioned our baby to her crib, and I was back in our bed, we split MOTN.

If Chloe woke up before 4am, I took over. If she woke up after 4am, he took over.

He got up at 6:15 for work anyway, so an extra two hours wasn't unreasonable.

We made sure we both went to bed early, especially me, so we at least got a few hours of sleep before she woke up.

In the beginning, DH was up with me every time she was up. When he went back to work, I took over all MOTN waking a, and now at 8 months old, I still take the MOTN wakings. I WOH and we are EBF, so when she wakes, she usually wants to eat. But there are times that I send him in to shush her and put the paci back in because she was just up.

ETA: we no longer change her in the middle of the night unless there is poop.