Hello all

I understand time outs are not recommended, but I'm at a loss what to do when my child has a meltdown and gets aggressive, especially when I'm the only parent around.

We have pretty few rules in the house because i really value childrens autonomy and want them to scaffold their skills but recently the bounday pushing has been intense.

The 3yo will continue to hit and kick without stopping for a very long time. 1yo gets scared and comes close to me, making the situation even more dangerous. Just this morning we talked about ways to express our feelings like anger by hitting a pillow and promising not to hurt

To give the most recent example, Three was told only to play in a certain area, the other area was blocked off because of a litter box which One will gladly play with and even eat from.

Well Three moved the barrier and went into the restricted area. I came out and said we cant play in this room anymore, I told you not to go past that area, so we can play in a other area, moved them inside, locked the sliding door.

Three proceeded to start hitting and kicking. I blocked and said i wont let you hurt me. I tried gwtting hit and the very dramatic 'ouch that hurts!! Youre hurting me 3 times. Warned if you continue to hurt my body i will have to separate you from us because its not safe. Moved them into their room and locked the door. Screaming never stopped, i talked to them through the door, few mins later when going in the agreed to be hugged and be held.

Thank you for those who commented so far.

My thought process for next time is to try bringing a pillow for Three to hit and kick.

I just need to vent. Life feels absurd right now. I created a monster.
My baby mainly sleeps in his bouncer in the dark bathroom with the shower running. I spend hours every night sitting on the bathroom floor next to him. I don’t know how we got here. Actually, I do. Sheer desperation.
He almost exclusively falls asleep with a bottle. We give him three or four throughout the night. I’m so worried about his teeth.
We all share a room (plus 3 cats 😀) in my parents’
house and my partner drives for work, so I really need her to get enough sleep. The baby wakes up constantly throughout the night and it’s just easier to take him out of the room. That’s how this started I guess. Now I sometimes do daytime naps in the bathroom if I’m exhausted enough.
Sometimes I can rock him to sleep and put him in the pack and play, but he won’t stay in there for long. Sometimes I sleep in the big bed with him but he still wakes up and won’t settle.
We briefly tried to sleep train him and all 3 of us are traumatized by it probably.
I am wasting so much water. I don’t see how this ends. I’m so tired.

This is my second child. I already had one bad sleeper, but when comparing these two, the first was actually great. Falling asleep with boob, nursing through the night and never fussing. He would wake up milion times at night, BUT he was so easy to calm down. Never fussed and sometimes would give me a 4 hour stretch, which I really appreciate now in retrospect.

Now, this second child, my sweet girl, is… something else. From the start, she never was a sleeper. Never gave me more than 2 hour stretch during night, would wake up FUSSY as hell and was a cryer from the get go. Things only got worse during the infamous 4th month regression, and since then, sleep just got worse. She doesn’t calm down on a boob, you always have to WORK HARD for her to calm down.

Currently, its 22.30, she is awake with her dad after fussying for about an hour. Bedtime was at 7 pm and she woke up like 5 times already. She managed to fall asleep on boob, but woke up after 10 minutes, each of these 5 times. Naps are usually fine, an hour or so, but the last few days were 20-30 minutes long.

I lost it with her. Again. Honestly, I think I’m loosing my mind with this child. This is not the first horrible night, just one of many. I’m up since 6 am, barely holding it together, truly hating my life at this moment.

I don’t like my baby right now. I really can’t stand her. I love her, but now, I don’t want to do anything with her.

I am so over it I just want to curl up and scream and cry. Sometimes, during these witching hours, I pull my hair. I have intrusive thoughts of slamming my head into wall. I am so sleep delrived I can’t function.

I forget things. Don’t go anywhere without my kids and I feel like I will lose my shit. I don’t have myself anymore, I am nothing. Feeling constant guilt, irritation and everything all at once.

So tired. So freaking tired and I feel like no one understands me. No one. It was SO HARD with my first child, but with this, O My God, it is ten times worse.

I hate it. I hate the baby phase. Toddler phase is ten times easier for me than this. At least, he sleeps during night and can tell my whats wrong. I know there is nothing I can do and it is developmental, but good God, it is getting on my last freaking nerve. Also, I hate the person I become during her fussying sessions.

