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We alternate now that he's older. I breastfeed but I have a lot of pumped frozen milk. During maternity leave I did all the feedings, but Dh would change a diaper or help if I had trouble getting lo back to sleep.
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We exclusively formula feed and this is what we did:
When DD was first born and not up to her birth weight meaning she had to be fed every 3 hours we split the nights up 50/50. My husband took the first shift (10pm-3am) then I got up for the second shift (3am-8am) so we each got in 5 hours of sleep. I slept in a separate bedroom as I wake up to easily.
Once DH was back at work and DD was up to her birth weight meaning we could just feed her when she woke up, he would stay up 'til midnight or 1am (whichever time she wanted to eat at) while I want to bed around 10 which guaranteed me a chunk of sleep. He would then put her in the rock 'n play by my side of the bed and I was on duty for the rest of the night.It has worked out really well for us!
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With LO1, we split it pretty evenly because I pumped and she was bottle fed. And to me, working doesn't mean you get out of night wakings (which, you know, when I went back to work, that point was proven). Anyway, our first LO was the worst sleeper of all time and still wakes 1-2 a night at 2.5 years old, so we had to split wakings or I would be insane now from lack of sleep.
Now that we have two kiddos, we do man-on-man. I take the baby's wake ups, and DH takes the toddler's wakeups, and really that's a pretty even split of night time parenting duties.
I have sleep issues, so I could never be one of those women that just does all night wakeups for forever and ever, amen while the husband snoozes through everything. In fact, I'm quite sure that if I were a man, my wife would give me a pass on night duties because of my sleep issues--but I'm a woman, so we do a 50-50 split.
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I EBF so didnt have the option to not do the night wakings, but DH always got up with me and typically would change baby after feedings or just be there for moral support. i really appreciated it. I didn't get a lot of sleep during the day anyways so we were both in the same boat. Ultimately I probably did more in the early days, but it has evened out since I stopped nursing DD in the MOTN or since she stopped really needing it, DH does all MOtN wakeups when they happen.,
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We just alternated all night long. So if I took the first waking, DH took the second waking, I took the 3rd, etc.
That way both of us got to have sleep stretches that last for 2 sleep-cycles (which sounds like would mean a 4 hour stretch for you now but that will increase over time).
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We have a similar situation (demanding job/hours for DH and a baby that was up often) and I took all of the feedings. It made sense since I had a long-ish maternity leave (for the US, anyway) and DH had to wake up so early for work. Plus DD was EBF and never took a bottle well. However, DH did wake up tp change her diaper a lot in the early days. At a certain point it just became easier for me to do it all which I DON'T want to do for our second coming in a few months. If this baby gets on the bottle I will definitely be handing off some of the earlier weeknight and many weekend feedings to DH.
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My husband was home for three weeks, so we played it by ear. Then, for the next five weeks I got up and pumped overnight and prepped bottles, and he got up with the baby and fed him the pumped milk. (I had various nursing issues and could not nurse round the clock, so this was the compromise.)
Once I was able to nurse 24/7, then I just got up and nursed in the dark and went back to sleep. It was so much easier to do that than to deal with equipment. I think if we have a second baby I will just get one of those cosleepers. We live in a 2bdrm apartment, so until a second baby is STTN I think it will have to stay in our bedroom.
ETA: I don't think this is necessarily you can 100% negotiate in advance. You might start out with a game plan, but it may also need to be re-worked once you see how it goes. E.g., if you sign up to handle overnights, but you find you can't function at all during the day, then something will need to change. And if you have a 50-50 split but your husband is messing things up at work, then you may need to help more.. Etc. etc.
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@Truth Bombs: that's exactly what my son did! Hopefully he does sleep through the night at 16 mo, he's only 12 right now.
I never got a good schedule going and I regret that. It was that much harder for dh to eventually assume responsibilities since I essentially did everything. I wish from the get go he did a shift. He worked till 930pm at that time so it would have made sense to have him do first wake up. I was too controlling to even suggest that and he wasn't exactly insisting. Something else that could have made sense was to have him get up for the wake up around 5-7ish so I could sleep a good stretch in those early am hours. Much later we started having him get up with baby and I would go back to sleep till 9 or so. That worked great and honestly still does.
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I breastfeed, so there wasn't much he could do at night. That said, I have always handled all night wake ups. My husband had to go back to work the week after kiddo was born, he works a demanding, physical job, and I'm staying home at the moment, and I deal with sleep deprivation better than he does.
It's working for us so far, and baby is 4.5 months. However, we are also very lucky. My baby slept through the night--11 pm to 7 am--from about 5 weeks to 16 weeks. She's now waking up once or twice to eat, due to 4 month regression and a major growth spurt.
My husband more than makes up for me doing the night time parenting during the evenings and weekends. I'm a night owl, so he takes the baby while I sleep in on weekends. He also gets time with her while I cook dinner. It all balances out.
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Oh, one more thing to add that made nights slightly easier. I only changed night diapers if there was poo, if it was just pee, I didn't change until morning (assuming it wasn't overflowing or anything). We never had diaper rash issues doing this.
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@lamariniere: same here on the diapers! Never had an issue.
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I went to bed shortly after the baby went to bed - that was his best stretch with sleeping - so I could get maybe 4 hours at first and then it stretched longer. I would do the middle of the night feeding but then DH would do the early morning feeding (anywhere between 4:30-6:00) and his start his day after that.
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We formula fed, and this is what we did...
