Is it normal to get frustrated with your baby?

[EeeyMacarena]

Hi all. DD is almost a year old and a gorgeous, happy, smiley girl. However, her previously good sleeping has taken a nosedive and I’ve found myself getting more and more frustrated with her

Normally, she will be asleep by 7/7:30pm and will sleep until 6:30/7am. However, for the past couple of weeks we’ve been lucky to get her asleep before 11pm. That or she’ll fall asleep at 7pm but then will wake up screaming 5/6 times in the night.

Friday night/Saturday morning, she didn’t fall asleep until 2am and then was up for the day at 6:30am. Thankfully it was a weekend so we got to nap when she did later on in the day, but I’m at uni during the week and partner works full time, so if she decides to have a late night party during the week we’re like zombies the next day!

On particularly bad nights I’ve found myself getting really really frustrated with her, to the point where I’ve had to put her down in her cot and walk away, or I’ve had to give her to my partner, otherwise I was scared of what I might do. Afterwards though I feel SO guilty and like an awful mum. I love DD to bits and she’s still a very happy, smiley girl in the day. When she sits there and smiles and claps at me I feel like the biggest piece of crap for feeling getting so angry with her

I know this bad sleeping is likely just a phase (she has just started walking, which may explain it), but I’m finding it really tough right now

Completely normal

Yep. You're a human being. We all get frustrated, and sleep nonsense is one of the worst triggers for me when it comes to getting frustrated and short-tempered.

Yup I felt the same with both my ds's. Ds2 wasn't a particularly bad sleeper, just screamed constantly for an entire year. I used to get so frustrated I would cry. Sometimes I felt like I was losing my mind. I really didn't like him very much, but I also had pretty bad pnd which I didn't realise at the time. Well I was too scared to admit it.
Ds1 wasn't a great sleeper and I used to get really frustrated with him too. I remember one night screaming into a pillow in the next room.
Its ok to take yourself away from the situation, it's the best thing to do. As long as they are safe. I really wish I had a good set of headphones when they were younger, so I could have sat and comforted them but didn't have to listen to the crying. I think that would have helped. I can cope with lack of sleep, but the screaming sets my nerves on edge. Think if I had something to block that noise out, it would have made a big difference.

Absolutely normal. You’d want to murder anyone torturing you via sleep deprivation, and babies, however adored and winsome, are fiends.

My non-sleeping baby is now a lively seven year old who said to me a few weeks ago, after I’d told some funny story about something gross he’d done when tiny, ‘You know, I feel very sorry for you, Mummy, when I was a monster baby.’