We also prioritized sleep pretty heavily. Just as a datapoint, here are some of the ways that has looked for us:
Both parents get 4+ hour chunks of uninterrupted, “both ears closed” sleep from the time the baby comes home. Mom sets alarms to pump and baby gets bottles of breastmilk when Mom is on her sleep shifts.
As baby got older and more settled, taking dedicated shifts whenever we expect a more difficult night—e.g. switching at 2 AM. Parents sleep in different rooms, baby sleeps in room with on-shift parent, the first minute that parent is awake after 2 AM, they move the baby to the other parent’s room. (Sometimes modified to first time they are putting the baby down after 2 AM). On less difficult nights, we did the same thing by switching sides of the bed so that the on-duty parent was close to the baby.
From the beginning, each parent getting periodic off duty nights, sleeping in a room with no baby or monitor all night. Mom sets an alarm to pump if she’s off duty. Our experience was that waking at a pre-determined time to pump and not having to monitor for or judge baby noises, or know which chunks of sleep would be long versus short, was overall much more restful than getting up to nurse, even if the two took the same amount of time.
We have in general lucked out with our baby being a relatively good sleeper and generally easier than average, but the above has been very important to us as well.
We also prioritized sleep pretty heavily. Just as a datapoint, here are some of the ways that has looked for us:
Both parents get 4+ hour chunks of uninterrupted, “both ears closed” sleep from the time the baby comes home. Mom sets alarms to pump and baby gets bottles of breastmilk when Mom is on her sleep shifts.
As baby got older and more settled, taking dedicated shifts whenever we expect a more difficult night—e.g. switching at 2 AM. Parents sleep in different rooms, baby sleeps in room with on-shift parent, the first minute that parent is awake after 2 AM, they move the baby to the other parent’s room. (Sometimes modified to first time they are putting the baby down after 2 AM). On less difficult nights, we did the same thing by switching sides of the bed so that the on-duty parent was close to the baby.
From the beginning, each parent getting periodic off duty nights, sleeping in a room with no baby or monitor all night. Mom sets an alarm to pump if she’s off duty. Our experience was that waking at a pre-determined time to pump and not having to monitor for or judge baby noises, or know which chunks of sleep would be long versus short, was overall much more restful than getting up to nurse, even if the two took the same amount of time.
We have in general lucked out with our baby being a relatively good sleeper and generally easier than average, but the above has been very important to us as well.