I hate my baby

[whatisthislife55]

I’ve name changed for this because I’m not proud of how I feel.

My 10 week old baby will only contact nap with movement (walking, rocking etc) and in a sling. The moment I stop moving he wakes up. He fights sleep for every nap until he gives in. At night he does one or two stretches in the bassinet (thank god) and then he’s up from 5am. He also hates his car seat and screams. Once I’ve fed him and changed his nappy I can put him down for 20-30 minutes until the cycle starts again. My husband works long hours so is of limited help.

Honestly I am miserable. I love my son but I hate my baby if that makes any sense. I honestly feel like I’ve made a massive mistake and wish I’d never had a baby. Ironically we had multiple miscarriages and years of fertility issues to get to here and I should feel so happy.

I’ve spoken to the health visitor and the GP and they’ve put me on group therapy but it doesn’t seem to be making any difference so far.

Has anyone had a baby like this or felt like this? I just don’t know what to do anymore.

My DD2 was just like this. The only time she wasn't crying or whinging was when she was asleep, which thankfully she did do.

She is still my more challenging child and is an emotional soul.

I have so much guilt to this day as until she turned 2.5y, I could have quite easily put her up for adoption.

@Muffinmam That has crossed my mind actually! It does run in my family. He simply won’t sleep if I put him down though but I always make sure I follow TICKS when he’s in the sling and regularly check him

Sorry to hear that you are struggling OP.

My baby was ok until around 10 weeks when she started displaying the symptoms of silent reflux. Took us a while to figure out how best to treat it and it was not an enjoyable time.

If baby is happier napping upright on you I’m wondering if he also has reflux.

Either way, it will get easier, although I appreciate it does little to help you feel better at the moment

My youngest was like this and it's so hard OP, you're not alone. At least you have the night stretches...mine was like this 24/7 until 8 weeks when it got slightly better but still awful 😖. Do you have a gym ball? I used to rock/bounce on this with baby in sling. White noise also settled her...I used to rock on the gym ball in the kitchen with our extractor fan going full blast! We also found a dummy helped. Things do improve, I think for us around 12 weeks we saw a big change.

Yes, my dd was like this. She wouldn’t go in her crib at all for the first 12 weeks and had to be held for all naps and all through the night, hated her pram and was generally a high needs baby. Her toddler years weren’t much better, she started tantrums earlier and had huge once that went on for ages and nothing we could do to stop it. It does get better once they’re out of the toddler stage, she’s now 4 and she is so much easier and we really enjoy having her now. We also have DC2 now and he is a very different baby and toddler, not all babies are as hard.

If anyone says “enjoy every second” then hiss at them and make them hold the baby for an hour while you have a rest. It feels hard cos it IS hard

The gym ball does work eventually but he prefers being walked around! I really hope things get better soon

Oh dear, it is difficult! I had a velcro baby too and I well remember thinking, "What have I done?" and wondering if I'd made a huge mistake.

It does get better, it really does. When every day seems like an eternity, it's hard to feel excited when people tell you it will be better in six months - it may as well be six years! But hang in there, get all the help you can at this stage, and one day you'll look back and realise that things really are much better. Mine, like yours, loved being in the sling, and going outside for a walk helped a lot too.

Edited to add, my clingy baby is just about to go to uni! I don't miss the very young baby stage that you're going through right now, but I do miss the toddler and older stage. In my view, you've got the best to come!

Yeah I want to shout back ‘What am I supposed to be enjoying?! This is hell!’ Similar response for ‘soak up the newborn cuddles’ as well 😭

Cranial osteopathy didn't help my babies with this issue, OP. I also had the thing that other people's babies seemed more settled sitting there in groups. Mine wanted to be carried and look around. There was one other mother who had this issue and we bonded really well as friends. It turned out we had highly intelligent children who were more curious about the world than most and were always exploring. Mine's a research scientist with a PhD in progress now and even left home.

This takes me back OP, DD was like this. 10-30 min naps maximum and only slept on my chest (sitting up) at night.

