I am completely at my wits end with my 8 month old daughter's sleep and I don't know what to do anymore. It's having a huge impact on my mental health, my relationship and my physical health too. She screams all night long and nothing we do seems to change anything. She is an awful sleeper - day or night. She relies completely on us to get her to sleep - whether it's boob, pram, car or being bounced to sleep. She simply cannot get herself to sleep at all. We've tried to teach her to self-settle and it ends up in her hysterical to the point she's making herself sick/choking and spluttering. It is horrendous. If we don't help her, she doesn't sleep!
This has been going on for nearly 4 months now, and it's just steadily gotten worse and worse. She has CMPA and egg allergy which I am free from, and I often wonder if that makes things worse but I thought by now we'd see some improvement in her night time sleep.
We've followed the same bedtime routine since she was born, we have quiet time/nappy free time around 6:30pm, then bath, feed and bed. I've tried to feed her awake with the lights on and then put her down drowsy but she just screams and screams. She will not stop, it's been hours some nights and she's still screaming. If I feed her to sleep she'll wake the minute I put her down - again screaming and screaming. Then the rest of the night she's waking every single hour, sometimes less. She only settles when fed or when lay on me (sometimes her Dad but mainly wants me). The same goes for daytime sleep - naps are never longer than 40mins, usually 30, unless she's asleep on the boob. Even then, she stirs every 20mins or so to latch back on and comfort suck. I can never just put her down for a nap without feeding her or rocking to sleep. Or it's a nap in the pram, and the minute I stop waking she's awake again.
My partner and I can't take much more. She's still in our bedroom because she's that bad at night the thought of being in and out of another room fills me with more dread. But it's having a huge impact on our relationship, we just have no time together in the evenings because she's up and down so often. Plus we're exhausted 😩.
The lack of naps without help means that we struggle to get anything done in our house. It's filthy, because when she's awake she demands all my attention - she won't go in a sling, she won't sit in her high chair, she won't just 'be' without me right there with her!! So nothing gets done.
To top it all off, last week our neighbours complained to us about her night waking as it's also waking them up!! We live in a terrace house so it's impossible not to hear it. So now we're even more anxious about her screaming all night because we know they're up and fuming too!!
Honestly I don't know what I'm after here, I'm not even sure if any of this makes sense. I'm currently sat hiding in the bathroom crying and I can hear her screaming from the bedroom. I just know I can't cope with this much longer. Please someone tell me it gets better!!!