To leave DD (9 months) with DH and go away for a few days?

[ArtFine]

DD is recovering from a cold and I've got the cold. She is understandably extremely miserable (lots of crying despite calpol/nurofen) and every time I sneeze she starts crying

DD has been a very very fussy baby since birth and a very poor sleeper, up every hour at night since the past six months (have had the odd good night here and there).

DH has not done any nights and has not been supportive. He can come home earlier from work on the odd occasion but doesn't. I asked him for 2.5 hours per week for myself to catch up on sleep/rest, but has only delivered that a few times. Basically everyone and everything else takes priority than me. He knows ill carry on looking after DD.

I'm utterly exhausted, fed up and ill and tired. DH is off next week and I'm tempted to text him and let him know I'm leaving for a few days and he has DD to himself. She's currently ebf but desperately needs to get onto the bottle (which I've again asked his help for in the past but hasn't delivered much). She needs to go on the bottle due to allergies and as she is a very poor eater we can't do sleep training as we suspect she is actually hungry as night.

DD adores him and he is a good father. She is generally much happier with him.

So AIBU to just leave her with him and go? I know timing is a bit rubbish as she is recovering from a cold but she is over the worst of it (and plus isnt it time DH sees how it is to look after an ill baby all day on your own?).

So what do you think?

merci, that does sound better. And maybe when she is fully on the bottle then ill go away.

How do I decide how many feeds to cut down to avoid pumping?

Go away for the night. I did that nine months. I stayed in a hotel five minutes away. It was an extravagance but it bought me my sanity. My DH would take our DD for an hour... The golden hour... Every morning before he went to work. She was a bad sleeper and woke several times a night. Would yours do that for you? It's the least they can do if they're not the ones on night duty. I hope you get some rest soon: the tiredness really messes with your head, I remember how desperate I felt at this stage when everyone else's babies were sleeping through (lies!)

Is there a possibility of something in addition to allergies?

As I previously posted, my dd was a nightmare sleeper. Still can be if her meds need adjusted and she's now 15 months, but she was undiagnosed for 6 months as reflux doesn't magically appear - but she'd always had it. They just didn't connect the dots.

Does your dd have any symptoms?

I hope you're having a decent night. I honestly have every sympathy with you. Your h sounds like an unsupportive prick, and I hated my dh at the peak of dd's illness and he was generally pretty good!

as long as you're not in pakistan and the baby won't be accused of murder why not? i mean you're trying to get off the tit onto bottle so it would be easier if you were gone (and you need sleep and he needs a reality check) personally i would not but my baby wheezes across the carpet at me to deaky launch himself up my legs and im still at the stage of finding it cute xx

There must be a reason why dd sounds so discontented .
Reflux sounds the culprit for night disharmony .
The allergy thing needs further exploration ; she could easily be intolerant of additional things and these are making her sore and grumpy . Have you cut the foods out of your diet ?
I would not jump to the bottle as a cure , your worries will only multiply if there's allergic responses to that .
Sorry you're struggling . It's hard when tiredness gets unmanageable :(

I would personally try to get her to take milk from a doidy cup rather than the bottle, much better for teeth

I thought breast milk was the first choice for allergies have you had hcp advice about this?

I don't think it is a good idea to just leave them. He doesn't sound prepared or experienced to deal with it all. You say he hasn't been supportive so how is that being a good father?

Definitely use next week to get some downtime for yourself. Days out at first (or spend some time napping during the day). He can take on the bulk of parenting. And consider going away for a couple of days at the end of the week, or at some stage in the next month or so, once they have got some sort of routine happening and are more familiar with each other.

You poor thing. I have literally been where you are, right down to the waking every hour and DH not doing nights and generally wanting to jack the whole lot in. At one point my sister was holding the baby and I was unbelievably tempted to just leg it, turn off my phone and come back after a weekend of sleep.

I don't think what you're feeling is necessarily depression - in my case it was just exhaustion - but I do agree with Bunty that the phrase 'she is happier with him' might suggest that you have been brought very far down by the whole situation.