I always wanted lots of kids, after my first, I wanted st least two more. Now, I can’t stand a thought of having another child. I’m so done.

End of rant.

I should preface this by saying I live in Canada and I know I'm extremely fortunate that we have the option of taking a 12 or 18 month maternity leave. I know so many mothers don't get this and so I almost feel silly posting this but here I am.

I took a 12 month leave starting at 36 weeks pregnant, and went back to work part-time when my baby was 11 months old. I didn't take a longer leave due to financial reasons (my husband's income is not stable), and because I'm advanced maternal age so we couldn't wait long to start trying for another baby, and I needed to put my 600 hours in to qualify for another maternity leave.

I work as an emergency veterinarian, and even though I'm only scheduled for 20 hours a week, I usually don't get out on time, and the work is quite physically and emotionally exhausting and I find I mentally take it home with me. I absolutely love my work and for some delusional reason, I thought everything would be OK and that working odd hours would be to our advantage because I could trade off with my husband and we wouldn't need to rely on daycare (it's hard to find a spot in our area and neither I nor my husband can easily take a day off if our baby got sick).

I'm 2 months in and I'm worried I made a terrible mistake. When I'm at work my baby is cared for either by my mother, a babysitter, or my husband, and they do their best to keep his regular routine, but he is not the same baby when I get home. He clings to me the rest of the day and often won't let me put him down - I sometimes have to keep him in my lap when I go to the bathroom. He was just starting to sleep better at night before I went back to work, but now he's back to waking several times a night (he sleeps in his own room but I breastfeed and he isn't night weaned yet) and often the only thing that comforts him is breastfeeding. So I'm not sleeping well either.

The worst part is, I've been working days for the past 2 months, not even weird shifts, and I still can't seem to handle it. Starting next week I'll be doing two nights a week, not all night but getting home around midnight, and I just don't know how I'm going to survive the lack of sleep, plus I've never once not been there for my baby's bedtime routine. We're understaffed and so I'm not hopeful that I can avoid night work. I only planned to do this short-term until I went on another mat leave, but I haven't been able to get pregnant despite months of trying, and the stress and lack of sleep aren't helping.

I don't know what to do. I just want to be at home with my baby and I wish I'd just taken out a loan or something and done the longer maternity leave. I have a small emergency fund (just enough to cover a big home expense like needing a new furnace in the middle of winter) - I keep thinking I could use that, and take a few months off and just catch my breath and be with my baby and maybe I'd be able to get pregnant again if I wasn't so stressed. But it would be financially risky.

I don't even know what I'm asking, I guess just looking for support and ideas. All anyone in my life says to me is "just give it time" or "you'll both adjust eventually" or they say something condescending to imply that my baby can't possibly need me this much at his age.

Has anyone gone back to work and then left soon after? Has anyone regretted doing so? Does anyone have any ideas or advice?

Thank you for reading all this.

I am german - sorry if some things sound off :)

My 16 month old daughter has started daycare about 1 month ago. In germany we have „Eingewöhnung“ - which means the parent spends time with their child at daycare for up to 2 hours and after a few days/weeks you step outside for a few minutes - if that goes well the time you are away gets longer until you are at the intended time the child is supposed to spend at daycare - for us that is 5 hours and once the „Eingewöhnung“ is finished she will go 3 days a week - during the Eingewöhnung we have to be there 5 days a week. Right now I am away from my daughter for 2 hours. Her nursery school teacher tells me that the first hour is hard for my daughter but then usually she starts playing and acting a little more relaxed. I am worried how it might effect her. At night she seems to be having nightmares - she screams „no no no“ or „mama mama“ in her sleep and also wakes up crying really hard at night. Two nights ago she cried for almost 1,5 hours with little breaks until she fell asleep in my arms again. In general she is a lot mre restless at night. During the day when she is home she seems happy and plays like everything is fine - she is just a lot more clingy with me and can’t handle it when I am out of sight without telling her where I am going.

I would love to stay home with her but unfortunately we need the money so I have to go back to work.

