Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Night nanny here of 15 years (and also employed one for the first 9-12 weeks with all of my own kids). You are likely going to want 4 nights per week at least for the first 4-6 weeks. There is a steep learning curve, recovery time, and absolute exhaustion in the early days. The more nights you have up front, the more consistent opportunity the nanny has to guide you and baby to a healthy sleep schedule, the better.

You get the baby on a schedule in the first 4 weeks?

I lay the ground work for a routine to build in that time and support the parent(s) with understanding eat and sleep intervals, breastmilk supply, and things like that.

Anonymous wrote:Leave it up to your husband, but you shouldn't do a single night with the baby (except for someone bringing baby to breastfeed if you so desire) until 6 weeks.

It's either the night nurse or him. Since he didn't save more money, it's him 4 nights a week, night nurse 3 nights a week.

I have no idea why women are doormats. Why in the world would you be expected to grow and birth a human and then be up all night taking care of it? You need to rest and recover. Happy mom is a happy baby.

If someone can’t spend a single night looking after a baby, they really aren’t ready to have a child.

Leave it up to your husband, but you shouldn't do a single night with the baby (except for someone bringing baby to breastfeed if you so desire) until 6 weeks.

It's either the night nurse or him. Since he didn't save more money, it's him 4 nights a week, night nurse 3 nights a week.

I have no idea why women are doormats. Why in the world would you be expected to grow and birth a human and then be up all night taking care of it? You need to rest and recover. Happy mom is a happy baby.

I would definitely front load the nights. Start with 5 days the first week, then go down to 4, 3, 2, and one. repeat a few weeks at 4/3 if you have more hours.

You can still EBF and just have the nanny change the diaper and put the baby back to sleep. That is what I did and it was extremely helpful and I rested and recovered a TON without interfering with breastfeeding at all. Best of luck!

Anonymous wrote:We have money set aside for a night nanny that would cover 3 nights/week for 8 weeks. We could also drop down to 2 nights per week and extend longer, or drop to 2 nights/8 weeks and add in a couple weeks of unpaid leave at the end of my mat leave (without those extra weeks, baby would be entering daycare at 5.5 months). Which would you pick?

I never had a night nurse but thought I would share my experience.

Many newborn babies sleep a lot. What a lot of people don't realise (after they've congratulated themselves on what a good sleeper they have), is that often starts to change after about 4 weeks. I definitely found it got harder at that point. For the first few weeks, I just slept when my baby slept (including with daytime naps) and we were fine. He was in a crib next to my side of the bed so it was easy to feed him then get back to sleep. The help that was most useful was having a cleaner and buying in meals. I had an induced birth with a bit of tearing but I just took it easy and was not overly ambitious.

Things got a bit harder once DH was back at work and my baby started sleeping less. At that point, I also started expressing milk as it would enable DH to do a late feed so I could get to bed earlier and sleep for a decent stretch. My baby was not consistent about what time he would wake up and sometimes he would be quite wakeful after a feed. At THIS point, it was harder. I realised that I needed to try to encourage a routine that would preserve my sanity and help us get into a better rhythm. I followed a particular book and it was fine. However, I do think that if I had needed any professional help, it would have been most useful at that point. If you are going back back to work when your baby is almost 6 months old, you really do need a good routine established which is not necessarily easy. It is easy to doubt yourself. Some professional help at that point might be more helpful.

Anonymous wrote:Night nanny here of 15 years (and also employed one for the first 9-12 weeks with all of my own kids). You are likely going to want 4 nights per week at least for the first 4-6 weeks. There is a steep learning curve, recovery time, and absolute exhaustion in the early days. The more nights you have up front, the more consistent opportunity the nanny has to guide you and baby to a healthy sleep schedule, the better.

You get the baby on a schedule in the first 4 weeks?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are you going to breastfeed? That would make a difference to me.

OP if this is your first, you may not realize yet how much your supply might be affected by taking nights off and/or how your boobs might explode and wake you up anyway. Not at all saying a night nanny isn’t still helpful, just might factor in.

OP here - it is my first but I do understand that. I don’t plan on EBF and if my supply is impacted in the name of sleep, so be it. Sleep is really important to my mental health.

Yes, but you might not get to pick your supply issue. Mine was oversupply, so I had to get up to nurse or pump no matter what. But a night nurse could still have made that process less disruptive. There are also a lot of subterranean hormones that will affect your ability to sleep through the night. Just go easy on yourself is what I'm saying and don't count on a night nurse solving all your postpartum sleep issues.

I think I would front load, personally. More help earlier. As the baby gets older and into a rhythm and your supply regulates, the nights will get easier.

This! I’m the PP who had a night nanny 4x/night until 7 weeks. One of the reasons we didn’t continue past 7 weeks was that as the initial exhaustion wore off, I was often plagued with insomnia after waking to feed. It sucked paying that kind of $ on the nights I was awake anyway. 11 weeks now and baby is sleeping 9pm-7am so I am finally able to get a full night of sleep.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are you going to breastfeed? That would make a difference to me.

OP if this is your first, you may not realize yet how much your supply might be affected by taking nights off and/or how your boobs might explode and wake you up anyway. Not at all saying a night nanny isn’t still helpful, just might factor in.

OP here - it is my first but I do understand that. I don’t plan on EBF and if my supply is impacted in the name of sleep, so be it. Sleep is really important to my mental health.

Yes, but you might not get to pick your supply issue. Mine was oversupply, so I had to get up to nurse or pump no matter what. But a night nurse could still have made that process less disruptive. There are also a lot of subterranean hormones that will affect your ability to sleep through the night. Just go easy on yourself is what I'm saying and don't count on a night nurse solving all your postpartum sleep issues.

I think I would front load, personally. More help earlier. As the baby gets older and into a rhythm and your supply regulates, the nights will get easier.