To be absolutely depressed by parenting

I'm not accusing, I have lived through this. Bed time is bed time. Don't be a slave to them,

Is she moving to a different childcare provider? Can she start there early if so, even if it's only certain days? Likewise, I'd use what money was available to keep her in the present one for whatever days in August were possible. I see that the budget is limited, but I'd say one of your options here is to throw money at the problem and use childcare as extensively as you can for now, with the idea that it buys you, literally, time to decompress and also so you have more energy to tackle it all in the time you do spend with her.

My 2 yr old was up around the same time. He has just fallen asleep beside me, because he wont fall sleep alone in the cot. How old is your DD?
I am going to move him into the cot now because I want to shower and eat food like a human being does. He will be up again around midnight and will only fall back to sleep if I bring him into bed with me. Around 4am he will start thrashing around, hitting, kicking, hair pulling etc. I will wake up, try to protect myself and not go back to sleep.

I have a 3.5 yr old too. She is getting better at night
During the day they absolutely kill each other. And then we do that night time routine I mentioned above

Great Craic!

The teenage years are like Google reviews. You'll always hear more from people who struggle. I loved those years. Zero to two on the other hand 😱

God I found this hilarious. I nearly woke up the 2 yr old demon beside me i laughed so much

I like this one

DD was up at 6.30 today, and is still awake now. She’s been lying in bed for 2 hours now; getting up periodically to check where I am. She’s already woken her brother once by shouting MUM. I have no evening. I cannot relax.

Could you do it for half or part of the week then? That's better than nothing.

It is very easy to accuse others of being obsessed by sleep when they aren’t the ones disturbed overnight, woken at the crack of dawn and then get the bit of me time they have at the end of each day snatched cruelly from them!

Yep, they’re all chilled mannnn. They couldn’t get at all worked up about 5 broken hours of sleep, every night for 6 years 😎✌🏻 (they don’t actually go through that themselves tho, but are happy to provide advice, because they definitely would be!)

That plan of extending her nursery time till August - do it. I would in your shoes. You have to put your own life jacket on first and that gives you more breathing space to get a grip on it all and not be screamed at.

I read a thing that said to prepare for being a parent you need to make a list of everything you like doing and then cross them off, one by one. True really.

late bedtime? No. Bed time is just that.

Kindly OP, and I get it , you seem obsessed with sleep. The more anxiety and cortisol this is creating, the worse it will get. Can you coem up with some sort of rota?

That's why I say maybe we're lucky! I don't attribute it in any way to my good parenting 😂
But it was mainly directed at people who have kids that are capable of doing this (NOT at OPs kids ages, they're too young), but feel that they have to get up with their kids. I also think many parents of our generation coddle and helicopter parent a little. Many kids when given the chance are more sensible than we credit them with.

Yes absolutely! It was to give OP hope that this will probably change pretty quickly for her ☺️

I rhink this absolutely speaks to the Orchid vs Dandelion narrative. Dsis and I were by all accounts very pliable and sensible girls who my parents left to play and get ourselves breakfast when we woke between 5& 6 aged 2 & 4. I know my mother told everyone who would listen (and still does) what a fantastic parent she was. The reality is we were high in agreeableness and conscientiousness in other words easy to parent.

Sigh.

OP has clearly said she works less than half what her DH does.

Therefore, justifiably, the lion’s share of childcare falls to her. We would expect that of him if the roles were reversed.

But this means OP becomes the default parent because it is inevitable that the parent doing 80% of the childcare will be the one who remembers and carries out all of the finer details of that childcare - play dates, doctor’s appointments, birthday parties, being the person in charge of the ‘the schedule’, knowing their current shoe size, knowing what forms need signing for school and nursery…

Of course, you could do a handover and delegate parts of it, but like OP as a part time worker I find it is simply too complex and fluid as they move from stage to stage to hand over bits of it. For example, at DD school, 1 parent had access to their app. The app does EVERYTHING - meals, trips, clubs, reports, booking parents evening, homework.

If I am working part time and doing the vast majority of school runs then it HAS to be me who does this, because all that would happen if DH did it would be ‘remember, you need to take this to school today when you drop her off’ ‘remember to ask the teacher this at pick up’ ‘remember it’s mufti day tomorrow’. See how it wouldn’t make any sense?

But then inevitably school and everything in its orbit falls to me. I do the pick ups so I’m the one who has struck up school gate friendships and play dates.

As much as you all fall of yourselves to say your DH ‘does exactly half’ I wonder if that ‘half’ really just means he spends at much physical time with them as you do. I don’t really believe they organised the last birthday party, announced they were taking DC on an independently organised play date yesterday, or reminded you it’s dentist time and assured you he’s booked an appointment and has written it in the calendar.