To dread every part of parenting day and night.

[pompomsgalore]

Normally I see the 'I hate parenting' threads and pop on to say 'don't worry it gets better' but I can't talk any sense into myself.

I have a 3 year old and 9 month old and basically dragging myself through everyday and night. Both kids are ill and have been ill with different things for two months now so no sleep. And In fact broken sleep for me for almost 4 years with all the pregnancy sleep crap.

3 year old is a nightmare atm. Like a horrible tyrant who screams and shouts and demands and is rude to people with no filter. She can be the sweetest, funniest and intelligent chatty personality but we are on an awful phase. I've tried love bombing her and I've been very strict and no approach works. She is her own person and nothing I do makes a difference. She will not listen and she will not be tamed or bribed or sanctioned. She doesn't give a fuck about anything.

She goes to preschool 3 times a week and we are upping it to 4 but the more she goes the more tired she is and the more awful her behaviours.

I'm so sick and tired of her and not sleeping. I feel like she's ruining my time with the baby as she dominates everything.

I can't keep the house tidy and washing is never ending. Everywhere I look there's stuff to do and fucking sick of it all. H is excellent day and night so I can't even blame him. But two kids is horrific, like a living hell. Then I feel guilty for saying that and wishing our precious time away. I want these days to be so special but the reality is crap.

Why does anyone go on to have more than two kids?

This is why I stuck at two. You’re in the most difficult stage - for both of them! A three yr old is demanding & wilful & a 9 month-old baby is, well, tough. Add synchronised illness onto that & the fact that you are a SAHM which is the toughest gig going - then it’s no wonder you’re feeling the strain.

You have my sympathies. I was you not so long ago, I know that feeling of getting up in the morning after yet another broken night's sleep & wondering how the hell you're going to make it to the finish line.

I don’t know how you do it, you just do. Be kind to yourself & above all don’t fret about the housework if you can help it. Do the bare minimum necessary. Fuck everything else, lower your domestic standards & focus on sleeping when the kid’s heads hit their pillows - I know you want time to yourself but weigh up what’s most valuable to you right now. Sleep always always took priority over literally everything else for me, bar eating.

The days are long but the years are short. Babies develop very quickly & so do 3yr olds. Hang in there

OP- You have my total sympathy . I found everything about parenting almost unbearable during that stage from my pregnancy with DS2 onwards up till quite recently.

DS1 is now 5 and DS2 nearly 3. It’s getting easier, so much easier but more importantly much more fun, more rewarding. I am still tired of course BUT life feels purposeful and good. I remember the toddler plus baby stage (I had a very similar age gap) and it was utter hell. I became extremely depressed and wasn’t good at seeking help in the right ways or talking about it to DH (I am very lucky to have an excellent DH and it was still difficult). I had one or two unhealthy coping strategies which weren’t good and I am recovering from now.

Hang on in there. Take every opportunity to cut yourself some slack and don’t feel guilty about a thing (particularly about not enjoying this bit!) Don’t worry AT ALL about the TV, as long as they also have other things in their daily life (park, books, crafts etc) then some chill time with the TV won’t make the slightest difference.

Ask friends to take the 3 year old out, to babysit etc even if you just go upstairs to hide and read the papers/ nap. I wish I had told people how much I was struggling and reached out.

Wishing you all the best

I had a 9 month old DS2 and a 3year old DD. DD is a very strong, independent character and could be a horror, especially if tired. She would only wear shorts- or shorts with tights- not trousers, leggings, dresses, pinafores or dungarees. That went on for a year. She wore summer shorts all through the winter with thick tights underneath them- every day.
She went through a phase of only eating Weetabix and bananas.
She threw tantrums- big whopper tantrums.
Woke DH and I (and DS2) up at 4.30am often, standing at the side of the bed singing nursery rhymes loudly.
Her favourite expression was 'No, not doing that'.

She is 4.7 now and at school and like a different child.
It gets better, honestly it does.

Why does anyone go on to have more than two kids?

Have a big gap before the next one. I recommend 8 years. Makes such a difference.

