How to take shifts at night while pumping/BFing

My twins are 7 weeks old. How do others do shifts at night with DH? Did you breastfeed on your shift, then pump, and have DH do bottles on his shift? When did you pump? It seems like to get a good stretch of sleep when DH has a shift you'd have to pump at the beginning or end of your shift, and they could fall too close to when you last breast fed. Looking for any advise. Thanks!

 

DH always got up and changed their diapers and handed them off to me in bed to BF'd. Then when they were ready he would take them to bed. We had a crib in our room for a while when Jess was still on a monitor, so it wasnt hard for him to do this.

So we didn't tke shifts per say, but always had our "jobs" and it worked to help us both get a little more sleep.

 

Ditto to the above... DH was responsible for changing diapers and bringing them to me, then taking them back to the crib. I figured I'd rather BF through the night than have to pump in advance and worry about having enough.. Gotta figure the crying is going to wake you up anyway.

 

I echo the previous responses completely. It just doesn't make sense for me to sit up and pump in the dark when I could be feeding (and snuggling) my babes. I long for even one full night of sleep but my drive to BF (which has only occurred since I started BFing btw) gets me up every time. A commited hubby who will basically do everything else really helps and makes it more efficient!

 

Shifts never really worked for us either. My girls had a really tough go of nursing in the beginning (bad latch, weak suck, etc) so it was much faster to bottle them at night. But I wanted to protect my supply too so the system that ended up working best for us was that we all got up & while DH bottled the girls, I pumped. Then we each took a babe to soothe back to sleep. It wasn't till they were about 3 months old that we got latches & such sorted. At that time I took over all the night feeds as it was much simpler & faster for me to just nurse them.

I think the easiest way to do shifts when you're breatfeeding is that whoever's on shift takes care of everything else besides the actual nursing (ie diaper changes, soothing, etc) while the person off shift gets to go straight back to sleep.

Hang in there! :hug:

 

I agree with everyone else. I would feed, pass baby off to DH to burp, swaddle, settle, then feed the second, pass off to DH and go back to sleep while he got that one back to bed. Keep in mind you have passed the worst already. Mine started spacing night feedings between 6-10 weeks depending on the child. If you're not opposed to going to bed early, you could realistically sleep 6 hours or so once they start dropping a night feed.

Another thing that worked for us once they started spacing their feeds was to intro a dream feed. Bedtime was 7P, dream feed was 10/11P and they would usually sleep 5-6h after the dream feed.

 

Maybe have one or two nights a week where your DH is entirely responsible for wakings and feedings and you get to sleep a 6-8 hour stretch. Then you pump after nursing when you wake up. We've done this and it didn't mess with my supply at all.

 

Shifts never worked for us either. I have been solo at night with all 6 of our babies. Only one of our newborns would even take a bottle and it was not one of the twins LOL!! To be fair to DH, honestly I prefer the night shift if he could feed a baby in the night I would just worry that he didn't burp them or do it right LOL! And I would have to get up to make sure anyway. My DH is a great father but he does better when our kids get to be toddlers, he is not an infant person.

 

I do it all myself too as DH needs to sleep to function at work/school. It was hard at first but when they reached about 8 weeks they started having one sleep segment of 4 hours, which meant I got 3 hrs in a row. ( at 4 months old now and they do one 5 hr stretch)And they just go back to bed all night without fuss from about 9 pm to 8 am. So maybe I am lucky. DH is taking parental leave in a few weeks so technically he could do night feedings but now they won't take a bottle!