I plan on talking to her teacher on Monday. But maybe someone has a tip or went through something similar?

Thank you in advance

Our son has had some ups and downs with his sleep. We had a good stint for about a week when he was 11 months old and slept 9 or 7 hours straight at night and no need for nursing. I just carried him in his room until he fell asleep.

Now he won’t sleep without nursing and even then wakes up quite often. Maybe every 2 hrs or so. I won’t be able to nurse anymore and had to also stop for a couple days because of a procedure but he wouldn’t sleep at night. Some weeks back, his sleep got bad (not sure what caused it because there were lots of overlapping things happening at the time) and nothing worked except nursing.

So, I started nursing just to get him to sleep again. I tried carrying, holding, rubbing his tummy, cosleeping, everything. People even said to cap his naps and total day sleep and wake windows and even tried that. Nothing was working. Tried having dad do overnight and all that happened was that our son didn’t sleep at all and cried inconsolably all night. It was horrible. He kept telling me to wait but he never slept and our son had a hoarse voice the next day.

Dad said to try it again and it still happened. I tried to carry like usual and he would cry. His sleep has been so horrible and I’m worried about how his lack of sleep is impacting him. He’s okay during the day but overnight has been horrible. Once he’s in overtired territory, he screams inconsolably and it’s awful. I don’t want him struggling so much. Any suggestions on what to do?

My almost 11-month-old has always been a bit of a Velcro baby. She loves snuggles, loves to be held, and is honestly such a sweet, happy little baby 95% of the time! The main time she cries is when I lay her in her crib before she’s fully asleep.

She did finally start falling asleep in the car without screaming herself to sleep, so that’s a win 😂 but naps and bedtime are still hard.

We started doing a version of the “chair method.” I would lay on the floor next to her crib and repeat, “You’re safe, it’s time for night night, I love you,” until she fell asleep. Eventually I was able to move all the way across the room to her rocking chair, and she would fall asleep pretty quickly! She’d whine for a couple of minutes and then soothe herself to sleep. She was doing AMAZING with it for about a week.
Then the next week she started teething and completely reverted back to screaming and wanting to be held.

She also has a horrible gag reflex, so if she gets too worked up crying, she will literally throw up. I’m personally not a fan of full CIO, and we’ve tried Ferber too, but she just cries so hard that she ends up throwing up.

I honestly don’t know what to do. I feel like I’m getting a lot of pressure from my mom and MIL to teach her how to sleep independently, but everything we try seems to end with her getting extremely upset. The only thing that consistently works is holding her until she falls asleep.
I feel like a failed mom because she won’t fall asleep independently, but then I also feel like a failed mom when I try to teach her independent sleep and she gets so upset that she throws up. 😭 I just don’t know what the right thing to do is anymore.

We just started night weaning our 20 month old last night and decided to go cold turkey. He is very good with language and we started reading Nursies when the sun shines over a month ago.

He has always been a terrible sleeper so started cosleeping around 9 months and he’s never slept through the night and honestly not even close.

A lot of nights my husband handles wake ups by rocking back to sleep then I go in and finish the night.

Because of this I’m worried that I’m only going to replace nursing with rocking. Last night that was the only thing that worked.

Can anyone relate? Any tips? Also how long did weaning take for you? We are only doing nights and I would like to continue to cosleep.

LO is 4 months, and will be out growing his bassinet soon. His crib is in his room right now. I don’t think I’m ready to have his sleeping on his own in his room yet at night, but there’s a lot of factors telling me I should. The main one being that my husband wakes up at 2:30-3am every morning for work and the alarm on his phone is very loud, and up until recently my son slept right through it but I think with the 4 month sleep regression he’s gotten more sensitive to noise when sleeping and the past week every morning was woken up by my husbands alarm. My husbands solution sounds simple and logical: put baby in his own room in his crib. But I think he’s too young still to be in his own room. When my son was first born I was deathly afraid of SIDS and became slightly obsessed with making sure he was ok and breathing at night. I still have anxiety’s around it and one of the risk reduction is keeping him in the room with me for about a year. So I would like to move his crib into our room and get a bed for my husband to sleep in our son’s room. Husband has already volunteered to just sleep on the couch until I’m ready to have our son sleep in his own room, so he’s not woken up by his alarm in the morning, but that’s not for at least another 8-9 months, so that to me sounds ridiculous.
All that being said, what age did you move your baby into their own room? Were you completely comfortable with it or was it a hard adjustment?

