Struggling with being a mum

[PollysPocket1]

My LG is 5mo and I am struggling with lots of aspects of being a mum. Her awake windows are now up to 2.5 hours and she needs my attention all the time and I struggle to find things to do. We go for walks and lots of baby groups but the days feel endless.
She's also going through a really fussy stage, like she wants to be held a lot and whinges a lot. I get frustrated because I don't know what she wants and she gets frustrated because she can't tell me!
I end up feeling like the worst mother in the world when I'm touched out and frustrated and she's smiling at me and I can't muster anything to smile back.
Don't get me wrong, we play and cuddle and laugh a lot but these hard times are coming more often and all I see ahead of me is more hard times.
DO is fantastic but has been working a lot more recently to help pay off some debts we have so has been around a lot less.
Night times are hard too. Sometimes she just fussed for no reason. I hen she spits her dummy out for the 10th time I can feel my body reacting in anger and I don't want to feel like this. I just feel like the worst mum ever. I should be more empathetic to her needs.

I don't know what I want from this post and I hope I don't get any horrible comments because I feel quite fragile right now. Think I just need to get the words out of my head

Aw OP. You're not a bad mum at all. I agree with PP - months 4,5,6 are shit lol. Once they start properly sitting up and exploring stuff with their hands they are a million times easier. Don't worry about entertaining them the whole time they're awake it's not necessary. Focus on having st least 15 minutes each wake window where you are 100% focused on engaging/interacting and anything above that count as a bonus. Also google 'things to do with 5 month old' 'games to play with 5 month old' '5 month old skills to develop' etc etc or look at parenting accounts on Instagram for inspiration. I used to do that all the time to get ideas on how to fill the next hour lol. Some ideas were great, some didn't work, all helped pass the time.

It is all normal but that's not to take away from your experience. I found mindfulness really helped. I learnt that I was focusing on the bad. So it seemed like it was alway bad because that's how I felt. Be focusing on and enjoying the nice times and viewing the tough times as individual experiences rather than something ' she always does' it felt a lot easier tho nothing has physically changed.

Today has been a difficult one. Getting us ready to visit my mum who lives an hour away and DD just shouts as soon as I put her down, when I pick her up she's pulling at my hair and clothes. When I try and bf she does an obligatory tug away for 5 minutes with my nipple still in her mouth, until she decides to eat and then when she bites and I look down she has the biggest smile on her face. I ended up just putting everything down at one point this morning and crying with her because what else can I do. Keep telling myself things will get easier when she's mobile like everyone has said 😭

Hopefully she’ll have a nice sleep in the car and you can enjoy some peace and a sit down for an hour... get yourself a drive thru coffee and stick a playlist or podcast or audiobook on, whatever makes your soul sing, and look forward to a helping hand when you get to your mums xx

You're putting in so much effort and you're doing so well. Reward yourself and give yourself a break. I was terrible at this. Can someone look after her for a couple of hours? So you can watch a movie, meet a friend, go out to dinner. Even if you can't can you pop her in the carrier and get yourself a cake? Maybe do this after every rough night xxx use her naps to take a break - just chill with tv and something nice to eat/drink xxx

Zombie thread! But @PollysPocket1 how are you doing?