We took shifts. DH would stay/get up with them until 12am-1am, and I would be sleeping. Anything after that was me. We did this because DH is a night owl, and has trouble falling back asleep once he's awake. Where as I like to go to bed early and have no problems falling back asleep after I got up to feed them. It just worked best for us. -
We had the baby sleep in our room so that the distance was short (in their own crib). The crib was closer to my side of the bed. Often though DH got up and got LO and brought her over so I could feed her because I have low bloodpressure and cannot get up quickly without having major blackout issues. So these days LO is in her own room (but still wakes MOTN) my DH gets her, I feed her and by that time I am able to bring her back to her bed. Although sometimes I just know that it wouldn't work and then DH helps out by also bringing her back to bed.
We have both learnt in the last 2.75 years to just fall back alseep when one of our kids is up -
I EBF and we never figured out a good schedule. For a while, DH would take the first shift with a bottle of pumped milk, but I started waking up too engorged and was worried about losing my supply, so stopped that
Eventually it became an issue because if DH got up with her in the MOTN, he was TOTALLY NON-FUNCTIONAL the entire next day to help me at all. Which was annoying and made things worse. So I eventually made the calculation I'd rather do nights alone and have him be rested during the day to help.
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In the beginning when I hadn't learn how to nurse laying down and we weren't co-sleeping, regardless of what DH had to do, he got up with me to help.
After we started co-sleeping and I learn how to nurse laying down, I took care of all the night wakings, but woke him if I needed help. DH was home some days, and my mom came, so I did had some help during the day and to rest.
I think overall tho, we were just both really exhausted! But I usually choose to let DH sleep so that he has more energy during the day to help!
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@JoJoGirl: @snowjewelz: Just curious...when you say you do the night wakings so your husband is rested and can help during the day, do your husbands take over totally during the day for a few hours while you sleep?
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@Anagram: yeah, he would if he is home. I was just the sucker that can never seem to nap randomly tho no matter how tired I am! So it usually meant more that he will take care of house chores, etc. But taking all the night wakings def lets me make the call on what he has to do during the day lol!
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DH gets up in the middle of the night to get dd and bring her to me to feed (nursing). He then puts her back. We did it this way with ds also. On nights where baby won't sleep (sick, teething etc) we are both up with baby. There isn't too much "you do this and I'll do that" when it comes to nighttime. We made them together and we'll be exhausted together. We split more things during the day since there are two little ones. He is always more than willing to take over though. Especially in the very beginning when I was recovering from my c-sections.
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Gah. Those early days are so rough
My husband typically got home around 7pm. I would hand him baby immediately and go to sleep. Since I was BFing, he had to wake me up once at 9pm so I could feed her, then I'd go right back to sleep until about 11pm. Then we switched off - he went to sleep, and I fed her / put her to sleep. I handled all the night time wakings.
But, He has lesser sleep needs than me so once she started sleeping in longer stretches (from about 11pm to 4-5am), he would wake up and bring her to me so I could feed her. It really helped me so much to just stay in bed and have him bring her!
Since I was home during the day, it was easier for me to rest / nap while baby napped. My husband couldn't nap / rest during the day, and he had to drive 40 miles each way, so I didn't mind taking over the 2/3am wakings completely. I never really had to go anywhere while I was on maternity leave so I just dozed off and on throughout the day.
Now when baby 2 is here this summer ... I have no idea what we are gonna do -.-
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For the most part I did, for a while. We co-slept for 6 months, and I breastfed for 15 months. I went back to work when DS was 19 months, and DH started getting up with him at night (he works second shift, so he's up later and goes into work later).
DD is almost a month old, and I'm still BF constantly at night, so I'm up with her (we co-sleep, but I also change her diaper when she gets up). I've just started pumping and go back to work in 3 weeks, and at some point DH will take over more of the night wakings. I'm not really sure how, yet...I didn't start working until DS weaned, but we'll figure it out. Right now he takes her for 2-3 hours in the late evening so I can get at least a little sleep, and usually brings her up when he comes to bed or she wakes up hungry. He also still gets up if DS wakes up at night.
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@Anagram: With our first, yes. Not like ALL DAY but he'd usually wake up at 6 to take her so I could sleep a few hours, then I'd wake up at 8ish to have breakfast and whatnot and feed her. Then usually i'd be able to take another nap later in the day if it was a weekend. If it was a weekday and he was at work, I was on my own.
ETA: I always struggled with this - i was really bitter about doing MOTNs by myself, so I'd make him help, then he'd be USELESS the next day and kind of a jerk and I'd always think to myself "that wasn't worth it". So I still don't have the right answer to this
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@snowjewelz: yeah, I can't nap during the day either. That's why I had my husband help at night--I figured we both had to be up all day, haha.
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@JoJoGirl: gotcha. In my house, it's me that's the jerk when I don't get enough sleep. but because I'm a woman that doesn't mean I get out of it completely, it just means we have a more equitable sleep. I think a lot of men get a pass on this type of thing when women never (rarely?) do.
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We exclusively formula fed. DH did all the night feedings until he went back to work. We then split the nights while he was working. He covered from when he got home to midnight and I was on primary care from midnight until he got home from work. Once we were both working we split the nights and kind of winged it. I had a lot of post partum complications so he picked the brunt of the nights up. At this point, he does almost all of the nights (they're occasional now that LO is almost a year) since he can fall back asleep easily and I cannot. I get up with LO early and let him sleep in. It's kind of a funky schedule - but it works for us.
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We exclusively FF and here's what we did:
with DS1: DH wasn't working. We would both get up with him until he was like 2 months old, at which point, DH took over. I was going back to work at 3m pp, and DS1 didn't have a parental preference, so we just went with it.
with DS2: DH went right back to work, though he still did a lot of the getting up in the early days, only because I had a c-section and was super slow. Around 8 weeks, he developed a super strong mommy preference, and if daddy went in, he would scream his tiny face off. So, he made the choice that mommy had to go in.
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@Anagram: Yeah I tried not giving him a "pass" but it was always worse for me in the end
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