Losing my mind/ fear PPD

[Sunshineeeee]

Hi all,

Guess I just need some encouragement/insight/help..

My baby just turned 6 months and although we had a really difficult time with breastfeeding and lots of ups and downs with my health I've generally felt fine post partum. My son has always been an absolutely terrible sleeper since birth. A good stretch for him is 3 hours. I was able to cope before but the adrenaline wore off around 4 months and I started to feel like I was getting what felt like ppd at random moments. It took 3 months to get my son used to his Moses basket, then he finally got used to it and went through the 4 month sleep regression. He always fights his naps and it can take 2/3 hours to get him down for the night even though he is tired and constantly rubbing his eyes.

Now at 6 months he refuses to go down once asleep. He'll wake flailing his arms around and will wake no matter how deep asleep he is or what time it is. Nothing is helping. I feel like the last 6 months of sleep deprivation have caught up and I just can't do it anymore. During the day (outside of nap times) my son is a very happy baby and everything feels ok but when it comes to napping and the evening I just can't handle life anymore. I've ran out of tears and instead have this deep deep anger and depression. I don't ever see this improving and if anything he's becoming harder and harder. It's 2:40 and I've finally got him down (he woke at 1 for a feed). I'll probably sleep an hour till he's up again. He'll then start the day around 5:30/6am.

I've blacked out his windows. I've burped him. I make sure room temp is good. I have white noise. He has his dummy. I've given pain relief for teething. His nappy is clean.

I attempt to have this as his schedule (he fell into this routine but lately fights it):
Wakes 6am
Naps 8-9ish (sometimes sooner, ill try and lay with him to get him to sleep longer)
Naps 11/12 for an hour
Naps 2:30/3/4 for an hour
Bedtime 7

He used to nap for 2-3 hours in the afternoon but has stopped and is really overtired from missing that nap. I have no idea why he has stopped and he's definitely not ready to drop a nap. Things were seeming to improve at around 5 months for a couple weeks but that's all gone down the drain and things are worse than ever before now. Argh! Rant over.

Argh it was pot luck! He woke at 5 and refused to sleep no matter what. An hour later he was still crying demanding to be nursed and patted in bed. He just threw his dummy lol. My back is broken this morning

@eyesbiggerthanstomach I've done this. I've let him stay up longer to see if that would help and nope it just made his night sleep even more broken and he would still wake at 6am. I tried making it earlier too. I found he gets roughly 11 hours sleep when he's asleep by 7:30ish and he sleeps 3 hours at a time at the beginning of the night too. Any later than that and he's up hourly.

We were in exact same position, though without co sleeping involved. Baby is almost six months. For weeks he woke every hour at night, never ever managed to go to sleep without being fed or rocked.

We started ferber last week and it’s been amazing. Tough, emotionally, SO hard to walk away and close the door when he’s crying. But worth it, he’s now getting good sleep which he and we all need. He puts himself to sleep within ten minutes at night already on day five and will sleep five then six hours with a bottle then putting himself back to sleep in the middle.

It’s simple stuff, ferber. You just have to be at a stage where you’re so desperate you’ll try anything. Like i was. On antidepressants.