I love my baby so much. As any mother loves her child. Nothing makes me happier than his smile or his laugh but I find him so exhausting at times.
He's 11 months. He takes great pleasure pulling my hair, ripping my glasses off my face, smacking me, etc. I know he doesn't mean too and he doesn't understand but it's still quite hurtful.
He does this frustrating thing where he arches his back in annoyance. I'll tell him no and he ignores me so I go to pick him up and remove him for the situation and he arches his back very forcefully and aggressively. He's getting quite strong and it takes every bit of strength to keep hold of him when he does it.
I just put him in his highchair to give him some fruit and he did the arching his back thing in the chair but it was honestly so forceful and aggressive I was worried he was going to hurt himself as he arched his back and threw himself back, smashing his head against the back of the highchair and when I told him no he did it even more forcefully so I unstrapped him straight away and picked him up.
He's slept through the night without issue since around 4 months old but he got his first proper cold, virus type thing a month ago and since then he's waking without fail several times between 2am - 4am. Then he's ready to be awake and play just before 5am. Whereas before he would sleep through until 8am. This means hes napping more during the day but he always resists this too.
He always been very content and happy. Never much of a crier. So I'm finding all this quite hard to cope with.
I've always found it hard to do the sit down and do the play thing with him. It's monotonous and boring. I preferred the newborn cuddles, milk and naps stage. But when I do get his toys out and sit to play with him, he isn't interested he just crawls off and tries to hunt down things that aren't toys and he shouldn't be playing with. There's a lot of "no" and chasing after him.
He's in Nursery two days a week while I work and i feel so guilty, as much as I miss him dreadfully, I bloody love it. Yet even thinking that feels me with such guilt and I look at him and feel terrible. I want to be with him all the time and cuddle him and see him happy but at the same time it's relentless.
He's only been at nursery a month so far and when I picked him up last week he had a bruise on his leg, his cheek and bruises both sides of his forehead, quite nasty ones so now I feel even more guilty about sending him to Nursery.
I feel like a terrible mum who not only fails at the parenting lark but I feel like I'm failing in every other aspect too. Health, finances, relationships, job, etc.
Don't know what I'm asking really. Just for others to say they get it and they've been here too.