Does your working partner help overnight?

[daisy83]

What do your nights look like with working spouse and multiple kids who don’t sleep through the night?

Struggling to figure out a system that works for my family. My husband is at work 5:30am-4:30pm M-F while I’m home with the kids and have no other help. 5 week old (EBF, up to eat every 2-3 hours overnight), 13 month old (multiple night wakings, usually has one bottle overnight), and 4 year old (wakes once per night and prefers not to sleep alone). Not interested in sleep training.

Currently, my husband puts the 1 yo to sleep in the master at 7 while I do the 4yo’s bedtime routine and manage the newborn. Around 9:30 my husband will go to bed in the master and I go to sleep with our 5 week old on the couch (she sleeps in the bassinet next to the couch). Before baby was born I coslept with the older two and we typically slept through the night with the 1yo waking to feed once. Our 1 yo is having multiple night wakings since sleeping with my husband and he can’t handle not sleeping but I don’t feel like I’d be able to manage all three kids overnight and during the day? I’m already running on barely any sleep and can’t imagine having to be up with the middle one as well.

Any suggestions? Would love to hear what works for your family!

 

[fatefulslave]

@daisy83 We really depend on my husband to maintain his A game at work so I do the nighttime shift until it's time to night wean. Once it's time to night wean he's completely in charge of the nights (handles all the wake ups and doesn't give milk). When we night weaned our older one he put up a huge fuss and my husband had a rough few nights (but still nothing compared to me getting up every 1-2hrs for ages!) and then our son just stopped getting up at night when he realized he wasn't getting milk and it was only Papa lol.

 

[mamastitch]

@fatefulslave How did you night wean? We need to cut my son’s night milk now (he’s so capable of sleeping through the night, he’s done it plenty of time. But still wakes up for multiple bottles) I just don’t know how to do it. He just screams until he gets a bottle! No comfort measures seem to help. Any advice? X

 

[fatefulslave]

@mamastitch So I was giving him milk at night and doing all night time shifts (which was 1-2hrs every night since birth!) so we went cold turkey. We told him no more milk at night and papa would be getting up with him. I knew he would wake up and cry and I couldn't let him "cry it out" bc I'm too soft and my son is too stubborn and truly wouldn't ever stop crying. So my husband would go in every time our son woke and cried for milk. My husband would hug him, soothe him, tuck him back in- don't get me wrong, my son screamed for milk the entire time but at least he wasn't alone. He did NOT want his papa, he wanted me and milk. But my husband went in every hour, and stayed with him basically all night. It was hard for them (I put in earplugs and white noise and finally slept longer than a 45min stretch lol). Eventually my son just stopped waking up at night. It was a rough week but completely paid off. I will not wait as long to night wean bb#2.

 

[mamastitch]

@fatefulslave Oof. Sounds rough what age did you do it and would do it in future? X

 

[fatefulslave]

@mamastitch I'm embarrassed to say that we did this when he was 2yo... Maybe 2.5yo! Ugh that's so late and I know it's so late. Honestly we could've done this around 1-1.5yo but mentally I couldn't stand hearing him cry and I felt... Weirdly guilty asking my husband to help at night while he was working (important to mention I 100% acknowledge this is silly mom guilt and my husband was always willing to help if I ever would've asked). With bb#2 we'll do this much much sooner bc honestly my mental health needs to be prioritized

 

[mamastitch]

@fatefulslave That’s ok!! We got a sleep consultant for my daughter at nearly 2 because she was still waking so much. Best money ever spent. I feel like I’m falling into a pickle with my son again and need to get it fixed before i lose my mind again it’s so hard isn’t it?! I also have a super supportive husband but feel so bad asking for extra help

 

[marisasa]

@daisy83 We have 5 kids and our rule is that I am in charge of all middle of the night newborn care while my husband deals with all big kid wake ups. That means I am always waking up multiple times in the middle of the night while my husband could get lucky with either 1 or no wake ups from the older kids. If I woke up with big kid nightmares/toilet/etc plus newborn I would never get any sleep. The best thing I ever did for my mental sanity was to delegate all big kid bed time duty to my husband while I am always in charge of the youngest. A suggestion if you are having trouble doing 4 year old bed time with newborn in arms would be to move 1 year old bed time up 15 min and move 4 year old bed time back 15 min so that dad could do both big kid bed times or he could hold newborn while you do 4 year old bed time solo.

 

[snickeringfox]

@daisy83 We always did it to where my husband took over the nights he wasn’t working (Friday and Saturday night) so that I could get a solid at least 7-8 hours of sleep. I never agreed with the “well he’s working so he gets to sleep at night” because the SAHP is also working… 24/7 keeping small humans alive. We ended up sleep training at 6 months after we both couldn’t take the sleep deprivation anymore, I know you said you don’t want to sleep train though which is totally understandable.

But yeah, my midwife was actually the one who “prescribed” me at least 2 nights a week of 8 hours straight sleep when my mental health was really suffering due to the lack of sleep. So that’s my recommendation if you’re able to do it.

