How do you guys handle night time wake ups with newborn?

[striveforclarity]

We just had our first baby last week and my husband returns to work next week. I want to start operating on a system close to what we will be doing when he goes back.. curious how you guys handle this!

He works from home 3 days a week and in the office 2 days a week. When he’s home he needs to be logged into his computer and in meetings at 8 am. When he goes to the office, he has to leave our house by 6:30 am.

Our little girl wakes up every 1.5 - 2 hours for food and diaper change. Some nights I stay up all night while he sleeps, others I go to bed early and we switch out around 1-2 am, others we switch off per wake up. I can’t decide what actually works best.

I definitely slept the best the night we went to bed at the same time and switched off, but he had a hard time the next day and took a 3 hour nap. I don’t want to ask this of him while he’s working. He would never tell me he won’t take care of her by the way, I just want to be a good wife to him. How do you guys handle this with your working partners? Should the stay at home parent take the hit on sleep more than the working one? When I favor his sleep at night over mine he checks in with me during the day asking if I’m ok, if I need a nap etc so I want to reiterate he is very willing to working out a good schedule.

 

[arno]

@striveforclarity Keep in mind, you are both working. You cannot be a mindful, responsive parent on indefinite low sleep. The baby is also his baby. Unless he is in some sort of high stakes job where people could die, he will learn the same as you how to get by on less sleep.

Some other ways to handle this would be he handles baby after 5am, so you can sleep during the morning before he works. Or he could be responsible for baby before midnight. And you should each be giving each other a day to sleep in on the weekend or when appropriate.

 

[brucepjr]

@striveforclarity Shifts. I never got it worked out quite right but I’m sure there are people here that got a good shift going. Someone has to go to bed quite early for it to work but if you can each get a five hour solid block that will go a long way.

 

[georgewaini]

@brucepjr 100% this. Shifts saved us and it’s nice to know when you are truly “off”. We did shifts for our first daughter and I’m giving birth any day and will do them again.

We will likely do something like I put toddler to bed around 7:30 and go to bed myself and he is “on” until 12:30 or 1 and then I’m on the rest of the night. That way we at least get 4-5 uninterrupted hours of sleep ideally.

My husband works an office job that isn’t life or death for anyone. He used to be a plumber and worked construction on skyscrapers. If he was still doing that I would probably do more of a 7:30-10:30 for me and then he’s off and he would pick up more slack on weekends.

I feel like very few jobs negate the working spouse from helping at all. With the exception of doctor, pilot, first responder, etc. My friend’s husband was a plumber similar to my husband’s old job, and said he didn’t need to do anything at night which me and my husband both saw as unfair to my friend.

Like the first comment said you are working too, and depending on his job sometimes working harder. You can’t fall asleep holding the baby or driving with the baby. Don’t fall into the trap that you need to do it all our you will quickly be resentful

 

[friardan]

@striveforclarity I've always done 100 percent night time as my husband has a very dangerous job and needs to get good sleep, he's awesome about "letting" me have a nap whenever he's home though.

 

[kmar123]

@friardan Yeah my husband is a resident who literally has people's lives in his hands. I've always done the night shift. My job as a SAHM certainly isn't easy, but I do have the ability to have a slower day if I need to. With a newborn, I literally sat on the couch with her all day haha

 

[ivanlukas]

@kmar123 Yes, my husband is a surgeon and it sucks but I do 100%. On weekends, he takes the baby for the ~6am feed and gets up the eldest at 630am but we are morning people so this is less him getting up early (wakes up 530 during the week) and more me “sleeping in” until 7am or so

 

[roneil]

@friardan Same.

 

[isaac96]

@striveforclarity I just always took nights. Not because my husband was unwilling but because of breastfeeding, pumping and if a baby wakes me up crying I am up. There is no just going back to sleep for me once I woke up. But I always napped during day when baby napped. And I was less rigid about cooking and cleaning and whatnot.

 

[mariomarco]

@striveforclarity I personally didnt have my husband wake up with the babies. Ive had four! I was breast feeding and it just didnt make sense to me since baby slept waaaay better with me than him. It felt rude to wake him to help me when i could be at home and sleep with the baby. Newborns sleep like 20hours the first few weeks and at 3 months they still sleep 17 hours a day. If i needed a nap, i took one.

