I can't do it anymore

[Albamahanna]

I can't do this anymore
I have been lying next to my 5month old for two and a half hours trying to get him to sleep. I feel like I'm having a break down.
He has never slept longer than two hours so we have been trying to help him get to sleep without feeding for the past month and it's not working.
I try to follow a nap schedule in the day but I have a toddler so this doesn't always go to plan
I am so miserable. I feel like my relationship is over because we never see each other as we take it in turns to sleep with baby. I have never been so unhappy.
I'm a shit parent as I'm not even that tired it's just that I can't cope with this.
Most people are horrified by how much he wakes, but others tell me there child was the same until they were four or five. I cannot do this for another four years. I don't know if I can even do it for another four days.
I am absolutely miserable and I can't do this any more. I miss feeling happy and not dreading every single night
Don't know why I'm writing this but it's pointless telling my partner as he doesn't get it so I guess I'm writing to vent while I cry next to my baby who is now asleep on me but only because I ended up giving him another bottle and holding him to sleep thus making sure he will cry for me again when he wakes in less than two hours time
I just can't do this anymore

You need to speak to your midwife for advice and to tell her how you are feeling, esp if you are unable to talk to your partner x

It will get better, and you aren’t a shit mum. But you do need a break. Is there anyone who can help you out? A relative or a friend who could take your baby for a couple of hours during the day so you can get some sleep? Everything seems so much worse when you are sleep deprived. The nights may continue to be awful, but if you can get some catch up sleep in the day it makes it all so much more bearable. X

Where are you based op?

I suffer from insomnia so I can't sleep or nap. When the baby wakes me up I can't get back to sleep, and I have never been able to nap during the day. This is why my partner helps so much when he is home but it means I never see him and that only makes me miserable. I thought it would be better by now but baby is still waking so much. I have family nearby who can help in the day. This is why I am a failure because I have support around me but I still can't cope. I am sure others could cope.
I have no faith in health visitors I don't know what they would suggest.
I don't think I will feel better until baby can sleep for longer chunks but I don't know how to make that happen and I really don't know how to cope anymore. I've tried soo hard to be patient and laid back about it but it's just repressed how I'm really feeling.
I am based in the UK

It's fucking torture having a non sleeper. Please try and go easy on yourself, you are not a shit parent, you are tired and tiredness makes everything so hard. I've no good advice (had a non-sleeper & a good sleeper despite doing everything the same) but hopefully someone else will.

Bring him into your bed. Cosleeping is absolutely fine, and I bet you both sleep better. Curl into a C shape around him, protect8ng him from being rolled onto. This was a breakthrough for me and my 6mo. Mind you, he's now 6 and still climbs in with me and DH in the middle of the night...

I'm always raving on here about amitriptyline... went on it after the birth of my son for six months because of pnd and then on it again after the birth of my daughter for six months.
It honestly saved my life because like you I had bad sleepers but the real problem was that i could not go back to sleep once awakened by my baby. I would just get more and more anxious about all the sleep i was not getting.
My husband would take the baby overnight but that didnt even help because i would wake up at the cries before he did even if i was in a different room because i was so tense about the whole thing!
I got put on 10mg of amitriptyline and it really really helped, it didnt knock me out but it kept me drowsy through the night so that I'd just drop back off to sleep in between feeding the baby. I wasnt just lying there in the dark freaking out about how awful everything was...
When my babies sleep began to improve dramatically after six months i came off them.

It's worth considering talking to your gp about that.... for me it was certainly anxiety about the whole lack of sleep which made the situation unbearable.

I hope things improve for you soon.

If he needs to feed to sleep then so be it, if it works then why stop doing it? Don't be too hard on yourself. Can you follow baby's cues rather than a sleep schedule, I found my second child's routine completly different to what my firsts was like.

I co slept for the first six weeks of baby's life and I did not sleep at all. I followed all the guidelines but it isn't something I feel safe with and it made my insomnia worse.

