Sharing night feeds when you both work

"Did you feed her at two, or was that me?"

"How long was the last one?"

"Was the nappy before or after?"

The breakfast debrief. Two tired people trying to piece together a night that neither of them was properly awake for, before one of them has to leave for work.

Sharing night feeds is one of the most practical ways to get through the early months when you are both working, or when one of you is back at work and the other is at home all day with a baby. It also comes with its own problems, and most of them are about information rather than sleep.

There is no single fair way to split the nights

What works depends on how you are feeding, who has work the next day, and how your baby's nights tend to go. A few approaches families use:

• Shifts. One of you covers the first half of the night, the other the second, so each gets a stretch of unbroken sleep. Often the most restful option if you can make it work.

• Alternate nights. One on, one off. Harder nights, but a full night of recovery in between.

• Work nights and weekend nights. The person at work the next day does less on weeknights and more at weekends.

• The breastfeeding parent feeds, the other does everything else. Nappies, settling, winding, bringing the baby over, taking them back. Often underrated.

If you are breastfeeding and thinking about a partner doing a bottle overnight, it is worth reading the NHS guidance on combining breast and bottle first, and talking it through with your health visitor, since skipping feeds can affect supply.

The version that works is the one you both agree to, and revisit when it stops working. Weeks change. Teething happens. Someone gets a cold.

What gets lost when only one of you is keeping track

In a lot of households, one person ends up holding all the information. They know when the last feed was, how long it went on, which side, whether there has been a dirty nappy since lunch.

That person is usually the one who has been at home. And it becomes an invisible second job: answering questions, reminding, remembering.

When the night is shared but the information is not, the handover goes wrong in predictable ways:

• Timings get muddled, because nobody knows exactly when the last one was.

• The side gets forgotten, and nobody wants to guess.

• Small things slip, like a feed that went badly or a baby who seemed a bit off, and the person who noticed has gone back to sleep.

What a shared log changes

The simplest fix is for both of you to write into the same record, as it happens, so whoever is up next can see what happened without waking the other one to ask.

In Littles, both parents can log into the same account from their own phones. A feed logged at 1:20am by one of you is there for the other at 4:05am. Night mode keeps the screen dark, and a timer started with two taps keeps counting on the lock screen, which helps if you are feeding with one hand.

The breakfast debrief gets shorter. More importantly, the person who has been doing all the remembering gets to put some of it down.

Staying safe when you are this tired

When you are this tired, it is very easy to nod off during a night feed. The Lullaby Trust says to never fall asleep on a sofa or armchair with your baby, because it significantly increases the risk of SIDS. If you think you might nod off, put your baby down on their back in their own cot or Moses basket first.

This is one of the reasons swapping shifts helps. A parent who has had four hours of unbroken sleep is safer on the 3:40am feed than one who has had none.

Looking after both of you

Sleep deprivation is hard on adults. It shows up as short tempers, forgetfulness, and a tendency to keep score about who is more tired.

It helps to talk about the nights in daylight rather than at 2:47am. What is working, what is not, what either of you needs to change. If one of you is really struggling, with sleep, mood or anything else, that is worth raising with your GP or health visitor. It is a completely ordinary thing to ask for help with.

Littles is free to download, and logging feeds, sleep and nappies stays free for as long as you want it.

Your baby's own 24 hour sleep needs, and the rest of the analysis screens, are part of premium. Two weeks free to try, then £6.99 a month or £50 a year.

Sources: NHS guidance on combining breast and bottle feeding; The Lullaby Trust advice on sleep deprivation and safer sleep.

Related reading: How much milk does a baby need? A plain guide in ml and oz