DD is 9 months old and I have absolutely hit breaking point with her.
For a bit of background; she's never been a great sleeper. She either feeds to sleep, or is rocked to sleep. She is breastfed, up until her last feed around 10pm ish. Then (because I am unwell) dh does the 1am/2am feed, 3am/4am feed, and then she comes into bed with us (unfortunately!) until 6am/7am at the latest, where I then feed her.
During the day, she'll only really nap on us, once she's been fed or rocked to sleep. She will sleep in the pram, eventually, but wakes up as soon as the pram stops moving. Same with the car.
This has always worked for us, as we've tried putting her down etc etc many times and it just doesn't work.
We moved house recently and she was ok to begin with, but the last week or so has been an absolute nightmare. Usually at night she niggles for a feed and it slowly escalates. The last few days, she has gone straight into a blood curling scream. She holds her breath and then screams and screams and screams. She's inconsolable. This can go on for a good 45 minutes or so. Then se refuses the bottle and wants to be breastfeed. She then falls asleep, but wakes up pretty soon after as she's still hungry, I assume because I don't have any milk at that time of night as I've never fed her during the middle of the night before.
The nights are just a nightmare. I can't even articulate how loud and angrily she screams, until it then turns into very distressed sobs and she can't breathe as she's so worked up.
Today, when she needed a nap, she screamed and sobbed for 1 hour and 10 minutes. There was literally nothing I could do to console her. Not her teddy, feeding, rocking in my arms, rocking in the pram, lying in the cot holding hands, in the cot with me outside the room, lying on the bed together cuddled up....nothing worked.
I'm just at breaking point. I feel so ill, I just can't cope with 2-3 hours sleep a night. I just can't. And now she's getting like it in the day too, what to I do?!
The house we've just moved into is rented, and the person who lives next doesn't leave the house (has carers come twice a day etc), so she must hear ALL of this. The walls are so thin we can clearly hear her talking to visitors etc, so she must hear this as DD is so loud when she screams me and dh can't hear each other. So apart from when I'm out of the house, this poor woman doesn't have a break from DD's screaming. She screams over everything; nappy changes, wiping hands after food, cleaning her teeth, telling her no etc so next door must be so fed up. I'm worried their going to complain to our letting agents and then our tenancy won't be renewed in 6 months :( but that's another problem.
What can I do, if anything, about her sleep? I've tried everything; rocking or feeding to sleep, putting down on her own and having my hand on her reassuring her and gently retreating, going in the pram.. what else can I do?! And how can I stop the absolute hysterics during the night? :( it goes on for hours in total :( :(