I (25F) have a daughter (20 mo F) with my boyfriend (30M) or 5 years. For the most part, we work really well as a team. He’s very involved with her, stayed home for the last year and a half or so with her as a SAHD, did all the night shifts with her as a baby, etc.
We decided to take a road trip to my parent’s state to pick up something for me (medical). His family lives about 6-7 hrs from that state, so we decided to head there once we leave the first state. We figured we would leave late at night to head to my parent since our daughter typically sleeps on car rides when she’s tired. That was our first mistake. She was awake pretty much the entire 12 hour drive, and she was PISSED. Because of this, I didn’t sleep while he drove, so we all arrived exhausted.
Under the assumption that she and I would actually be sleeping during the drive, I had said I’d take over with her the day we get there so he could rest. Well, that didn’t go over well because we were both running on fumes. I also have a condition that requires me to get full nights of good sleep, otherwise I’m in significant amounts of pain the next several days.
So we get to the first state, we’re all exhausted, and our toddler refuses to nap. Finally, that night, we all go to bed, and toddler goes down easily. Middle of the night, she wakes up SCREAMING. I’m talking a blood-curdling scream I have never heard in my life. She was thrashing around, screaming, almost hyperventilating, and NOTHING we did calmed her down. Well, turns out it’s likely her first ever NIGHT TERROR due to the lack of sleep and all that. After that, we all got very broken, crappy sleep. The next night, she wakes up crying (not a night terror), so we bring her in bed with us again. This time, she sleeps fine, but I am awake absolutely terrified out of my mind that she’s gonna wake up screaming again.
The next morning, we’re both just absolutely messes and arguing over the dumbest crap ever. I typically have a high threshold for his passive aggressiveness (he doesn’t realize he’s being passive aggressive— he has adhd and untreated trauma, and I am AuDHD and hypersensitive to tone of voice), but the lack of sleep and bad pain lower it significantly. He gets nit-picky and I get even more forgetful when tired, and he thinks I’m not listening to him because I keep forgetting the small things he wants done “his way.” We’re both a mess. He realizes he needs to chill and gives me the night off, so I finally get some sleep and space to myself for a couple hours.
Next day, we drive to the next state. Drive is terrible, AGAIN (idk why I thought a road trip with a toddler was ever a good idea). He’s driving, I’m anxious trying to calm the baby, he’s trying to give suggestions that feel like nit picking to me, we end up angry again. We get to the next state and go to bed.
Another night of awful sleep, he wakes up at the crack of dawn by accident and gets up. 8:30am, she ROLLS OFF THE BED, I wake up and scramble to find her (she’s fine, pretty much slowly slid down the tiny space between the pack and play and the end of the bed somehow, but this was one of my worst fears). He takes her and I try my best to go back to bed. In tons of pain due to broken sleep again.
I woke up for the day in a lot of pain still, and he brought her back to bed for a nap. He gets nit-picky again, I’m exhausted and forgetful again, and yet again, we’re arguing. I’m especially frustrated because many of the things he’s getting annoyed with me for are things he also does, but both of our annoyance thresholds are just SO low at this point. I’m currently sitting in a rocking chair while the baby sleeps, just fuming. It’s even more frustrating knowing that if we both just got some good sleep, we would be perfectly fine. Now we’re trying to figure out when to leave for the 14 hour drive back 😭😭 I just wanna be home, so I figured we leave even later tonight so she’s even more tired and just pray she sleeps? I don’t even know how to survive the rest of this at this point. Do we sleep here tonight again and leave early in the morning instead? I’d give almost anything for teleportation to exist right now…