To find husband's comments upsetting?

[Goldfishshoals]

Our baby is four months old. I'm really struggling with her, she makes 'unhappy' noises a lot - it's not so bad on days when she naps, but some days she just can't seem to sleep and then the unhappiness is constant, and no amount of distraction/playing/singing/holding/sling walking/etc seems to do anything.

I end the day exhausted and feeling pretty crap about myself.

At lunchtime today I commented to my husband that the baby hadn't napped at all this morning and I was probably in for a difficult afternoon - his response was to say 'Well she can't sleep all the time and it will only get worse as she gets older'. This isn't the first time he's said something like this, and he often likes to tell me that when she becomes a toddler she will be more difficult/demanding etc.

I like to believe that I will cope better with an older child, and that I'll find then easier to communicate and play with - but even if he's right and it's just all shit from here on out, why keep telling me? What does it help? It's not like I can decide I'm a crap mum and give the baby back or something!

Some people really seem to love telling you it just gets harder. My experience has definitely been the opposite. I think sometimes people forget what it is really like in those early days, or maybe they just had it really easy and so it did get harder for them.

I honestly have friends with primary school age children who dress themselves, feed themselves, can be trusted to walk safely on the pavement without running away / having to be carried, go to the loo by themselves, sleep through every single night, will sit and do an activity or watch TV by themselves for easily an hour and spend some amount of time not being looked after by their parents (at school, round at friends house etc). Those parents will still happily tell me it only gets harder. Really?! Because you've sat here for the last half hour drinking tea in peace while telling me that ...

Clearly everyone is different and perhaps I will be proved wrong but I do think it's easy to underestimate / forget just how gruelling the constant being needed is. I'm quite sure there are many and varied challenges to come but at least there is every likelihood that you'll be dealing with those challenges on a full nights sleep and regular breaks.