Are you a new father who’s wondering how to help take care of your baby at nighttime, as well as during the day? We’re joined by Jack Shaw of Modded who’s here to explain why he believes it’s important for fathers to play an active role in caring for their newborn at night too.
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Why I Believe New Dads Should Help At Night
In my experience, sharing nighttime parental duties is one of the greatest acts of early active fatherhood. All parents can go through months of sleepless nights because newborns and infants sleep in short bursts. Babies under three months of age wake up frequently to get their tiny tummies filled, have their nappies changed and sometimes stay up for a while to ‘play’.
Nursing a newborn or infant is a full-time job, so, in my opinion, you and your partner should work as a team to care for your baby day and night. Although this responsibility can intimidate some new fathers, it’s significantly less challenging when you try to do your share as best you can.
Why New Fathers Should Be Excited About Sharing Nighttime Duties
Working the night shift as a parent can be an exciting experience. Holding your child when the rest of the world sleeps is magical. Cuddling your child, soothing them when crying, changing their nappy, feeding and burping them, and getting them to sleep are intimate moments you can cherish forever.
Skin-to-skin contact releases a deluge of oxytocin in the brain, which triggers deluges of feel-good hormones — serotonin and dopamine. Touch can make you and your newborn, infant or toddler feel safe, calm, happy and satisfied. Moreover, physical contact fosters body awareness in babies. Interacting with your baby physically helps familiarise them with their body parts and movements early, stimulating brain and cognitive development.
Looking after your child at night can be tiring when you have a day job or work from home. However, doing your equal share of parental responsibilities can allow your partner to rest. Childrearing is more stressful when you’re chronically tired and stressed, creating a vicious cycle. A high stress level makes it more difficult to sleep eight hours nightly, and sleep deprivation aggravates existing mental tension. The more poorly rested your partner is, the more unfit they can feel to take care of your baby when it’s their turn to be the primary caregiver. Do your part to make your partner’s life easier and help keep their stress in check.
What Strategies Can I Use As A New Dad To Help Take Care Of My Baby At Nighttime?
Scheduling a night shift to care for your newborn, infant or toddler requires strategy. You can use these tips to perform your role to the best of your ability when on baby duty.
1. Create a Plan Together With Your Partner – Nighttime Duties As A New Father
Clarify your responsibilities based on your unique situation so you can meet everyone’s expectations of how looking after your baby at night is going to work.
Are you in charge of the baby at night daily, every other day or on weekends? Will you tag-team with your partner so you take half the night each (while the other sleeps)? Do you wake your partner up when your child needs breast milk? You can feed your newborn independently by warming refrigerated breast milk (check here for how to warm breastmilk safely), but your partner must sign off on this decision if they choose to express milk and want your newborn to take a bottle. Equally, if your baby drinks formula, you can prepare this easily at night, and feed them.
Create a collaborative plan from the beginning and refine it over time. This strategy ensures you and your partner are on the same page and prevents unnecessary misunderstandings.
2. Expect To Be Up Every Two To Three Hours With A Newborn -Nighttime Duties As A New Father
Newborn babies usually naturally wake every two to three hours to feed and have their nappies changed. Newborns’ stomachs are tiny, so they need to feed little and often. In some cases (including medical reasons like jaundice ), they may be sleepier and actually need waking up to make sure they are taking enough milk. Always check with your Health Visitor if you feel your baby isn’t waking up frequently enough to feed and/or isn’t putting on enough weight.
It may be in the early days that you’re there as more of a support to your partner if they’re breastfeeding or cluster feeding throughout the night. Once they get to a month or so, and start going longer between feeds, you should be able to enable your partner to get more rest at night. Of course you can do this sooner if you’re bottle feeding or combination feeding.
3. Let Your Partner Sleep in a Separate Room If They Want To – Nighttime Duties As A New Father
The point of being in charge at night is to give your partner the space they need to rest undisturbed as much as possible. Your partner should be able to sleep in another room if they choose while you hold the fort to avoid inadvertently waking them up whenever the baby cries. Perhaps they go to bed ‘early’ and you wake them up when your baby is ready for their next feed (if they are breastfeeding and choosing not to express).
