Is that really the only choice after 4 month regression? I personally can’t bed share because it majorly affects my sleep (I’m highly anxious - yes I know about Safe Sleep 7 but I am still too anxious) and I really don’t want to have to sleep train.
Is it just too bad in that case? Did anyone do anything else?
Yep, it happened. She told my sister in law she was waiting for my husband to be at work and then she was going to talk to me. When I was alone with my 3 month old baby. And she actually did it. She told me she tried before but there was a car parked outside so she didn’t come in. Clearly me being alone was important in this plan.
I can’t stop beating myself up because I let her come in. My baby was in his baby carrier strapped to me and I think I’d just had enough and didn’t wanna be stood arguing on my doorstep. I didn’t know it would happen so I didn’t have chance to close the blinds and pretend I wasn’t home, so she’d seen me through the window.
She berated me for everything. Why didn’t I tell her sooner when the baby was born even though we’d already fallen out over her refusing to not kiss him. And I told her I don’t regret waiting because she responded exactly the way I had thought she would and I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with that while I was in the hospital. She told me I needed to not be stressed because she could tell me tone was very stressed and she was just here to calmly talk it through. I told her if she wants to talk about a stressful experience I’ll be stressed. She asked me what happened and as I explained she kept interrupting to tell me I wouldn’t let her talk. I told her she’d asked me a question not the other way around so why wouldn’t she want me to do the talking if she wanted to understand what had happened. She refused to listen. I told her to leave, she refused and acted so shocked that I’d ask her to leave. I blew a fuse a told her I will never forgive her for the way she treated me in my late pregnancy and early motherhood. She told me that was my problem and stormed out.
All of this while I held my little baby in the carrier.
These people are unbelievable. I wish I had a real mum.
EDIT: thank you all so much. I wrote this at the start of my baby’s nap to help me regulate and now I feel ready and recharged when he wakes up again. This support means so much right now. It’s tough out here!
Hey!
I am just looking for someone to see if they can notice any sleep pressure issues which might be stopping us getting longer stretches at night? Little boy is 11.5 weeks old - I’m open to just being told to hang fire, but wonder if there’s anything we can do to set ourselves up for a bit longer in the first stretch since it ranges from 2-3 hours and then we’ll be up every 1-2 hours after that and I’m finding it a bit tough (I’d love a 4 hour stretch).
We follow sweet spot roughly but also go by cues. His last stretch he consistently wants longer than huckleberry suggests (usually he wants a 2h15 wake window which I know is a bit too long for his age, but we start a sleepy routine at around 1h15 and he just won’t take it, we don’t pressure him just walk him around in the dark and re-offer the breast as needed). The last stretch is the one confusing me the most since it seems like a really long period but still doesn’t seem to build the sleep pressure for a long stretch.
Over the past 4 days we’ve been consistently using a 7:30am wake up. We don’t have a specific target bed time at all, just go by how long he’s been awake.
He did a few 4hr stretches before he was 9 weeks, and once managed a miracle 5h45 stretch, so we know he can do it, just wonder if there’s some approach we can take to guide him there or if he’ll just get back there himself?
He’s a little super star with resettling - usually me or my husband try rocking for about 10 mins and if he’s still upset or shows hunger cues in between then I just feed to sleep. I don’t mind supporting him back to sleep, I have mat leave until he is 1, so not interested in sleep training - just would love some longer stretches to help bring me out of sleep deprivation. My husband does take him when not working for a few hours, but I’ve never managed a 4hr stretch then either because the baby asks for food every 2-3 hours during the day time too and is exclusively breastfed. We’ve tried a pumped bottle, but since I have to wake to pump it also doesn’t massively help with getting me a long uninterrupted stretch.
All naps are in the carrier (sometimes I use the pram for his first nap to get a break) and I don’t mind it at all since he’s happy staying asleep through noise and light I can crack on with my day while he naps and it works for us right now. He’s 90th percentile so I do worry how this will look in a few months when he’s heavier, but I’ll cross that when we come to it!
He sleeps in his crib (out grew his next to me) in a sleeping bag as he showed signs of rolling around 7/8 weeks. I get him fully asleep and then transfer him fully asleep.
Usually four naps a day (unless he’s had very short naps and we need to pop an extra one in).
Wake windows: 1h20 / 1h20 / 1h30 / 1h30 / 2h15
He gets about 13.5-14h total sleep in 24 hours, usually 5 hours of nap and 8.5-9 hours night sleep. I know this is on the lower end, but he literally will not sleep more than that… we don’t wake him up.
If it’s too early, when will it not be too early?
I’ve had a lot of issues with my narcissistic mother, all kind of coming to the fore since my baby was born a couple of months ago. She refused to not kiss him, posted him on social media before I’d had chance to announce his birth even after being explicitly told not to, etc.
She’s seen him a few times at special occasions (Mother’s Day, Easter) which is on my terms the relationship id like to have - where we only see her when the whole family will be around including my siblings. Whenever she has seen him, she’s made every effort to wake him up from his nap and actually said to me out loud on Easter that she was going to find a way to wake him up. I’ve made no effort to see her since then. She hasn’t reached out properly except to tell me to let me know if I “need” her - not that she wants to see me. Only relationship she wants is one where I’m dependent on her.
She recently sent a long guilt laden message about how she’s not allowed to need updates about her grandson and we never invite her to visit. I told her we’d be round on my dad’s birthday (which is very soon). She can’t accept this and says “so still no invite then. We need to understand what we’ve done to be unwelcome in your home”.
She knows what she’s done. I’ve explained it and it ended with her screaming down the phone at me with a two day old baby in my lap. She knows. She just refuses to accept it and wants me to jump to being defensive and feed her attention craving because she’s suddenly decided she wants to initiate again. She hasn’t spoken to me for weeks. Last message was asking for photos of me at my friends party (because she doesn’t believe I went, since it was on a day where she wanted to see me and I said no) which I refused to provide her. Since then nothing and then at the drop of a hat she wants me to justify why we’re not inviting her into our home.
It’s so exhausting. I find it so hard not to give in and send her a long message about how she’s abused me as a child, has proven she can’t be trusted around our child, and is an utterly awful person to spend any time with because all she does is belittle my choices as a parent.
I’m just looking for somewhere to rant and a reminder that it’s ok to not explain over and over to someone who won’t accept they’ve done something wrong…