Hi all, I'm posting this in sleep support but it's only loosely sleep related really, but wasn't sure where else to post. I am mum to a 5 month old baby girl, our first child.
I'm really struggling at the moment, feel like she's gone right back to newborn stage in terms of challenge. Sleep-wise she used to sleep through but now wakes 2-3 times a night, I'm not so bothered about this as generally she just has a feed and goes back to sleep but bedtimes are a huge battle. Doesn't matter what time I start really, she fights it and fights it, takes me up to two hours to get her down. After her bath she messed around with her feed (shes's breastfed) and gets cranky when I won't play with her. When she FINALLY settles down for a feed she gets put down and then wakes every 10-20 mins for about another hour before finally going to sleep. Tears at every bedtime.
She's never been great at napping but in the early days I used to let her sleep on me or in a sling now she's not great at that. The only way I can get her to do it really is to lie down with her and side-along feed to sleep, but even that doesn't last long and she always wakes up if I leave her.
Really hating breastfeeding at the moment, night feeds are fine but in the day it's an effort to get her to feed, she wants to have little laps of milk then pull off and look around, she'll keep doing this until she's really cranky from hunger. Could possibly be teething related as she's going through this at the moment. In public especially is difficult as it's hard to be discrete, we were out at a restaurant the other day and it took me a good half an hour to get her to have a proper feed and she was getting more and more cranky.
And she's the world's clingiest baby! 5 months so should be out of the 'third trimester' but before I'd be able to put her on a playmat for short periods but now she wants to be on me all the time. Putting her on the floor is a big no-no. She quite likes bouncers (she had a jumperoo) but I absolutely cannot leave the room or she will go crazy. She's decided to wake up for the day around 6.30-7 now so before I'd be able to express milk, shower before she woke but not possible now. I never wanted to be a parent that left their baby to cry but if I want to shower or go to the toilet ever I have no choice. So whenever I need to do these things or make a sandwich it's to the sound of a crying baby.
I'm going completely mad, I love her to bits but feel like a crap mum as sometimes I just need to walk off for 5 mins and I can always hear her crying when I do! My DH has offered to sign her up for nursery once a week which is lovely of him, and I use the gym a couple of times a week for an hour or so and she seems quite happy in the creche from what the staff have told me. Worried it will just be complicated though as I'll have to provide expressed BM and I'm not sure how she'd take being away from me for a whole day. Plus the expense. AAAARGH!