Husband and I Disagree On Parenting Philosophies

[Anonymous]

My husband and I have different parenting styles. Our son is a little over 8 weeks old and my husband has been pushing to get him on a schedule. I’m all for schedules but I think he is too young. I’m doing on-demand at this point and following his cues. I feel like it’s going well but naps are becoming a challenge. He is having issues with fighting naps in the afternoon and staying asleep for more than 30-45 minutes unless he’s held. My husband thinks putting him on a schedule will help solve it. I think it’s developmentally normal and not much we can do about it until he’s older and we can sleep train. I want to be respectful of his views and opinions, but I also want to do what I feel is best for the baby. I’m not really sure how to navigate difference in opinions on parental philosophies and who decides what to do?

[Anonymous]

Find a compromise, though I agree with. Your child is too young to be on a schedule. Maybe give him some books to read so he can understand newborn development better. Talk it over but I think the main caregiver should make more of the decisions.

[Anonymous]

He's too young to be on a clock-time schedule, but he's not too young for you to establish a sort of routine. For example, if you wait until he is showing signs of tiredness, it's too late -- he's overtired and he won't sleep well. Instead, watch the clock and start putting him to sleep an hour after he wakes up.

[Anonymous]

Talk to your pediatrician

[Anonymous]

1. This is a fine age to do a schedule. We did with both kids.
Do Eat-Play-Sleep every 3-4 hours on a cycle. You can do a fixed hourly schedule but you don’t have to as long as you roughly time the cycle . Doing the Sleep part on a schedule before they get overtired helps a LOT.
2. Pediatricians are fine but they’re medical professionals and haven’t trained their whole career to be sleep coaches. They know stuff but don’t be a slave to the pediatrician.

If you do 1 will that get you and husband to agree?

[Anonymous]

Your baby is behaving in a totally normal way. Please continue to respond to him. He will settle into a schedule of his own. Wanting to be held almost all the time is healthy and normal for a baby that young.

[Anonymous]

Man if you can’t let your kid roll at 8 weeks life is gonna be rough. He’s two months old. Hold him, love him. You cannot spoil him. I promise you will not carry him to college in your arms. Keep track of when he naturally wakes and eats and sleeps so you can get a sense of his patterns and then follow him. He is literally a baby. Treat him like one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He's too young to be on a clock-time schedule, but he's not too young for you to establish a sort of routine. For example, if you wait until he is showing signs of tiredness, it's too late -- he's overtired and he won't sleep well. Instead, watch the clock and start putting him to sleep an hour after he wakes up.

This. Following a sort of eat, sleep, play routine doesn't mean you don't feed your baby when hungry or respond to cues. I think this a good compromise for you and might work really well for your baby and naps. The funny thing about being a parent is, the kid you have determines the philosophy you use, not whatever book you read before you became a parent.

[Anonymous]

Not a schedule, but at that age I established a bedtime and tried to stick with an appropriate wake time between naps. If I went even five minutes over that the baby would get overtired and be harder to nap.

[Anonymous]

don't worry. i mean this not snarkily (it sounds like i do but trying to help): your husband and you have no idea yet if you do or not have similar philosophies.

congrats on the baby!

[Anonymous]

Who is handling most of the parenting? I always took my husband's opinions and we compromised a lot, because I want him to be seen as an equal in parenting roles. But when I was on parental leave and he wasnt, I got most of the final decisions because it affected me more.

[Anonymous]

There's problem in your household. It affects both of you, so both of you have a say.

[Anonymous]

OUr newborn was on a schedule from the beginning. Part of it was I, the mother had complications and was kept at the hospital. DH was given the newborn to take care of on his own (our first). Doctor said to feed her every 3 hours. So that is what he did. He even woke her us at night to feed her until the doctor said -- if she sleeping and it's the middle of the night, don't wake her up!

[Anonymous]

Tell your husband to chill out and let you take the lead- you’re still in the fourth trimester.

[Anonymous]

You are breastfeeding so you get a much bigger vote in this particular parenting choice than your husband does. The schedule has to work for you AND the baby, which it sounds like the on-demand feeding without a rigid schedule does. Explain to your husband that if you try to impose a rigid nap schedule now, that will affect not only how you currently feed but actually has physical impacts on you (you might have to pump more because you are full of milk during an appointed nap time, or you might see overall decrease in milk levels because you are messing with something that is currently working).

Your child will feed less frequently as he gets older, which will allow for a lot more opportunities to create a schedule. And when I say "older" I mean in like a month or two. My DD was EBF and I was able to put her on a very stable napping schedule at 4 months without even doing any formal sleep training. She was just big enough at that point that she could get a full belly in one feeding that would last a few hours, which enabled her to lie down in her crib for long naps after breakfast and lunch and then a short nap before dinner. But trying to do it earlier would not have worked because she needed to eat more frequently.

I get where your DH is coming from. He's stress and tired and he's "problem solving" but trying to come up with a proactive solution to the "problem" of having a newborn. One of the most important things to learn as a brand new parent of a new baby is that a lot of your problems aren't really problems, and don't need solutions. They are just the normal phases of life with a baby and they extinguish on their own. You kind of get into a rhythm with it and learn to just endure short periods of sleeplessness or frustration with the knowledge that they will end and then you will be dealing with something else (often something delightful, like your baby learning crawl or starting to laugh and babble).

But your instincts are good. Try to explain to your DH that it's okay if the schedule right now is a little inconvenient. In the scheme of things, it's a blip. Trust me.