No one understands

[bluebellaa]

I'm really not expecting anyone on MN to understand, I just really need to vent and I've pretty much lost most of my friends.

DD is 10 months old and has never, ever once slept longer than 3 hours at night. 3 hours is actually only applicable to when she was a newborn, now it's 1.5 - 2 hours max. Subsequently I have literally not had more than 3 hours of unbroken sleep since before she was born, and often times I'm roused up to 10 times a night. I refuse to sleep train for multiple reasons, including personal experience, it being inappropriate for DD's temperament, and the fact that I'm aware a lot of her nightly disturbance is due to discomfort from gas and reflux (stemming from a habitual poor latch that I can do absolutely nothing about at this age).

DD is also (E)BF alongside solids. She has multiple allergies that I therefore also have to avoid, which have caused symptomatic deficiencies and I have lost a lot of weight from pre-pregnancy. I used to be an amateur bodybuilder and I am now very skinny and saggy. Again for multiple personal reasons that I won't go into here, formula is not an option and neither is weaning off of BF at this stage.

DP works very long hours multiple times a week and has educational commitments alongside working, thus he doesn't spend anywhere near as much time with DD as I do. DD therefore has developed very strong separation anxiety from me and only being consoled by me. Hearing her screaming like someone has broken her leg because she only wants me and trying to ignore the instinct to be with her ruins my mental health.

PIL are around but, to be honest, I don't trust them. I have witnessed how they treat our nieces away from their mum; the way they have been with DD at times (purposely trying to scare her and make her cry at 5 months old); having no concept of how to safely offer solid foods (giving blueberries whole without squashing them); putting DD in her car seat in a pram suit... I could go on. Frankly I do not feel at all comfortable leaving DD with them when I'm due to go back to work, and they are our only option in the way of childcare.

Our future is (and has been since before DD) been banking on the success of an 'entrepreneurial venture' should we say. With the changes to the economy in the last year, failure to realise the plans I've been working on for the past 3 years now will mean we will be forced to sell our house.

As a result I spend every opportunity (DD's naps, some time when she goes to bed, and whenever DP is around to look after her) working towards this goal. I do nothing for myself because I am putting every ounce of energy into this project for the sake of our future. I don't even see friends, hence why I'm posting here rather than messaging them.

The pressure is gigantic, and the combination of it all is causing me to start to crack. I am terrified that I will let my family and myself down. I am equally upset that I am watching time slip away from me and am not finding myself able to be present and enjoy watching my daughter grow up.

I'm not going to give up, on any of it, but tonight after fighting an overtired 10 month old to get to sleep and DP being away, I really needed to let it out to help me straighten my thoughts.

Appreciate if you've read the whole way through, thank you. X

@Cupcakesnake sleep training doesn't work on allergy children with reflux and it's cruel to try. It made everything worse when I tried it. Please trust the OP to understand her own child's needs. She needs emotional support not solitons. There is no solution but time and the right medical backup

If you don't want advice why put this in a forum? A diary would make more sense

If you have problems make changes, only you can do that

are you cosleeping?

Mine, rather than hers. Calcium is the biggest one, which has been causing me some palpitations and muscle cramps. I have notified the GP but they said to try some OTC calcium supplements and go back if the symptoms don't resolve.

Sorry I don’t mean to be harsh but the reason nobody understands you is because you’re basically causing these problems yourself. Are you trying to punish yourself for some reason? Do you actually enjoy not sleeping and avoiding food?

Ill let you into a secret. If you decide tomorrow to put your baby on the bottle and start gentle sleep training then possibly by this time next week or the week after all of these problems will have gone away and you won’t need your dangerous blueberry loving in-laws to help you out.

Your baby will also be much happier having finally had the chance to get a decent rest at night and will sense that you are happier and healthier which in turn will make your baby even happier.

Solidarity. Sleep deprivation is the pits. I EBF and refused to sleep train too. Co-sleeping saved me -I put a double mattress on the floor, baby-proofed everything in the room and had a baby gate on, and I went to bed at 7pm every night with the baby. He finally slept through at 3.5yo, a couple of weeks before I gave birth to his (thankfully much easier) little sister. It gets better, eventually. Hang in there.

Oh and one of my children had massive reflux issues and sleep training did work, and you can also get special formula for allergies. There really is no excuse for not trying these things, other than some form of weird punishment because what you’re doing isn’t good for you or your baby!

Hi OP

I understand you don’t want any advice - fair enough but by the sounds of it, you are, and have been struggling for a while. This rant won’t be the end of your issues and I feel like something has to change for you and your situation as it can’t continue this way. Running on little sleep for starters is a form of torture. Our bodies are not equipped to run this way!!

I’m not not going to suggest any solutions, but I feel like you need to take a look at your current options and see what you can do. Something has to change.

@Turquoiz I can’t believe you went to bed at 7pm with your baby until 3.5 years 😳 I must be living on another planet because that just sounds like utter madness to me! I’ve never heard the like.

This sounds so tough. With all kindness and respect I think you are too tired to think of a way (that suits you) out of this situation. I am sure you have considered all the options but could you pump and get DP to feed in the night, or just stop feeding in the night and then DP can get her back to sleep? You will feel so different after a few nights unbroken sleep and there is no reason why you can’t get it at Dd’s age. Try everything you can to build the relationship between DP and DD in the daytime? You don’t have to listen to her cry if you go for a walk or out somewhere. DP can always call if she is really inconsolable?
There are other things you could change without sleep training by leaving her - for example try a mattress on the floor in her room but only talk to her when she wakes, don't pick her up? There are sleep books which suggest solutions which aren’t just leaving her to cry. We completely changed our routine with DD at 10 months and she started waking once instead of 4 times.
With all this going on you can’t also shoulder all the financial pressure. If DP works long hours could you be better off in a house affordable on his salary?
If your daughter was in this situation when she is older, what would you advise her? Surely not to run herself completely into the ground?