 

[abower12]

@daisy83 I know you said you aren’t interested in sleep training, and that is fine, but you may want to speak to a pediatrician about nap/sleep cycles.

How many naps are your 13 month old and 4 year old taking during the day?

Most 13 month olds no longer need night time feedings and should be able to sleep for a 10-12 hour stretch, with 1-2 naps totaling 2-3 hours during the day, with at least 4 hours between waking up from the last nap and going to bed.

Most 4 year olds are completely capable of sleeping through the night and staying in their own rooms. A lot of 4 year olds no longer need naps, but those that do only need an hour, and there should be at least 4-5 hours between waking up from that nap and bedtime.

Your husband needs to help, at least a few times per week, but you also might be accidentally making things harder on yourself by establishing bad habits or poor sleep hygiene. Definitely talk to a physician or specialist. Correcting these habits might lead to some lost sleep and rough days when you first start out, but will be worth it to help everyone sleep better in the long run.

 

[daisy83]

@abower12 Hey! Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

I’m well versed in sleep needs and sleep pressure! Feeding to sleep works for us and my one year old really only woke once around 4am for a feed until new baby came and she started cosleeping with dad. She takes one 2-2.5hour nap a day.

I know my 4 year old is capable of sleeping on her own through the night but we’ve just welcomed a new baby and she’s having a difficult time with the transition. We’re struggling to have enough connection during the day so there’s a lot of separation anxiety at bedtime. She hasn’t napped since she was 2.

I’m thinking I’ll take over weeknights so my older girls start sleeping better again then get husband to help on weekends.

 

[stateemil]

@daisy83 Bedtime with our 4yo is super rough right now, too. We might maybe finally be making a little progress after many weeks of hell. So you may have a double whammy with the age and new baby. Hopefully you see improvement on its own soon!!

 

[doninfaith]

@daisy83 "it depends" is probably the shortest answer.

As a rule of thumb, the working parent gets the night to sleep on nights that they work, and they get night time duty on the nights they don't.

It can get a bit more complicated when both parents are working some days.

If one parent is struggling, the other can help regardless of the night.

All that said, we only have one kid. You're in the wars with three!

 

[beingthere]

@daisy83 He only helps if I am having a particularly difficult night.

 

[landonc]

@daisy83 Yes. We did shifts. I slept like 8pm-2am. Then I took over from like 2-8am. It wasn’t perfect and it didn’t always work out like this, but it helped.

 

[daisy83]

@landonc This is what we did when we welcomed our middle girl but it’s trickier now that we have two still waking at night and I’m exclusively breast feeding this one.

 

[maczkojohn]

@daisy83 DISCLAIMER: I'm answering for my friend beside me since she doesn't have reddit.(Yes, I'm a lurker, I'm here so I can understand what she's struggling with when she rants to me).

Her answer was that they split the night duties revolving around her husband's work schedule. He is also M-F with an early morning start and does not handle sleep deprivation well at work.

What they did was that she handled Sunday-Thursday nights BUT he got up even earlier on those days to handle the last wakeup so she could get a solid chunk of sleeo. Then he handled Friday and Saturday nights himself while she slept through (as best she could; she still work up to crying but at least could go back to sleep instead of getting up).

Can your husband handle Friday and Saturday nights on his own? And is your 1yo's last wakeup late enough that your husband can get up early to manage that one at least?

Also, while they were EBF he would bring the baby to her and help her hold the baby so she could half-doze while feeding. Then he'd bring baby back to the crib so she didn't have to wake herself up more by moving. It doesn't sound like this part is relevant to you since you have the bassinet beside you.

 

[brucepjr]

@daisy83 We started at 10-2-6 rule. From 10-2 I did the night wakings. From 2-6 he did them.

Honestly though, with a newborn, IMO he should be handling the other two kids.

 

[boroughs09]

@daisy83 With an 11 hour day and having to wake up that early I wouldn’t expect help regularly but if he can manage fine on less sleep maybe on the weekends. My husband is usually up at 4 am and comes home around 4:30/5 pm because he commutes to the city, I did all night wakings when our child was young and it was hard and I resented the hell out of him for getting a good nights sleep but also recognized if he didn’t sleep he probably wouldn’t be able to work, I’ll add that my husband has a physical trades job and that not being alert could easily cost him his life so that did factor in. If he had a desk job and wasn’t at risk of literally falling to his death or power tool related injury I probably would have asked for help at least every other night so I could get a solid 5 hour stretch which is what I personally need to function. That period was brutal on our marriage, I’m sorry you’re going through it.

 

[stateemil]

@daisy83 We have 4, but usually it’s just the baby up at night (probably once a week the toddler or preschooler is up, too). My husband is a VERY sound sleeper, but he’s also very low sleep needs. So if I need him, I can wake him. But he will not wake on his own. It has to be pretty serious for me to wake him, because otherwise we’re both awake at that point. Usually the preschooler wants someone to lay with her until she falls back asleep, and that has to be him because I won’t hear the baby if I’m with her. He’ll also get up to take the baby if it’s a bad night and I need a break, too.