DH & I sleeping in rotation while bf?

steph2809

Has anyone tired this while bf? I will be at home full time and DH goes to work 2 ? days a week. He wants to try sleeping in rotation so that we are both getting about 8 hours of sleep. I understand him not wanting to get up the nights before he works but the other days I don't see why he can't get up to. Since I will be home full time I had only planned on pumping enough for when we are away from home or when we have a sitter on our date nights. We have a bf class in 2 weeks and I will get more info then but from what I understand now, if I'm not feeding her or pumping during that time my supply will go down, is this true?

jlsimon56

We both work fulltime but I get up to nurse if LO is hungry.  If she just needs to be soothed back to sleep, DH does it.  Once your baby is here and you see how annoying pumping is, and how precious the pumped milk is....you will get up to nurse, haha.  Your DH can help by cleaning up after dinner, washing bottles and pump parts (if necessary), bathing LO, doing LO's bedtime routine, etc. so that you can head to bed a little earlier to catch a little extra sleep.

tokenhoser

I couldn't go 8 hours without feeding my baby right away. I couldn't miss a feed without having explodo-boobs.

What did work for us around 3 months was having DH do a dream feed by bottle at about midnight. I'd bf at 10 and go to sleep, he'd dream feed at midnight, and then baby would sleep to 2 or 3. 

DH never got up with me for the late night feeds. There was no point in both of us being miserable. He would sleep at night, and when he was off (he's a teacher, so he was home 2 months) he'd make sure I could sleep during the day.

blu-eyedwife

In the beginning baby sleeps a lot so we both always got 8 hours of sleep a night - we'd just stay in bed until we did.  We'd go to bed around 9pm.  I'd get up and feed and go back to bed - DH would get up and rock the baby back to sleep.  Repeat until 9am in the morning. 

Once DH went back to work, I handled all night feedings, but by then he wasn't getting up as often so I dropped down to 6-7 hours a night, which is still manageable and I could get more, but I like going to bed at 10pm and getting up at 6am so I can spend some time with DH.  

On the weekends, however, DH gets up with the baby in the morning after I feed him and the two of them play together while I get in a couple more hours of sleep.

uncharch7

I've been able to do this but I have a low supply. There was no difference when I started skipping a feed at night in my supply vs. not. You'll know pretty quick if it affects it.

I now pump at 930-10, DH feeds at about 1, then I get up at 4 when he needs to be fed again (he's 5wks now).  

mari_gold

You really should pump every time your LO takes a bottle if you don't want supply problems, especially when your baby is little. The best thing to do is just go into it realizing you likely won't get 8 hours of sleep in a row for a while; that's just life with a newborn.