To ask what your "mum burnout" looks like?

[PaddleBoardingMomma]

Would really like to hear your opinions on how mum burnout makes you feel and how it manifests for you.

I have a 5 year old and an 8 month old, still up 4-5 times in the night but it's brief (a little bit of milk or her dummy has fallen out) no long nights awake pacing her about the house crying thankfully, so can't really use that as an excuse but...

I'm exhausted. Properly burnt out. I find myself wondering if it's normal, or am I just weak or pathetic or dying 🤦🏼‍♀️ I'm always on edge, more anxious, argumentative, I feel like I'm stuck on a loop 😩

So what about you?

I am literally shuffling through each day trying to balance moaning and being ridiculously positive so everyone doesn't hate me. I have 4 children aged 7 to 14 and a very physical full time retail job. Dh is wfh 3 days a week so doing most pick ups, homework etc while working and falling apart too. At night when I get into bed I cuddle my pillow and tell it I love it!!!

@FTEngineerM

Lol @ sleeping through from 6 weeks.

My burn out looks a lot like ‘get the fuck off me’ ‘what the fuck is wrong with you now’ ‘you can’t possibly need something else’

All in my head of course, not out loud to them, they’re 22m and 6.5m old so still both tiny and still both need A LOT from me but in different ways.

Parenting is littered with shit moments, I wish people from older generations would have shared that nugget of info rather than just keep saying ‘don’t wish it all away’ ‘these are the best years of your life’ ‘you’ll wish they were small again soon’ ‘every minute is so special’

Is it? Every minute? Like when one cries the other is stood on my foot twisting my foot skin as I try and take a poo. Is that enjoyable?

Put the kids in a play pen or in their cot or something. Lock the door when you go to toilet. Not saying that in a sarky way but you deserve to have privacy, it’s a pretty basic human right

@PaddleBoardingMomma a month alone on a island sounds absolute bliss

With both my kids they’ve been bottle refusers so that gave my ex an excellent excuse not to help at night. And for the older child he’d say he hadn’t heard and I might as well help since I was up already.

@PaddleBoardingMomma Thank you. There is definitely strength in solidarity!

Regarding conversations with DH, we didn't really have one as I knew from the off that walking in the night wasn't going to help him. So I have done every night waking bar a handful in 3+ years, even though I'm working 4 or 5 days a week.

I'm depressed and burnt out. But DH is suffering more than I.

It's a hard world sometimes.

Agree with pp: numb to it all. And really, really going for it on nights out.

But interestingly, not as stressed in work. I mind if got to a: 'this is all I can cope with' stage and felt a lot happier.

I also don't put the kids' needs before my own. But they are older.

Really feel for you. I had two non sleepers many years ago and it was just awful. In the end with the second I just realised it wouldn’t kill me and it would end at sometime. This resignation helped a bit. Also the wonderful revenge when they were teenagers of waking THEM up!!

Over touched; over tired; over exhausted. Shouting and loosing the plot at the smallest thing; rage, rage and more rage. Loving my children unconditionally but god I didn't want to be near them! Antidepressants were a game changer, oh and getting more sleep than 3 hours unbroken for 5.5 years!

Only ome baby here.. she's 5 months old but i am destroyed. I feel like all my friends handled this better than me cause everytime i am talking with mums of older children they are saying.. "oh we had that also but it just hoes away..no worries."
Well we didn't catch a break with this baby at all! She either had problems with milk intolerance and didn't sleep because of it then came sleep regression, now we are in the 5th leap and teething! During the day she is soooo active, doesn't sleep more than 30 min and then I have to walk her around in my arms to put her to sleep (which takes 20 min or more).

I am exhausted .. really burnt out and last week i was on the verge of a breakdown because she was whiny the whole day (poor baby is of course in pain).

It is hard...I haven't had a good sleep since many months now and sometimes i break down crying.

PS: Love my baby with all my heart and DH is very supportive and helps a lot but he works during the day and during the night baby calms only at the boob so he is kinda useless 😅

I have 4 girls close together so didn’t sleep through the night for at least 8 years lol, they’re a bit older now (youngest is 6) but I found the burnout came in phases and presented like depression. I’d be irritable both emotionally and physically (not being able to sit still). Everyday tasks became overwhelming and annoying and I’d be very ‘shouty’ about having to do things but then would become irrational when hubby tried to help. I have been known to be found nursing a glass of wine and bawling my eyes out when it’s felt too much. Hubby would bundle the girls into the car on his day off work and take them out for the day, leave me just to reset myself, have a nap/long bath basically just do me for a few hours. Now they’re a bit older the challenges they throw at me aren’t any easier but honestly knowing a good sleep is a given most nights helps massively. Hang in there, the sleepless nights don’t last forever xx

My burnout consisted of ringing in my ears

Four kids (two girls, 9 months and 2 1/2 years and two boys 10 and 11) and I'm currently in bed bfeeding my 9 month old while nursing a high fever which came on yesterday afternoon. I had all four kids on my own all last week for the first time in a month since hubby started a new job (there was a one month gap between the last and the first job) and I am finished! I can't move out of bed. I think it's exhaustion but it feels like a nasty flu. I also took on way too much work (I work for myself) and little one wakes throughout the night to feed. I think my body was like 'nope, you're done. Take a rest'. So that's what I've been doing. But I feel awful. :-(

Mum burnout is real!