Perhaps what you really are asking for is a time out, and like you have already agreed, the dramatic overnight route will be very hard on your baby as well as your poor sore boobs.

DS also had reflux although the medications sadly weren't a silver bullet for him, and we also tried the allergy route with dairy/soy free diets and then by 2 weeks on the fully hydrolysed formula while I kept pumping, so that if the issue wasn't allergies (and it wasn't!), I could go back to feeding - sadly it made no difference for us, so it was good we kept options open. If this isn't right for you, then by all means wean anyway - you've done a great job already. DH still can't settle DS at night, but he does anything after 5am while I sleep, and that has been a godsend for us.

Anyway this isn't all about me, but I know how alone this can make you feel.

Can you:

1. Have a frank discussion with your DH about how you feel, and maybe set a timeline on when you might go away by yourself?
2. Have a frank discussion with a doctor or at least an HV about checking out the baby and maybe also about how down you are feeling.
3. Get some interim support from DH, family or even a paid nanny for a few hours. If you get even 3 hours of clear sleep, the world will make a lot more sense again.
4. Maybe look at gentle and achieable ways to improve sleep - of course sleep this terrible does not sound primarily behavioural, but all of us with rubbish sleepers do also get into a few bad habits just to survive, and we found that by doing a few small things we got DS from every hour to some occasional 1.5-2 hour stretches, which was awesome. The No Cry Sleep Solution was our bible, we tried everything else including baby whisperers and week-long sleep schools, but nothing stuck except the slow, steady and gentle way.

and good luck!

Just to add, if it is reflux, allergies apparently can coomobly go hand in hand, and bottles won't help the allergies or the sleeping. :(

I'd be tempted to try some infant gaviscon (although it's a faff), and raise one end of her cot. Dd sleeps outside for naps in her buggy as it's got a great gradient on it - maybe something to try? Also, you need help. Someone to share the night wakings, if not h then pretty much any on you trust. This is not sustainable yourself.

Also, not recommended until 1, but maybe a pillow? Put her on her side to sleep. A dummy.

Thanks everyone!

Bunty, she is happy with me, just more happy with her dad. I think it's because she doesn't seem him as much as she sees me, plus yes he does have more energy to play with her. I don't think I'm depressed, I'm just so so so exhausted.

She did have silent reflux at 4 months, but tbh her sleep went horribly wrong then. Anyhow she was weaned off her medication at 7 months and it didn't make a difference to how she was feeling.

I think normally when she wakes up hourly she is very gassy and I do think this is related to her allergies. I am dairy and soya free and so is she, but it's tough and I don't want to do it anymore. It's also really difficult because she hardly eats anything during the day, and if we try and withdraw milk at night, she screams and screams, possibly because she is hungry. If she is on the bottle or beaker, then we would have more control over how much she is having and when.

DH did try last night to give her some in the beaker but she refused. In the end he asked me to BF her, and I felt bad as she was ill. He thinks that I should go away and get some rest, and she will come round and have milk from the beaker. I don't know what to do now.

Bunty, she sleeps on the pillow (she helps herself to it) and she sleeps on her stomach too sometimes.

We tried fully dairy and soy free too, like with the reflux medication it made bugger all difference, but was incredibly hard work. If she is definitely intolerant, then moving to hydrolysed formula might take a lot of pressure off you, much as I am pro-bfing, we probably would have done the same if we hadn't realised it was making no difference.

It does gradually get better with time, though it doesn't feel it on the way...

Thanks sunny! What actually helped your baby? Was it just time?

My fully BF DD1 wouldn't take milk from anything when I tried weaning her around 10months. What eventually worked was a white soft spout that Avent do that attached to their bottles. Kind of like the spout on a sippy cup.

I have BF 4 babies and when weaning I dropped the afternoon feed, then mid morning, then overnight feeds, then first thing in morning feed and bedtime feed. I dropped a feed every 5 days or so. Never pump expressed but would hand express a little if I got very uncomfortable. Not a whole feed but just enough for it not to hurt.

