I am wondering how you deal with a baby when they don't sleep much... I find myself getting so frustrated when L is tired but only naps for 20-30 minutes in the day before waking himself up. I try to get him back to sleep and succeed, only for him to wake himself up again minutes later, even though he is tired. We have to still swaddle him as otherwise he flails his arms around and wakes himself up - but he is starting to roll and I am worried he will roll onto his stomach and not be able to turn himself over with his arms swaddled. However, half the time he'll manage to get his arms out of the swaddle, which is partly what wakes him up I think.
He can and will nap for 1-2 hours in the morning, and is much better rested when he does, but seeing as I cannot get him to fall back into a nap for a long period of time once he's woken himself up and just get more and more frustrated that I can't, and that he won't, it becomes a futile, horrible activity where I end up getting all cross and then feeling absolutely horrible.
I hate being this irritated person and don't know what to do about it. I hardly have time to shower or eat and I get mad at J who is very helpful but I see him as this 'hero Dad' who only gets all the good bits of parenthood and few of the bad. He gets to be the calm person who puts L to bed after I've been trying for ages, or after I've had to deal with him not sleeping all day. He is the rational voice that says to go outside even though he is not the one who has barely eaten anything all day or had time to have a drink or a shower and he doesn't have to take the pushchair then L down 3 flights of stairs and have to cope with a crying, tired child wherever he goes. That is unfair, L doesn't cry all the time and he is not always tired, just it feels that way to me (maybe because I am tired)?
Also, J is incredible - and I know it is my brain that has the problem of seeing myself (and thus thinking others, including him see me this way) as a useless mother who doesn't know what to do for her child and, even worse, raises her voice with her 3 month old baby sometimes. Furthermore, I feel like this boring shell of a person who looks like shit and has nothing to say about anything other than whether L has slept, eaten, been happy or not, because that is all my days are occupied with. That and feeling either crap about myself (when day has gone badly), or ridiculously pleased with myself as though I have accomplished an astounding feat when the day has gone almost as planned/well.
I wish I was a more positive person, and I am sure I used to be. I just don't know what has happened - I have reverted to needing things to be as perfect as possible to be able to cope with them. Which I also dislike, which ends up in a spiral of dislike of myself. The smallest things that deviate from this perfection I crave piss me off, and I end up going round a circle of annoyance at everything but most of all myself.
I know that I have to do things that make me feel better and that the only way out of feeling like this is to take action. But what action? I decide on something then the next day feel better so don't bother - because everything seems so much more complicated to get to or to do when I know I will have to bring a baby with me, plus all the paraphernalia that entails - pushchair, car seat that fits in the pushchair, changing bag, a drink for me, a snack so I don't fall over or have to try to get into a shop with the pushchair when so few shops or cafes have easy access, not to mention that everything here is in French so if I want to take a class I have to think doubly hard. I am sick of living somewhere where I cannot get access to things in my mother tongue, where I have a job I don't really want because the job I do want is virtually impossible. However, I know the alternative is to move to a place I would probably like less that is far less tolerant of alternative lifestyles, is far more violent, far more chavsterish...
I think I needed to moan and to try to feel less bad about not being perfect, about getting frustrated because I don't know what to do about having a tired baby and not knowing how to cope the way I would like. I don't want to get mad and raise my voice at him, I don't want him to have to experience me like that on a near-daily basis. Every day I tell myself that I won't get frustrated and every day I fail, and every day I dislike myself more for it.