She turned out to have tongue tie, it wasn’t obvious as she was putting on weight but she put it on much faster once we eventually found it and got it cut at 14 weeks. If you can afford to see a lactation consultant then I would recommend it.

Once we had the tongue tie cut and she was feeding better/less windy we also sleep trained, around 4-5 months which is young but I was broken (DD was also prem so we’d had a lot of stress and extra newborn weeks). Life improved dramatically.

Then things improved again at 6 months, 10 months and it was up from there really.

The one big benefit of having a very difficult baby stage is it makes even the toddler tantrums seem easy by comparison !!

Hang in there - but as others have said do get all the help you can during this stage, lactation consultant, lean on any friends/relatives and above all make your DH step up. It doesn’t matter if he is working long hours, what you are doing is much harder. He could get up with DS at 5.30 for example so you can get a couple of hours sleep then.

I’m so glad you have loads of replies on here supporting you. Honestly you’re doing great and you are basically me 4 years ago! Year one of DS’s life was my worst ever, soooo soooo boring and I’ve never been awake as much in my life, the sleep dep sent me bloody bonkers. In your spare 5mins do some reading around bringing up children in the non-western world and authors like Sarah Ockwell-Smith. This might help you as it’s TOTALLY different. Babies aren’t meant to be able to sleep alone or not moving as it means they’ve been abandoned/are in danger, so defo use a sling. I carried mine around all the time and co-slept. And defo look into the reflux thing too. Get as much help as you can from supporting sources and don’t worry about how you feel, having your first baby in the western world is a very lonely, tiring and guilt-making experience. Sending love! ❤️

Ha! You feel exactly like I did. There is nothing enjoyable about newborns that actually belong to you in my experience! They are little sleep monsters. I hated every second. But he’s 4 now and I love him to bits so it was worth it but I wished someone had warned me how hellish I would find it. I don’t think you can really get that message across to anyone before they have to actually do it themselves tho! Hang in there lovely xxx

My now 15 month old DD screamed from the moment she was born for months and months and months. Like your DS, she never napped properly and screamed non-stop in the car. It was the darkest time of my life to be honest but we are coming out the other side now. She is still a big car screamer but she is the funniest, cheekiest little thing in the world. She was walking at 9 months too and is now a big climber - found her standing on the coffee table this morning so she’s now challenging in other ways!

You really are in the worst bit of babyhood IMO and it will only get better as time goes on. I absolutely hated the baby stage with both of my DDs but now they have proper personalities and are more independent it is much easier (but still bloody hard!) You will get through this!

You don't hate your baby, you hate the situation.

My first was a contact napper and pretty much wanted to be held constantly. It felt like he barely slept at night and was constantly waking up. Its really hard and you end up really touched out, esp if your DH works long hours.

It does get easier and personally I think around the 2-3 month mark the newness of a baby and what you have waited so long for is overshadowed by hardly sleeping and constant contact.

My biggest advise...do not compare to others. It will ruin your experience. I also find you only notice the people in the situation you want to be in not the one you are in. There will be others that are in the same situation as you that haven't made it to the group you are at.

My daughter was like this. I'd highly recommend craniosacral osteopathy and white noise. My daughter has had a Glow Dreaming machine since 2.5 and it made a world of difference to her ability to settle and sleep. I wish I'd known about it sooner as I'd have bought one at birth!

There is also a gadget called a Rockit which may help you get some rest by vibrating the pram while baby's in it so you don't have to.

Good luck! It is hard to have a challenging baby but if it's any consolation, my daughter is now 6 and an absolute sweetheart

Have you tried safe bed sharing? it’s life changing.

If you can master breastfeeding in the side lying position you can sleep with the Velcro baby attached to you.

James McKenna has a lot of great research that shows this way of sleeping is the safest way for a breastfeeding dyad due to thing like co-regulation (the way humans have slept for millennia)

You need to be prepared to be miserable for a while when you have a baby. Yes its hard but that's what being a parent is. Try some white noise for babys from youtube.

I'm concerned that you've named your post 'hate my baby' and think you should push your GP for more support.

Can I just say what a lovely thread this is. So much empathy and understanding from mums who have been through this and come out the other side. When I saw the title I was worried you’d get some judgy replies, but it seems that this feeling is more common than any of us would like to think.