 

[reowen]

@mariomarco This was true for me until I had my second. I can’t nap anymore bc I have a toddler too. How did you handle that?

 

[mariomarco]

@reowen I had my first two close together, so we all napped at least once together for about 3 hours! However by the time he was 3naps phased out. The boys were like 2.5 and 4 when i had her and werent napping. But i had figured out baby sleep pretty well now and got her sleeping 8 hour hunks at night pretty early on (without tears i dont believe in letting babies cry). My fourth was the same i didnt fe too tired. However i went past 40 weeks with him and was tired. More tired than i ever had been due to the low iron i think... Middle of the day i survived by going into our playroom locking the doors putting on a movie for everyone and sleeping during the movie. I did that the first week or two after my last csection.

However at any time my husband could have helped i just didnt feel like i needed it. We run a business so he could have just at any time taken the day off. Maybe thats why i felt okay to do it all. We had our groove and i knew if my flow wasnt working that day he could just help... The way our dynamic is though, if im not working the business for a prolonged period (like when i have babies) hes gotta do double the work or hire out so idk we both just thrive in our elements haha

Im also the type of person to not take pain meds after surgery because i didnt want it to affect the baby. So im totally okay doing what needs to happen in order to keep the family thriving. Newborn phase is only a short time compared to the entirety of parenthood so i have the same mindset of an unmedicated birth "you can do anything for a short time"

Im sure if my babies were okay with bottles or dad at night things would be different but thats not how it played out for us haha and by the fourth i felt like a well oiled machine whos flow comes as a second nature.

 

[emma96]

@mariomarco This is my second baby and I'm having a really tough time with sleep. My 6 month old has been struggling with it. For naps, she'll do 45 minutes maximum if I'm not with her, and during the nighttime she's up like a newborn, waking up every 2-3 hours at night to feed. What no cry sleep method did you use? Absolutely exhausted here.

 

[mariomarco]

@emma96 Is this something theyve always struggled with or a sleep regression?

 

[emma96]

@mariomarco Always. Just generally not a great sleeper/very dependent on me to sleep.

 

[mariomarco]

@emma96 Okay so i just did weird amounts of research because i hyper focus on things until i master it haha i didnt follow any method..

I need to know mkre informarion before i can help but id love to try to help!

In what ways do you put them to sleep?
Where do they sleep?
What schedule do they follow? (Sleep and wake times)

 

[emma96]

@mariomarco Haha thanks for taking the time!

For naps, she takes 2-3 a day. I nurse her to sleep for naps and nighttime. Naps I rollover out of bed and since she's on the bed, so I keep a close eye on her with the baby monitor. If I transfer her to her bassinet for nap time then she's just up. For bedtime, I nurse then transfer her to bassinet. I try to do that throughout the night too, but we do cosleep a good amount. Just not great habits all around.

I have a 4 year old so during the day, I can't be nap trapped. Just struggling to get any semblance of decent sleep for myself and get things done when she's so reliant on me and don't know how to break the habit. Most people just suggest CIO and I'm not into it.

 

[rachellee]

@mariomarco lol are you me?! This is the same in my house. 3 kids, all EBF. I handled all the nighttime wakes/feedings. My husband wakes up at 5:15am to work 10 hour days, 5 days a week, plus 5 hours Saturday mornings. There would be no point in waking him up since they just wanted me and the breast.

 

[mariomarco]

@rachellee Plus hearing the baby cry because they wanted breast not bottle is not a way im going to catch some extra zzzs

Mines an amazing kid dad haha but for babies... his nipples are just too useless lol

 

[rachellee]

@mariomarco Exactly this! Friends have given my husband a hard time for not “doing more” with our newborn. My older kids are 6 and 4 and he’s so incredible with them. Those three do everything together. Anytime I need some quiet time in the house he takes the boys out to do something fun. But with the baby, that’s all me. I have the boobs, I do the feedings. Plus, the newborn stage goes so fast I love getting all the snuggles in while I can!