I’m so over this

I don’t know if I’m too old for this or if there’s something else wrong but I just hate hate hate this baby stage.

I have made a lot of posts about my daughter in this forum being miserable since birth, because she has been and we have been struggling.

I don’t think have PPD but also I have never felt like this in my life.

Some days are better, some are worse. Today is BAD.

She’s hitting that four month sleep regression kind of early—it started about 3.5 weeks ago when she hit 13 weeks. We are still struggling with these awful awful short naps and waking 5-6 times a night.

Today she was so tired and just would not nap, but instead when I tried to get her to nap, she would not calm down at all, lost her shit on me and my friend who were taking turns (she came over to help with my older son with Halloween, instead she ended up helping me more with the baby). I ended up getting one shitty hour long nap out of her today.

We come back from trick or treating and I feed her, and put her down for bed starting at 8:30. She doesn’t go down until 9:30 which is typically unusual for her.

She’s back up at 10. Then 10:30. And it’s not her usual quick wake up. It’s full blown AWAKE and SCREAMING. We give her a minute to see if she will settle—she will not. My husband and I take turns putting her back down. 15 mins to calm, settle and fall back asleep. Put her down in the bassinet—eyes wide open and SCREAMING. Repeat but with the other parent.

Finally I’m like “is she hungry??” I really try not to feed her past her sleep time because she has slept through the night since 8 weeks 10-12 hours typically and I don’t want to associate wake ups with milk. But I thought I had the start of mastitis today, but it did clear up (mostly) and she has been preferring that breast. So I’m thinking maybe she’s not getting as much as she needs tonight? Maybe it’s a growth spurt. Anyway I cannot have her nursing on me, mentally I’m just over it. So I gave her a bottle just now, hoping I didn’t shoot myself in the foot and of course it calmed her down. And (mostly) put her to sleep.

I am losing my shit. I HATE saying this because it makes me so sad. Sometimes I just don’t want to be a mom anymore. I have never felt so defeated in my life. Like I told my husband I have never felt this way ever. I’m usually very optimistic. Me and my husband are screaming obscenities to the walls. I’m breaking down crying. I have NEVER cried so much in my life as I have the last 4 months.

I feel absolutely awful. Before we even had her, we said over and over again “I can’t wait to have a baby again, that stage was so sweet.”

Now we literally cannot stand it. I feel like I’m rushing her growing up and it just makes me so sad. I want to enjoy her but it’s like every time I feel like she’s getting better; ie a personality, and not just crying all the time, something happens and we take like 5 steps back. I’m just so tired of being so miserable and sad all the time. When will this get better? I feel like I’m still just purely in survival mode, and I’m not really surviving.