I have no problem with baby feeding to sleep but I have a problem with him waking at least every two hours so I was trying to help him learn how to get to sleep initially without being fed. I had hoped this would stop him waking for feeds throughout the night but it hasn't worked and now I am at my wits end as I can't manage the number of wakings. Even when my partner is dealing with baby so I can sleep I am struggling because I never see my partner and I feel so lonely and like our relationship is falling apart. I just want to know when this will end but no one can tell me that

I always feel scared off commenting when I read threads like yours OP, but I think it might be time for you to start thinking about sleep training, specifically controlled crying. I know it's miserable and I know no one wants to do it but I'm genuinely concerned you're not coping (as I wouldn't in your circumstances - sleep affects my mental health dreadfully) and there comes a point when the balance of needs begins to shift from what your baby wants, to what you need.

It's generally not recommended before 6 months and you may not feel you're there yet anyway but sometimes I read these threads and feel like the OP just needs someone to say: *it's ok for you to have needs too.
*
At a certain point the sleep deprivation isn't sustainable and millions of babies have been sleep trained and come out the other side perfectly well adjusted (myself included).

Maybe this isn't what you want to do but please know that at least one person or there wouldn't blame you a jot

I was like you with my DD2, tried cosleeping but it became very obvious I wouldn't sleep a wink with her beside me, I was so on edge (not that she liked it much either...)

However. Now she's 6mo I tried it again in desperation, I think I put her on the bed to go to the loo after hours of rocking and came back to find her asleep, then just lay down beside her...and it worked. She slept for 3 5 hours and so did I, maybe because she's bigger, louder and less fragile now? Maybe because I'm 6 months more knackered? Anyway, when she doesn't go back down now I pop her in with me. DH still in the spare room but it's an improvement! Just sharing in case you think it's worth having another go now she's that bit older. Good luck, I know how tough it is.

3.5 hours not 35, jesus, I wish!

Thank you cautiously but I don't even have the stomach to sleep train properly, that's how useless I am. I would just end up giving in. Trying to help the baby settle with us next to him has been bad enough for me, I start to doubt I'm doing the right thing and then tonight I gave in.

I could try co sleeping again but in all honesty I don't want to. The relentless of looking after a clingy toddler and a newborn in the day is so draining so during the night I just want my own space to toss and turn and read. It makes me a terrible parent because I shouldn't need so much my space to function, other parents cope but I can't.

I don't think there is an answer but I can't manage like this. My partner is working away most of next week and I don't know how I'm going to get through it

Oh OP, please hang in there. As others have said, speak to your health visitor about how you are feeling. My DS went through a terrible phase at 5 months but once he started on solids at 6 months he slept for much longer chunks.

It may feel like this will be your life forever but it will pass and you will survive this!

You are certainly not a bad mother. Try to be kind to yourself. You are doing an amazing job

You sound like me 4 years ago.
I literally couldn’t take it anymore so I decided to try the Ferber method. It took around 3-4 days tops to get dd to settle on her own and not cry.
It was awful for me to begin with. I also warned my neighbors and my other dc it will be difficult few days ahead with her crying. But I mentally prepared myself because it was this or have a nervous breakdown.
My situation was a little different also as I have a severely disabled child and I’m constantly tired anyway.
Once she realised How to self settle. I would give her bottle (or you can breast feed ) and put her down stroke her hair for a few minutes and leave. It was the best decision I ever made.
Do you have anyone who can come to stay with you while your husband is away ? Just to give you a break.

Is he hungry?
Is he breastfeed?
Can he sleep in a cot next to your bed?

We feed him when he wakes up during the night. He drinks a whole bottle almost every time. So some nights he is having 6 or 7 full bottles of milk. He has a bottle every 3 hours during the day, and I have started weaning him so he is having solids twice a day. He sleeps in a crib next to my bed.

If I was to sleep train I don't know what I would do about feeding him in the night? I wouldn't want to cut out all feeds as I don't know if he would manage when he is used to drinking so much. But if I feed him sometimes isn't that giving him mixed messages?

It's not useless OP, it's being a mother - listening to them cry is dreadful and no one wants to do it, so I completely understand if it's not for you.

I suppose I'd just say if you do ever change your mind it'll be dreadful for one night, sort of grim for one more, and then basically fine by the third, so you really don't have to be strong for very long.