Great thread! DD8 slept through from 3months was expecting the same for DS4 months old. Oh hell!! Am up 4-5 times I cried last night . Been dizzy all day today

I had my boys very close together so I don't think I slept properly for about 5 years. My daughter is 4 and still wakes, though thankfully not for long.
For me I just feel constantly tired, but more or less so at different times. Like a constant babbling stream of tiredness that sometimes becomes a raging torrent, and it affects how I get stuff done. Or not, as is sometimes the case.

*If anyone is willing to share how that actual conversation goes id be fascinated to know. In my head it would be:

"Are you ok to do tonight with the baby?"
"No"
"Why not?"
"Because I'm a twat and I don't care if you pass out from exhaustion"*

Not my own personal experience but they normally say either "But I never hear them" (bollocks) or "I have to work tomorrow" (like 10 hours looking after a baby isn't work).

Our burnout (DH does almost as much as me excepting my 2 days off in the week) looks like a vasectomy after one.

The only times I feel burnout are my days off. It gets to 11am and I want to run out the door/go back to bed at the same moment.

Find this post so relatable. I’m just so fed up all the time. I’m wondering if giving up work would make me any happier but not sure if we will manage. It’s so tough.

@ChaosMoon

I stopped feeling anything. At all. I could tell that DD was doing cute stuff, but I had no emotional response to her. I knew, objectively, that I'd lay down my life for her, but I was empty inside.

Also the virus thing. And yes, I was very short tempered. And I went through anxiety and out the other side - like I just had no energy for it any more. I was just an exhausted, broken shell.

You are not weak and you are not pathetic. You are a good mum and a lovely person who has given too much. Please get help before you get to where I was.

What a lovely lady you are xx

@TheMoth

Agree with pp: numb to it all. And really, really going for it on nights out.

But interestingly, not as stressed in work. I mind if got to a: 'this is all I can cope with' stage and felt a lot happier.

I also don't put the kids' needs before my own. But they are older.

@TheMoth

You don’t put your kids needs above your own?!

Shock horror that’s a cardinal sin on mumsnet!

Even when your ‘kids’ are about 45 you’re still expected to prioritise and facilitate their every need, want and whim at the expense of your own

Exhausted physically and mentally. Depressed, clinically. I actually think there's been a couple of episodes over the past ten years of me mothering that I could of been sectioned, genuinely. I keep thinking that by the time it gets easier (when my youngest starts school) my body will give up and ill drop dead as I will be past the point of return. I'm proud daily, however, that I've got this far...

Maybe I'm being thick and I'm sure I'll get attacked for this, but if having one child is so bad, why do people go on to have more? It pretty much ruins your life (health, body, career, relationships). Why do it more than once?

@ColdSeptember

Maybe I'm being thick and I'm sure I'll get attacked for this, but if having one child is so bad, why do people go on to have more? It pretty much ruins your life (health, body, career, relationships). Why do it more than once?

Sometimes people have quite an easy number one and then number two is a screamy non-sleeper who wakes up (and winds up, during the day) child one.

I don't know though, honestly. I definitely understand large age gaps!

I’m an oldish Grandma but remember the half-dead feeling well. I’d just say factor yourself into this equation, be kind to yourself. Drop your standards a bit, as long as the children are fairly clean, fed (beans on toast and an apple is a perfect meal and sometimes chips is OK😁) and most importantly loved, that’s enough! Sleep while the baby sleeps, doesn’t matter a bit if no ironing gets done for several years and the dust is thick. And ask for and take help, if anyone trustworthy offers you a break from your DC bite their hand off. This will pass.

Just wait until you have older children. Every minute busy. Under 5 are the easy years!

@cherish123 I was thinking @ColdSeptember was the biggest bellend on this thread but then you came along with that classic.....

@cherish123

Just wait until you have older children. Every minute busy. Under 5 are the easy years!

Oh god, go away.

"You're miserable and burnt out? Me too, so let me tell you how much shitter it's going to get because misery loves company."

I'm not a bellend. I just don't understand. I get not knowing how awful it will be before you have the first, but after that you do know.