I'm currently sitting next to 10 yr old dd. We are chilling in front of the telly. I used to go to work, often close to tears, cos she was so hard. Then I'd linger at work cos I'd know she'd be a fucking nightmare when I got back. My older one didn't sleep.

I don't regret wishing the early years away. This bit is much nicer.

I think I'm putting some pressure on myself to enjoy this career break because I know when I return I work it will be incredibly full on, stressful and hard to cope with. These are my good times. ☹️

I honestly wouldn’t give how you’ll feel once you go back to work another thought. Concentrate on what will make this day, week and month a little bit more bearable for you. Give it 6 months and your eldest will be older (4 is SO MUCH nicer than 3 in my experience), the post lockdown ‘catch every illness going’ thing should have eased and the baby will probably be sleeping better. I also always found work helped, for the mental break from the kids, the gossip with colleagues and my own identity.

You’ll get there but please please be kind to yourself and be selfish about getting whatever helps you to cope

Its really awful but it does get better. It does get better I promise. xx

@HunkyPunk

Why does anyone go on to have more than two kids?

Have a big gap before the next one. I recommend 8 years. Makes such a difference.

No no no, why go back to the start when you get some freedom back?!

Is your eldest a young 3 or an old 3? DD is 3, will be 4 next month and I am definitely enjoying late 3s more than early ones. She has her moments but is becoming a delightful child.

I also have 6mo twins at home, so I feel you. My heart sinks when I wake up in the morning and I know I have to face it all again, having been woken 10 x overnight. It’s so blooming hard.

My house is kind of clean as I have fortnightly cleavers, and every now and then I’ll do a charity blitz but the preschooler is a mess machine so it’s never tidy. Lots of bits end up in the bin. I’ve told DD if she doesn’t clear up after herself we’ll donate her toys.

At bedtime if DD is tired we put her in pyjamas and let her lay in bed with the iPad whilst we settle the babies. I wouldn’t stress about telly, as long as they have plenty more going on.

DH takes the odd day off so we can do something nice with the family and for DD in her last year before school.

It’s still hard though and I genuinely have days where I feel like I’m losing my mind. I am buoyed up by all the comments from parents of older children saying the primary years are fab!

@TheMagicDeckchair she's 3 and a half and I thought we'd left the worst behind us but she's having a second wind. It's been a shock tbh.

I’m there too Op, toddler 2.5 & baby 3 months. It’s horrific. Totally underestimated this and totally unprepared. Every day is hell on earth. I suffer from anxiety daily that my toddler will go mental & set the baby off or the baby will set my toddler off. I hope it gets better but seems to have gotten worse. Not only that my toddler hits my newborn & throws things at them so I’m always on guard

No advice OP, but sending , sympathy and wine!

Mine are very similar age gap to yours OP and I just wanted to add my voice to those saying "it does get better - much better!" I struggled to truly like my three year old at times, when I had the baby too, but now I think he's just wonderful.

Please don't feel you have to be a SAHM, there's no point if you're not happy. Nobody will be the better off for it. If you can get the right job for you it can make all the difference to the parenting experience - and even better if it pays enough to have a cleaner!

It really honestly will pass. I found the preschool years so hard, I was so tired, and they were so difficult and I had 'good, easy going kids.'

They're 8 & 10 now and honestly, there's nobody I'd rather spend time with, they're fab, and I have my life back! Hang in there, take all the help (and drink all the gin!)

Thank you so much for starting this thread..it feels so good to know I'm not alone. Mine are 10 months and 2 yrs and 10 months. My two year old does 3 days in nursery but my husband also works crazy hours and will soon be on location for 2 months. Life feels so out of control and relentless that I often just feel I am surviving day to day and wishing the time with them away. I don't feel I can do that whole 'enjoy them at this stage because you'll never get these years back' and when people tell me that I want to scream. It's a relief to hear it gets better...here's hoping sometime soon...

