We have 5 kids and it was the same for all of them as newborns. DH would wake and get baby changed and ready to BF. I EBF no bottles, he did every diaper change, burped and put them back to sleep after allowing me to get extra sleep. He cooked and took care of our other children (school, groceries, laundry, sports practice etc.) so that I could rest. He was also amazing during my L&D. He's always been very supportive and attentive.

First baby, DH was kind of out of sorts, and neither of us knew how he could help. I was recovering, plus wearing/feeding the baby 24/7, he didn't know how to cook or clean or even do laundry, nor did it occur to him to help, so it was a lot (his parents were not much of a team, they were at each other a lot).

I was perpetually starving because of nursing. His mom came over, but was really just rude to me, and wanted me to leave my house, but I was too exhausted to drive, so I refused. I definitely had the feeling she had negative birth experiences, and I am fairly sure her husband was not present.

Subsequent babies we were more established and able to hire a person to help, which made all the difference. That person was even there for us when we were in the hospital, which was tremendous - we are obviously still close.

DH is a law firm partner, so he didn’t get any paternity leave. He went back to work on day 3 with all three kids. Honestly, it was fine. My mom came for a week with baby 1 but by baby 2 I had the routine down. My kids are tweens now and he had been doing bedtime since they were in preschool. I love that because by the end of the day I don’t want to tell a story and read five more books. I’d take a dirty diaper or a sleepy dream feed over big kid bedtime!

The area where I needed the most help was at night and to his credit he really stepped up. I’d try to go to bed by 9 or 9:30 and he’d take the first shift which went to around 2 am. He’d give the baby a pumped bottle of breast milk or formula when we started doing that.

Then I’d be on deck and thankfully for me, our babies were more likely to sleep then.

I struggled to breastfeed (we had to syringe feed at first, and I triple pumped every two hours for far too many months). I was so committed to the idea of breastfeeding that I did constant skin-to-skin to try to get my supply up, so he didn't get to hold her as much as he should have. But he washed/sterilized all bottles, kept the rest of the house fed (including bringing me smoothies when I forgot to eat), did all laundry and 90% of household cleaning, and snuggled or played with her whenever he could. We got up together for overnights until he went back to work, then we split overnights, then when she was down to one wakeup I handled it solo because I had decent milk supply at night.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DH did all the diaper changes, became a master swaddler and bather, and ran the house. He did all the cooking, walked and fed the dog, just handled everything. For the first two months he really said my only job was to recover and feed the baby.

+1 this was my DH too. Except we don’t have a dog. And once we started on formula feeds he would help with those overnight too. I was in a lot of pain postpartum and had trouble walking without pain for a while.

+1. I pumped extra during the day so that he could do one of the nighttime feeds and I could Zzzz

Anonymous wrote:DH did all the diaper changes, became a master swaddler and bather, and ran the house. He did all the cooking, walked and fed the dog, just handled everything. For the first two months he really said my only job was to recover and feed the baby.

+1 this was my DH too. Except we don’t have a dog. And once we started on formula feeds he would help with those overnight too. I was in a lot of pain postpartum and had trouble walking without pain for a while.

I am a morning person and my husband is a night owl. He gets really grumpy with disrupted sleep and I handle it better.

He let me sleep from 8:30pm until 1am and did baby bedtime and any wake ups before 1am. I did any wake ups and feeding 1am - 7am. I breastfed and pumped. He washed my pump parts, washed all bottles, and prepped and labeled bottles and any other daycare items. We split diapers pretty evenly.

DH did all the diaper changes, became a master swaddler and bather, and ran the house. He did all the cooking, walked and fed the dog, just handled everything. For the first two months he really said my only job was to recover and feed the baby.

I had a postpartum hemorrhage followed by postpartum preeclampsia which was horrible and put me essentially out of commission the first 10 days. He did everything. The one silver lining of that horrible situation was he was just so comfortable taking care of her that from then on it became a really 50-50 arrangement, often with him doing a little more than his 50 since I needed extra rest for quite a while. He has always said he is glad it worked out that way too, in a weird way, bc he credits his strong relationship with our daughter from Day 1 to the whole situation.

That won’t be most people’s experience (and I hope it isn’t!) but there you go.

When my kids were newborns and ebf, dh did everythibg else. All the diapers when he was home. Middle of thr night diapers, laundry, dinner prep. He also took 1 month off when babies were 4 months and i went to work.

I EBF but DH did a ton — basically all cooking and cleaning, most diaper changes, all the lifting and carrying to/from car. He also watched the baby from 7-10ish at night so I could get a stretch of sleep without being woken up.

After 10-11ish, I took over for all night activities since it didn’t make sense for us both to be sleep deprived.

My son is 1 now but he came home from the NICU at 15 days old on a every 3 hour schedule and I’d do the 9pm feeding and go to bed and my husband would do the 12am (pumped bottle) and I’d get to sleep until 3am. It was SO helpful getting those 5-5.5 hours of sleep in those early weeks. He also did most of the diaper changes when he was home.

It was really hard for us to figure this out. I was EBF and DD was physically attached to me for 10+ hours per day. DH helped wake her to feed, did all cooking and all financial/home-related tasks. He did what he could with the baby including changing diapers but it wasn't a lot he could do. DD was a sleepy newborn and a slow feeder. It got a lot easier once we started supplementing with formula and even easier when I weaned her. At that point we basically just started taking care of her in shifts.

What sort of help does your husband provide in caring for the newborn?