You're right, I should really try to spend a bit of time every day just slowing things down. The closest I get to that is offering to go to the shop when DP wants something so I can have a drive with some loud music that gets me back in a better mindset/forget all responsibilities for a few minutes.

FIL explicitly said to MIL in front of me, "shall I try and make her cry?". MIL laughed and said in a jolly voice "ah no, that would be cruel". FIL did it anyway, successfully, and then they were both laughing while DD was in MIL's arms, crying.

If they're like that then why not nursery/childminder? Why are they the only option?

Most of the problems you have described are not unusual, and plenty of us understand. There are
solutions available. However as you have set out in your op, none of these will be possible, for reasons your refuse to explain .

In this case all we can say is “oh, that’s very difficult, it will get easier”.

Yep, we do co-sleep currently. She was originally in a next to me when she was younger, then I pulled her into bed with me before she was 6 months because I was struggling to stay awake sitting up long enough for her to feed and be in deep enough sleep to be put down again without waking, and it got to the point where it was dangerous.

Then when she got to around 6.5 months, we put her in her own room. It made no difference to the number of wakes except then I was just having to get out of bed and walk to another room. Some nights I ended up sleeping on the floor from around 3am onwards. So after a few weeks I just brought her back in because although being roused multiple times a night is exhausting, it still didn't compare to fully waking up every time. We have attempted it for a couple of nights again here and there, but I can't hack it for longer than that so it always comes back to co-sleeping.

Totally get it - ds2 is 2.5 and I’m not exaggerating when I say he’s JUST (this month) started sleeping in stretches longer than 2.5/3 hours.
he’s been in full time nursery since 9 months old (due to not trusting my dm with him even though she would have offered childcare) meaning I’ve been back at ft work since then too - accompanied by the wake ups and bottle refusal. Yes we get it. No we didn’t sleep train. Yes it’s hard. You get on with it and then it passes.

In some ways you're right, but I moreso gave the additional information to try and save people the time of making suggestions that we've already tried, not because I'm just resistant to trying.

Granted a night nanny is not something we've tried, but I would have no idea where to even begin to look for someone and/or whether it's something we could afford at this point, as I'm now on three months of unpaid maternity leave?

@YukoandHiro my child had terrible reflux - horrendous in fact. And there are ways to manage allergies. Gentle sleep training worked for us and I'd highly recommend it to struggling sleep deprived parents. However, I also offered the OP my sympathy, which I think she is looking for more than advice.

Could DP take some annual leave and take on the nights for a week?

As I've said, I'm not willing to disclose the reasons for wanting to continue breastfeeding. But they go way, way beyond just because you're told "breast is best" (and are in fact quite unrelated to that). It has nothing to do with martyrdom.

Between birth and 17 months, dd1 slept through the night twice. All other nights she slept for periods of about 5 hours (fantastic) or 45 mins (regularly). I went back to work when she was 8 months and frequently hallucinated from tiredness. I was absolutely against sleep training but did manage to get her to carry on sleeping when I put her in her cot when was was over 1. It took a few weeks. She suddenly started sleeping between 7 and 7 when she was 17 months old. No reason, nothing different. It was amazing.

It's not healthy. That little sleep is dangerous for you. Do you drive? You'll be doing it badly. Possibly dangerously. Work? Badly. Your immune system will be shot, you'll have no patience. It's not sustainable.

This sounds so tough @bluebellaa. Im just out of the other side from where you are now. My 19mo was a terrible sleeper for a long time but has amazingly just started sleeping through. Sleep did improve after 12 months though with only 1-2 wakes per night. In your shoes I wouldn't be introducing formula either. I would recommend that you look at this lady....www.careitout.com/. She is a London based sleep consultant who is anti sleep training. She has a few online courses and phone call sessions that wouldn't break the bank. Even worth just having a look at her social media posts to get an idea of her attitude towards babies/sleep. There is another one called littlenest.uk/ who has a similar outlook. Hope this helps 😀

I'm not quite that bonkers - I phrased it badly 😬 I did the early bedtimes until about 18mo out of necessity as he just wouldn't sleep without me. After that it gradually got better so I got my evenings back but he still woke a few times a night until he was 3, though I stopped co-sleeping with him when I was pregnant with his sister.

Sleep train in a gentle way.

That sounds like hell OP. My kids also used to wake up every 3 hours and one of them has only just slacked off this pattern. They were ebf for various reasons and we were not near any family. With my first, a late-identified tongue-tie bub too, was also in a bit of a state and hadn’t quite grasped that the first rule of baby survival which is that your sleep must be prioritised for the health and happiness of you both. Unless you do this, you will be come very unwell, and you may not even realise that it is happening, please trust me on this, and that is no good for your baby. So something has to give here - the times that your baby is sleeping, please take at least 3 of those stints in your day/night to sleep yourself. while your entrepreneurial plan is obviously very important to you, it cannot come before the more immediate and vital goal of keeping both yourself, and the child you chose to create, healthy. In the long term it will be pointless and untenable if you have driven yourself into the ground.
Co-sleeping saved my sanity but it’s not for everyone. at 10 months, you can absolutely hire some nice experienced person at least to take your baby for walk for a couple of hours, that will not do your bub any harm, even if there is crying, and to be in your house ( or indeed a bus stop or anywhere else) without them for a couple of hours can do you so much good. if you start getting some kip it will be easier to think about everything else. Very good luck OP.

My youngest was like this. I didn't think it would ever end. Randomly 1 week before she turned one she started sleeping through. Did fir about 6 months. Now wakes 1-2 times a night but just wants tucking in. She's nearly 2.