I think the problem is that society doesn’t talk about how hard raising little ones is. Before having dc I really believed it couldn’t be that hard (talk about egg on my face) and I’ve had some real tough jobs, I can say that raising children was the hardest for me. I had many times thinking “what the fuck have I done” quickly followed by enormous guilt for even having those thoughts as I love my kids with my entire soul but everything seemed relentless.
So, what you have is a baby and a threenager. You’re eldest may well feel pushed out by your baby. I involved my eldest with her baby sister, she helped and was valued by us and her sister (things like fetching nappies, so she felt her sister was hers too). We praised her a lot for this, made her feel important because she is. When her sister turned three she was something else, tiny red faced tyrant (by then her big sister was much easier). Everything felt like a battle and I felt like a bystander watching my usually clean and tidy house fall to something resembling the local junk yard. Added in to the mix, lack of sleep for all of us (one thing after the other) BUT they’re now 8 & 5 and are such wonderful, caring, intelligent, hilarious human beings. It really does get better, I’m at the point where I wish I’d known it would and enjoyed their younger years. Hang in there, what you do now will shape your future and theirs, believe me looking back it’s flown past so quick whereas where you are now time feels like it’s slowed down.

People could wonder why you had more than one 😂 lots of my friends stuck with one as they didn’t enjoy parenting

When I hear that @TheMagicDeckchair is doing it with twins and @babypounds is doing it with a H working away I honestly don't know how you both do it.

Thanks everyone for all the moral support and words of encouragement. Today is a new day. This thread honestly helped a lot last night and @Shuuu maybe we need a thread for survivors of threenagers. Mine threw herself on the floor yesterday and told me 'I was ruining her whole life'. That actually made me laugh out loud as I've no idea how she even knows to say that.

So I have new day resolutions:

I've given up all hope of getting an ill baby in the cot so she's sleeping in with me which was a l lot better. I've given up on any thought of cleaning the house and will just tidy toys at the end of the day with the girls. I have to put washing on everyday so that's a non negotiable and we have washable nappies but I might rest those after this wash and just use disposables whilst the girls and I are ill.

Main aim is to cry less that yesterday as that used a lot of energy.

Deffo disposables. Co-sleep. Do what is easiest right now.

2y7m between my two (now late primary age).

I went back to work FT after dc2. Felt terribly guilty but I think it was for the best. Lack of sleep shot my tolerance and patience so as much as I wanted to enjoy being at home with them, I just didn’t.

Now my career has flourished and my kids are manageable and life feels easy again.

Hang in there……

Yep, this is why we have 2 kids not 3. It does get easier but not so much we wanted to go back through this stage again.

I have a two and four year old. Lockdowns have been horrific, I cried most days! Don't worry about what work might be like, don't worry about telly, just do what you need to do to get through each day. DH and I would also make sure each other got a complete break out of the house each week, away from the children, even if just a couple of hours which really helped.
Still knackered, as two year old doesn't sleep well, but it's slowly improving. A couple of times recently they've both played in the garden on their own for an hour, while we relax on the sofa - what a revelation, there is light at the end of the tunnel!

Bless you OP, it sounds really hard for you.

I have a 1yo, and a 6yo, so should have it easier than you. But I still find myself feeling like I can’t manage. Baby is awake at 4:15am every single day, for weeks now. Im exhausted. And I’m finding myself thinking “it’s 8pm, I should sleep, but all I want to do is watch something for an hour”. Then it’s 10, and I’m knackered again the next day. 6yo watches tv and baby is glued, like you say, which I’m not happy about. Mountains of washing, literally, as I haven’t been able to catch for over a month.

But we have little snippets each week, where it totally looks like we know what we are doing. Hoping to do handprints of them both for our Christmas cards today. Hopefully those snippets become more regular, but for now, we are in “manage mode”.

Best wishes to you and your family, you aren’t alone in your feelings xxx

I think parenthood would be easier for everyone if we could all just shout from the roof tops about the times when it is shit. Without qualifying it with a but. Without saying this too shall pass.... it is shit.

3 is easier than 2. The older 2 play together. I had small age gaps and it was better. No school runs, only ourselves to please, two little kids playing together plus me plus baby.