[jeska~and~her~se...]

I expected equality in all areas except BF, and that's what we have.

However I would also urge caution on cancelling the cleaner. DD hated to be put down, at any time, and although she did start sleeping on her own very early, I used a lot of that time to rest myself. I remember I only had two daily jobs early on: make dinner, and wash nappies. Some days that was a struggle, and I was the walking cliche of a mum in her dressing gown till after lunch. Luckily I had a gorgeous cleaner who came once a week and cleaned the kitchen and vacuumed for me. I think I would have found it even harder (and I found it pretty hard) without her.

Good luck, OP!

[=R2=]

I suggest not expecting anything at all. Everything is just a wonderful fantasy for you at the moment and the reality could be so different. People cope with sleep deprivation and groundhog days differently.

Just communicate your needs with each other as they come and thank each other when they are met. There's nothing worse than feeling like you're a single parent doing everything and feeling helpless or being the partner and feeling like you can't do anything to contribute because you do it wrong or not as well as you'd like.

[chocolatecrackle]

DH and I had three things we agreed on - my responsibility was breastfeeding and my own sleep; DH was in charge of settling; DH had to be home on time from work, or give me as much notice as he could if he was late.

DH had three weeks off when DS was born. I think this was a decent period of time - I am glad he didn't have longer as I think I would have found it hard to cope by myself.

The most important thing for me in the early weeks was having DH home on time. I could get through the worst of days, counting down the minutes to when I could pass DS over and take the dog for a walk, have a shower or just have five minutes without crying. When DH was running late, it was so much harder. I would have traded less paternity leave for more certainty that I could have had DH home on time.

As for dividing tasks, I was in charge of breastfeeding and getting enough sleep to be able to cope with a baby during the day. Everything else was a bonus.

Our agreement with the overnight feeds was that I would feed, and DH would settle. It turned out that DS was pretty easy to settle overnight, so I would only get DH to help if I couldn't settle DS within twenty minutes - it just didn't make sense to wake DH up for fifteen minutes of settling when I'd already beeen up feeding for an hour, especially given that I wouldn't be able to sleep with the bassinet next to me.

Everything else we made up as we went along. We tried to make time to talk for ten minutes at the end each day about what had worked, what hadn't, and what we should try the next day.

[Therese]

We didn't really have any expectations. He was happy to do whatever needed to be done. We had always shared what needed to be done before we had kids so I knew that would continue.