Remember NHS advice is that your baby sleeps in the same room as at least one parent, whether they are sleeping at night or napping during the day.
4. Have An Earlier Bedtime – Nighttime Duties As A New Father
A longer sleep window lets you log more hours of rest despite getting up several times to attend to your newborn’s needs. If you usually sleep at night, go to bed earlier than usual and get up at a regular hour. Of course this approach will require some tag-teaming with you and your partner in the early days, as newborns don’t really have ‘bedtimes’.
This bedtime adjustment can compensate for numerous sleep interruptions throughout the night. By the time your baby cries and requires attention, you will have already recharged your batteries to some extent.
5. Practise Dream Feeding (If You Think It Will Work For Your Child) – Nighttime Duties As A New Father
This strategy refers to feeding your child without waiting for hunger cues and completely waking them. For example, a baby may receive a ‘top-up’ feed between 10pm and midnight before the parent goes to bed. Parents may look at introducing a dream feed at between one and four months, once they know what the timing of a usual stretch of sleep looks like for your baby (remembering they change as they grow).
Rousing babies to eat — at a longer interval when you have a slightly older baby — may seem counterintuitive to new fathers, but can work like a charm to enjoy longer stretches of uninterrupted sleep for both of you. Make sure you dream-feed bottle-fed babies in your arms, just like a normal feed, to reduce the risk of choking.
There are pros and cons to dream feeding so here at Happity we recommend you read about dreamfeeding before deciding if it’s for you. If you do practise dream feeding, it’s recommended to drop the dream feed at around 6 months.
6. Get Your Priorities Straight – Nighttime Duties As A New Father
You have two objectives when on baby duty — attending to your child’s needs and resting as much as possible.
Unless you typically work at night and do house chores during your free time, you should follow your newborn, infant or toddler’s sleep schedule. Otherwise, you won’t be able to perform your responsibilities well consistently due to exhaustion.
Nighttime parental duty schedules with newborns, infants or toddlers are sustainable only when they don’t induce burnout. Put off less urgent tasks to manage your energy properly.
Be a Capable Primary Caregiver at Night as a New Father
Nursing your baby independently at night requires skill and experience, which you naturally improve and gain over time. Although you should fine-tune your plan as your child grows, adopting these strategies can help you be an effective caregiver and reliable partner.
Thanks To Jack Shaw – Modded
With a specialised focus on personal growth, Jack Shaw‘s articles provide actionable steps and valuable wisdom to ignite self-improvement. Jack is the senior Lifestyle editor of Modded, where he explores topics of mental health, relationships and parenting from the perspective of a single father. You can also find his works published in Tiny Buddha, Parent Co., Calmerry and more.
A Note From The Team Here At Happity
What If My Baby Exclusively Breastfeeds? How Can I Help My Partner At Night?
Many parents, including so many of us here at Happity, find that they or/and their baby choose to exclusively breastfeed. Or, for some of us, the mum has to wake regularly to express milk. If your baby wakes, has a nappy change, feeds, perhaps has another nappy change and then sleeps again, you can help your partner by being awake too to do the bits that involve being up and about. You can do the nappy changes, and, as Jack suggests, wake up your partner (if they’re not already awake!) to breastfeed your baby.
Bring your partner water and a snack as they feed (which takes lots of calories and can deplete their energy pretty quickly). You can also lift your baby back into their crib or Moses basket when your baby is ready to drift back to sleep. Or you can soothe your baby and hold them if they need extra cuddles. That way your partner will get maximum rest while still continuing breastfeeding at night. Yes, you’ll both be awake for a time, but you’re still sharing some of those nighttime duties. And if you follow Jack’s advice above, you’ll be as alert as you can be to support both your baby and your partner.
Again, see information from the Lullaby Trust on safer sleep for your baby and sleeping in the same room as you for at least the first six months.
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