so tired

[zeitgeista]

don't normally post about my ds as would rather avoid the inevitable troll hunting and lectures etc but today i am just so tired and have nowhere else to rant about it.
my ds is 4 months old and seems to be going through the sleep regression period. he slept maybe an hour last night, all in about 10 minute chunks. i am so so exhuasted, this is the 3rd night in a row where we have gotten less than 2 hours sleep. ds is currently napping on me, my mum offered to take them so i could nap, that lasted about 30 minutes before he got into such a state that i had to take him back. my bf (his dad) is great but we don't live together and he is busy (mothers day) today. i saw him for a bit this morning which was nice and he absoloutely would help if he could, he has taken him out on walks the past 2 days so i could catch up on sleep but today i just feel like a zombie. i understand this is part of being a parent and i love him with all of me, but god it's hard.
sorry for the rant, just needed to get that off my chest. obviously i can talk to my mum and bf about it, but none of my friends are in the same position so won't understand, so this is my only place to vent!

i love him dearly but sometimes i regret the stupid decisions i made that got me here in the first place. me and bf used to talk (casually!) about the future, that we both agreed we only wanted one child after we had lived our lives a bit first, early 30's (33 onwards) at earliest, and here we are, 17 years earlier than planned with our son. i know it will work out in the end and that i am luckier than most to have support from my parents and to have stayed in the relationship throughout the whole thing, yes it was hard but we made it through and that gives me hope for the future, just hard to think like that on an hours broken sleep.

Och pet, I feel for you. Its absolutely ok to say how hard this is, because it is ! I dont have any words of wisdom apart from utilise all support which you do seem to be doing. It will pass, hold on to that. You'll come out the other end of this x

thank you so much. my parents take him at least once a week so me and bf can just spend some time together, even just watching a movie together, when i was pregnant i found this site and looked for some teen pregnancy threads, and on all of the ones i found, there was always at least one person saying that the teen needs to grow up, don't do anything for them etc. obviously i have had to grow up much faster than my friends but i can't understand why people would suggest to the teens parents to never take the baby, never give them a break. honestly, without my parents doing this once a week, i doubt the relationship would have survived. it's so nice to just be able to be (almost) carefree teenagers again, even just once a week.

It gets better, I promise! All of my DC went through awful stages of not sleeping and it does make you feel like a walking zombie. It’s so hard and in the middle of the night when you’re desperate to sleep and there they are, wide awake and full of energy, it’s hard work. But it does get better. Make use of anyone that offers you some time to sleep. Never feel guilty about catching up on sleep. Don’t use the time when your DC is asleep to catch up on housework...that can wait, or someone else can do it.

I was a teen mum btw. I had my DD when I’d just turned 18. It doesn’t matter if you’re 16 or 36...you need a break, you need sleep and you need time to yourself. When I had my DD I was a ‘rare creature’ pregnant at college doing my BTEC and the looks I used to get were horrendous...people felt sorry for me for some reason, told me I’d miss my carefree teenage years and I’d regret having her. Yes I missed out on girls holidays and lots of parties and coming home drunk at 3am and eating pizza in my pants watching dirty dancing...but, 21 years later I’ve got my very best friend (who is now a mummy too) and I adore every bone in her body.
My mums friend told me when I was pregnant with DD...”you may of had her a little early, but you get to love her a little longer” and I love that. I might have missed out on girls nights out when I was 18 but I have better nights out with my DD now keep at it, you’ll do great x

thank you @Laila747. when did ur dc start sleeping normally again?
thankfully i still live with my parents so i don't have a full house to clean up after, generally it's just tidying my bedroom, doing mine and ds laundry, and washing up some nights, so nothing too bad!
tbh, most nights, when i realise there's no chance of us getting back to sleep, i just start drawing.
i'm looking to get a tattoo apprenticeship soon, so at least i'm able to make the most of my time awake and start filling in my portfolio!
maybe ds' terrible sleep is more helpful than previously thought...

@Laila747

I was a teen mum btw. I had my DD when I’d just turned 18. It doesn’t matter if you’re 16 or 36...you need a break, you need sleep and you need time to yourself. When I had my DD I was a ‘rare creature’ pregnant at college doing my BTEC and the looks I used to get were horrendous...people felt sorry for me for some reason, told me I’d miss my carefree teenage years and I’d regret having her. Yes I missed out on girls holidays and lots of parties and coming home drunk at 3am and eating pizza in my pants watching dirty dancing...but, 21 years later I’ve got my very best friend (who is now a mummy too) and I adore every bone in her body. My mums friend told me when I was pregnant with DD...”you may of had her a little early, but you get to love her a little longer” and I love that. I might have missed out on girls nights out when I was 18 but I have better nights out with my DD now keep at it, you’ll do great x

sorry, this posted while i was typing my last response! that's really nice, i really needed to hear that today. yes i am missing out on going to town late with my friends, but like you said, i have my son, and hopefully he will be my best friend when he's older too. sometimes i get really down about missing out on my normal teenage experiences, but then i see bf on the sofa with ds in the evenings, music on really quietly in the background so as not to wake him and i feel more love than i ever thought i could experience. i've tried explaining it to my friends but they just don't get it, so it's so nice to be able to talk to people who understand exactly what i mean! i look forward to the future, when bf is teaching ds to ride his bike, and 10 years later teaching him about motorbikes instead!

Exactly. Your life is different to your friends now. Neither is better, neither is right or wrong. They’re just different. It all works out differently too. My DC are all older than most of my friends DC...I’ve done the early mornings, the not going out, the trying to get babysitters etc - most of them are doing that bit now. Me and my OH have weekends away together on our own, we have a holiday with the DC then one on our own (DC are happy staying with grandparents or our eldest DD) we can go out in the evening without needing a babysitter, we can go shopping without taking the DC with us. We just did it all a bit earlier and now we have that bit of freedom we didn’t have when we were younger.
It’s hard work but it’s so worth it. This little person that you’ve got the whole world to show. There’ll be good times and bad times but the good will outweigh the bad 10 times over.

I think all of my DC were sleeping through the night by about 8 months (give or take a few teething/poorly moments)

@Laila747

Exactly. Your life is different to your friends now. Neither is better, neither is right or wrong. They’re just different. It all works out differently too. My DC are all older than most of my friends DC...I’ve done the early mornings, the not going out, the trying to get babysitters etc - most of them are doing that bit now. Me and my OH have weekends away together on our own, we have a holiday with the DC then one on our own (DC are happy staying with grandparents or our eldest DD) we can go out in the evening without needing a babysitter, we can go shopping without taking the DC with us. We just did it all a bit earlier and now we have that bit of freedom we didn’t have when we were younger. It’s hard work but it’s so worth it. This little person that you’ve got the whole world to show. There’ll be good times and bad times but the good will outweigh the bad 10 times over.

I think all of my DC were sleeping through the night by about 8 months (give or take a few teething/poorly moments)

bf's mum was also a teen mum, although his father pissed off to another country as soon as he was told! she told us basically this same thing, that although it's hard now, we get our lives back sooner!

that's so nice to hear, that they are were back to normal by 8 months! fingers crossed ds is the same..!

parents took ds out for an hours drive earlier so i could catch up on sleep, it took me about 40 minutes to fall asleep so i only got 20 mins sleep. i'm so exhausted but it's like my brain won't switch off fully to allow me to fully relax and go to sleep. just so tired