What it isn't is mandatory: it's just an option and sometimes just knowing there's one option we can take if we have to is enough to make what we're going through bearable. Keep it in reserve, but in the meantime be kind to yourself - you're in something hellish right now and you need all the kindness you can get.

I'd also say see if you can get even one night's respite, or 4+ hours? I know it's not a long term solution but the tiredness can make it impossible to think straight and then you can't come up with a plan for how to cope going forward. You need some proper restorative sleep to be able to see the wood for the trees.

In answer to your other question, you work on one feed at a time. Either try resettling without a feed or, more likely for you, reduce the amount of milk in the first feed gradually over the course of a week or so. Feed as normal all the other times. The idea is he adjusts and starts getting his calories at other times of day, but without the transition being too sudden. Then if you and he are both happy with the amount of sleep you're getting you can carry on feeding at every wake if you want. Otherwise you start reducing the amount of milk at the next feed, and so on.

You could also controlled cry for the first feed, but then feed as normal for the others. This would for sure be a more stressful way of doing it, for both of you, but at 5 months he would be ok to adjust and get his calories at another time of day.

But basically you need to get one decent stretch of sleep so you can think straight to decide what you want to do and how you want to do it - whatever method you use is likely to require some determination and energy to start with.

How are you getting on tonight Albama? I hope you're asleep and not seeing my message

Vital thing which hasn't been mentioned :does he have a dummy?

Also, have you tried increasing the amount per feed? 5 months is still fairly young and not really expected to sleep though, but to be waking that often sounds a bit extreme tbh

I suppose I'd just say if you do ever change your mind it'll be dreadful for one night, sort of grim for one more, and then basically fine by the third, so you really don't have to be strong for very long.

^^

This is sleep training.

And to answer : if I was to sleep train I don't know what I would do about feeding him in the night?

Well, you start small. Feed him ideally at say 10pm (when you go to bed) then get him to sleep till say 2am, then hopefully he'd sleep till 7am. Then you'd only be up once (or twice, if you used to go to bed at 7pm like I did as I was so fucking knackered!)

It's hard but honestly it gets easier. I know this doesn't help you whatsoever, but please at least know everyone has been there and survived.

It makes me a terrible parent because I shouldn't need so much my space to function, other parents cope but I can't.

This really stuck out for me because I often feel like this too. The relentless positivity about cosleeping on MN makes me feel so shit, like I must be a broken, defective mum because no I can't 'just cosleep and so you barely notice you've woken up!'. Like you I don't sleep at all with DS in the bed and I hate it to an extent that makes me resent him. I sometimes wish I could be different and less selfish - I sometimes think DS deserves one of those natural, cheery mums who 'just relishes the cuddles - they grow up so fast!', but, hey, he got me and I'm afraid that's who he's stuck with. I'm doing my best, and so are you.

He's a bit older (9 months) but we're doing some gentle sleep training at the moment and it's going so much better than I'd anticipated. I'm also trying to work on a) thinking about what I think I do well as a mum, rather than relentlessly beating myself up about what I think I'm bad at and b) remembering that these are all really small things in the grand scheme of things - and I don't mean that in a 'aw they're not little for long, hun, why not just accept having a total mental breakdown in the meantime?' way, but in a 'I am not going to fundamentally break him by not doing everything exactly the way some attachment parenting blog claims I should be'

^ this is superb advice.

Sorry OP I have no advice, things are shit here too, but I read this 5 times then cried about how much better it made me feel about myself and I hope it helps you too

Sometimes I want to punch the people who say how fast the time goes and how fondly i’ll remember it this period when it’s over. I’m not forgetting how shit pregnancy and labour were either

I could have written this post myself. I know exactly what you’re going through and it won’t help you to kkkw I have a 15 month old still not sleeping properly and I don’t have the resolve to sleep train. I need to though so I’ll be following this post with interest.
Just know you can’t possibly be a shit mum because you care, you’re not alone in this at all and there will be an end to it, it might be awful in the mean time. I’m off to research some gentle sleep training techniques now!