I am just so bored with my baby. My life for the past three months has been an endless cycle of rock, feed, burp, change, wave a toy in front of his face while he chews his fists. All the books say "sleep when he sleeps"... which only works if he sleeps. Yesterday he woke up at 7am, had three 15 minute naps (because I had spent an hour rocking him) and finally went to sleep about 10pm. I can't read or watch tv or occupy my brain in any way - every waking second is spent rocking and rattling plastic toys and pulling silly faces. Then when he's finally asleep, I sleep. I have no time for myself. He's supposed to sleep and give me a few hours to myself every day! If by some miracle he dozes off in the afternoon I literally sit with one hand surfing the web and the other hand over the dog's mouth to prevent her barking and waking the baby. If she does bark and he wakes up I cry hysterically at the loss of my precious free time.
I don't get a night off because I'm breastfeeding. DH doesn't get home from work till 8pm, he takes the baby and I'm still not free because I have to cook dinner and rush around doing housework before bed at 10pm and I'm back on duty. And that's a good night because at least I've been away from the baby... some weeks DH works away two nights Wed/Thurs and drives back on Friday night, getting home at 10.30pm to grab a snack and go straight to bed. So I'm in sole charge of the baby from bedtime on Tuesday till breakfast time on Saturday. Depending if DH is busy I might have the baby most of the weekend too.
I've had to give up my hobbies. I can't even sit on the sofa with a bottle of wine. And there's no end in sight because I no longer have a job to go back to and the sort of job I'm likely to get wouldn't cover childcare. I basically don't exist as a person any more and I am going insane. That's before we even talk about the state of my body after childbirth and the resulting loss of self esteem. And the worst part is that I inflicted this on myself. I'm typing this with one hand on my phone while walking up and down jiggling the baby with the other arm. Is this what PND is? Just the mind-numbing boredom of being tied to a baby who is as interesting as a sack of potatoes?
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Antenatal/postnatal depression
Do I have PND?
8 replies
LittleGreySheep · 09/05/2018 18:29
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