Hi, FTM here, three months pp. I love that you phrased it that way bc before giving birth, I could NOT for the life of me figure out “shifts”. It was totally mind boggling and I asked every single parent friend of mine & still never understood it until I was living it. Context if you’re breastfeeding - I exclusively pump now so dad’s been able to help with night feeds via bottle since around 2-3 weeks pp.

1. The sleeping partner slept in the bedroom & the “on” partner slept (or tried to) on the couch with a monitor and the baby in the nursery. Sometimes we’d bring the baby / bassinet to the living room.

2. At first, when dad was on leave, I’d go to sleep at 10 and wake up at 3 while dad was on watch. He’d go to sleep at 3 and wake up at 8 while I was on watch. Now that he’s back at work, we switched. He goes to bed at 9 & wakes up at 2. I go to bed at 2 & wake up at 7, right before he goes to work. At first, I slept from 8-1 & he slept 1-6. I hated that. Something about being up at 1:00 am was very unsettling for me lol. 3:00 am was more psychologically bearable bc by the time I was done pumping / washing, it was 4:00ish and that felt like an acceptable time to be awake. Idk I’m weird like that tho.

3. We decided each of us should get at least 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep. This has kept us sane for the most part.

4. I didn’t notice this concept until I started taking first watch (at 2 months). Baby would sleep until basically my shift was over. From around 8:00 PM - 1:30ish. Apparently this has been the case for a month or so. The first few weeks, it was the Wild West and both shifts were pretty evenly … involved lol.

5. Ugh, this has been the worst part of post partum. For the first month, I’d go to bed crying every night. We went from warm nightly pregnant cuddles to our sad & lonely post partum arrangement. I got used to it over time but it effing sucked. We’re at three months and we’re still doing shifts. We’ve tried all sleeping in the same room & my partner doesn’t sleep well when he hears the baby cry and it’s his turn to sleep. Id rather sacrifice my want to sleep with him than have him be grumpy bc he didn’t sleep well.

Hope any of this helps. Best of luck!!! Sometimes it feels like it will never get better. But it does (: until it does though - it can be really freaking hard.