While he is off next week can't you feed her first thing In The morning then give her to him. You go back to bed and he plays with her than after an hour tries giving her some porridge and toast fingers to chomp on. Then he can play with her again. Should mean you can get a couple of extra hours sleep every day.

Sleep deprivation is very hard.

Also after another feed he could put the baby in the pram and go for a walk, take it for a swing in a park and pick up something for your dinner giving you another couple of hours break each day.

Sorry, just wrote a long message and lost it

Time has been the best thing for us. I've also found that being accepting has helped - the most stressful times have often been when I was trying to recreate what he 'should' be doing according to the sleep schools, or some book, or my sisters, or to do the things that others in my mothers group can do! Now we've made adjustments to make life bearable (like DH taking him for an hour in the morning, doing day sleeps in the pram or sling to minimise cot stress, DS and I sharing a room for now and cosleeping when the night is getting too tricky, making a weekend lunch date for DH and I rather than trying to do things in the evening).
We've also had some success with the No Cry Sleep Solution - it's slow but the good thing is that her gentle approaches cause less distress for the baby (and therefore for you), and are also much more achievable when you are an angry and exagusted zombie-mother at 3am. Persistence is definitely the key, but we've got DS from settling only in the sling or feeding to settling (with our help) in the cot for a lot of the evening.

Things get better, and as she starts to eat more and feed less, and is more and more interactive, it will also be easier for your DH or other carers to take a more active role.

We still have some terrible nights, when I feel a horrible kinship with those women who would leave babies in Moses baskets on church doorsteps, but they are fewer and farther and farther between. Sometimes the changeover can be harder, as it's easy to feel a bit unfairly like the baby is somehow old enough to know better, but comparing with sleep logs from the early days shows us how far we've come.

Big ramble, but hopefully helpful at least a little. Have you had a good chat with your DH yet, or even shown him this thread? And/or your GP?

Yanbu

I've recently left my EBF 11m old for the weekend. He adapted by eating more solids, and has spaced his feeds a bit more since. He still wakes and feeds back to sleep, and DH gave him yoghurt to tank him up. He manages 12 hours without milk at nursery, and has always refused a bottle.

His older brother has CMPA and soya intolerance and woke regularly for multiple night feeds until he was on a milk free diet. By then he was a year, and had weaned to morning, bedtime and night feeds. The diet change co-incided with a massive change in his sleep. He was first left at 14m. I weaned him off thinking my supply wouldn't survive and that he'd miss it too much. It turned out, I kept my milk for months and that he was less bothered than I expected, which gave me more confidence for leaving DS2 sooner.

For me, the key bit is feeling confident that they'll take enough nutrition in other forms. DS2 would6ld have struggled at 9m, but there was enough change by 11m.

Is it possible to get someone else to attempt to bottle feed her with you out of the room? She might take the bottle more easily if there is not a boob in sight? Once she is on the bottle you can ask your DH to do feeds. If he doesn't up his game then do the leave him for the weekend plan.

Alternatively do you have any friends or family nearby who could let you come round on Saturday or Sunday mornings to catch up on some sleep while baby is left with your DH?

Bear in mind that if you leave him out to dry then he may well just rope in his or your mum to do the childcare and your cunning plan will fail. Would they support you if you asked them to make sure they were unavailable so he HAS to look after her himself?

Huge, huge sympathies. I have been there - DS woke every hour all night every night from 4mths-11mths (and not much better thereafter) and I am a single parent. That level of sleep deprivation is unbearable.

As far as wanting/needing to do this to make DP do his share, YADNBU. But I'm sorry, I don't honestly think it's fair on DD. Partly for the ebf thing, partly because 9mo sounds v v likely to be separation anxiety age and however much she adores him, you are her primary attachment. I agree with the pp who said 11mo and 9mo are v different, I would say hang in there (+ push for as much support as possible in meantime) and try going away in a couple of months instead, when it will likely be less stressful for all of you.