My DS1 was very much like this, fussing, crying, wouldn’t nap, just seemed so unhappy all the time! I was on my knees with exhaustion and his dad wasn’t a huge amount of help. Agree with suggestions to get a cleaner, get easy meal shopping or food boxes delivered, expect very little of yourself and your baby at this stage. I think imagining it as the fourth trimester, you’re still carrying him, just on the outside now, helps! Try not to compare with other mums and babies - its a long road of milestones and rough bumps in the road, and your babies will do things at their own pace. You may find your child is easier once he can sit up, or that he talks earlier than other babies so is less frustrated because he can ask for what he wants etc. so you won’t always be feeling like you have the tricky baby!

Mine are all adults now but the emotional scars of those early days stayed with me. I do feel for you, and I promise this era is one of the hardest, physically and emotionally. Once you get past this you can handle anything!

First, it's ok to feel like this. You can feel despair and anger as a new mum and that's ok. You have massive hormonal Shifts and a huge change in your life. It's ok to have those feelings.

Some babies are HARD! My eldest was a contact napper and nightmarishly bad at sleep generally until she was 2.5. Although it seems like you can't possibly survive it, you do and one day you'll be looking back at this time and it won't seem so bad. My eldest is a totally delightful 8 year old, and aside from her total dislike of all vegetables (which is still frustrating) she is wonderful fun to be with and has been for some years. My 4th has been a wonderfully easy baby and I can see how why some people seemed to be so relaxed with their first!

Call in as much help as you can and don't feel guilty. You'd be amazed how many women have been where you are and would happily take baby for a pram walk for a few hours so you can sleep and wash your hair.

My 1st DD was like this too, also BF - I didn’t give her a dummy initially as my DM had always hated dummies but by the time I decided to try anyway (around 6 weeks) it was too late and she just gagged. When I had my 2nd DD I had a dummy for her from birth and things were so much better. She only used it for sleep times and got her off it around age 2 with little difficulty. Have you tried a dummy?

It’s a lovely thread and I was worried about the replies as well. So many good suggestions from everyone but mainly it’s helped me feel less alone

Oh I should also mention OP that all my NCT friends babies were so calm and placid compared to mine. We would meet up and theirs would either be asleep in the pram or happily cooing at the world whilst mine was enraged 99.9% of the time. Oh it made me feel so shit and upset at the injustice of it all!

I was even asked to leave a baby group once because he was so incensed with rage and flailing around that it disrupted the others who were getting a nice baby massage or something 😆

years on and those same NCT friends absolutely adore my son who is just a really good egg. Kind, compassionate, emotionally aware. He’s wonderful and yours will be too.

I can look back now and laugh but omfg it was not funny at the time

I wish I had mumsnet when I had mine.
I felt like the worst mum in the world and didn’t realise that so many other women found it difficult too.

Being a mum is one of the most difficult things you can do, even if it’s what you’ve wanted for years.

It does get better.
Once the baby starts sleeping better, you start feeling a bit more human.

Just remember that your baby was in your belly for 9 months and it doesn’t know anything but being right next to you.
We would panic if our ship sank in the middle of the ocean because we would feel so unsafe.

Just take things easy.
Try techniques like a filled glove to put on your baby when they’re sleeping (and you can see them) so they can still feel that warmth but you get to sit and have a brew and 5mins freedom.
I would definitely use DH as much as possible and go out for a walk or long bath just to get some space.
During the day listen to audiobooks or read a book whilst holding the baby so you are still doing things for yourself.

My baby was just like this too and it was a horrible period of my life. We had no local family, and I was just so isolated and miserable with a screaming, BF, non-sleeping baby. The first year of his life felt endless and I think I saw every hour of every day and night of it.

He got a lot better with reflux medication (ranitidine) and then a lot better again once he could engage with the world a bit more. Although I spent a lot of time wondering if we’d made a terrible mistake in having him, he and I now have a wonderfully close relationship (he’s now 16). So even though the first year was utter shit, all the years after have honestly made up for it. He’s an only child though!