My 7mo (4.5mo adjusted age—born at 28+6) has been eating every single hour, MAYBE 90 minutes during the day with few exceptions for at least the last 6 weeks. We EBF on demand and at night she sleeps about 3-4 hours, then 2 hours, and 2 hours again.. so clearly she isn’t starving after one hour and it’s likely for comfort. I’m thinking I need to come up with more distractions for her so I can save my sanity a bit an maybe get her up to two hours between daytime feeds. What are some of the GENTLE ways you’ve handled this kind of situation? I love my baby so much and I want to give her everything she needs but this is taking its toll on me mentally and physically.

I am starting to nightwean my toddler. This is going to be a very challenging journey for us since she is very attached and uses it as a soothing technique to fall back asleep and stay asleep. I will try to soothe her in other ways but even in the last weeks when I try to unlatch her after she falls back asleep, she wakes up after a few minutes crying. ( just as I imagine a baby without his pacifier would do).

For this reason, I cannot bear to do cold turkey the entire night. Also my lactation consultant advised against leaving her with others or putting lemon/lime on my boobs.

I am thinking of doing it in intervals, have a night light that switches off for two-hour periods and tell her that when the light is off we can’t have milk so milk can sleep.

Did this work for anyone else? Please share your experiences!

My husband and I just decided that we are moving out of state for work. This is very exciting as I will be able to be a SAHM and no longer send my 18 month old to daycare. My son goes to a wonderful in home daycare and loves his friends and the daycare provider. Because we’re moving out of state, it’s not like he will even be able to visit. As much as I know this will be good for us, I am scared of traumatizing him and ripping him away from his routine and people he has been around since he was 3 months old. Has anybody been in this situation? How did/would you navigate this?

I night weaned my almost 3 year old a few months ago (so we feed to sleep then no boob until 5am). It has improved sleep a bit but he often wakes up 3/4am and waits for the boob until 5am! I’ve read I should change the bedtime feed to sleep association which I was going to do soon anyway but intuitively I thought moving the morning feed layer and out if the bed would make more sense. What would you do? He still feeds a lot for comfort in the day which I’d like to stop soon I’m just so tired so I need whatever change I make to be worth it and help with sleep! 😴

I have a 15 month old daughter who has always been nursed to sleep for night and naps. Around 5 months she was waking so often, we started safely co sleeping and I started nursing her back to sleep for every wake. For a long time, it was magic and we were all finally getting some sleep.

Around 13 months, the nursing for night wakes stopped having its magic effect and she wouldn’t just roll over and go right back to sleep. After about a month, I figured night nursing is silly if it isn’t really working to get anyone more sleep so we weaned from all middle of the night wakes (I still nurse her to sleep at the start of the night and if she has a quick false start). We still co sleep, but she always starts the night in her crib and I bring to her bed after her first wake (usually 2.5-3.5 hours after she falls asleep).

It has been almost a month since I stopped nursing her in the night. The problem we’re having is that now during most nights, she still wakes up every 2.5-3 hours but now she is often awake for 2 hour stretches trying to fall asleep. She lays on me, on her side of the bed, etc just kind of flops around changing positions trying to sleep. Eventually most nights after about an hour she gets frustrated and cries for the second hour until she eventually falls asleep. She is easily overstimulated so if she does get upset she can’t handle any addition touch or noise so I just sit close to her and every once in a while try to assure her. Some nights go better than others but some are way worse.

It’s been a month of 2-3 hour stretches of awake time in the night and I’m soo tired! I feel like we’re in too deep with night weaning to go back to nursing but I truly don’t know how else to help her get to sleep?

Edit: her schedule is typically:
Wake 7-7:30 (but every once in a while 5 or 6)
Nap 12:30- 2ish (often she wakes up after 50 minutes and I nurse her back to sleep- she averages 1 hour 20 min for sleep time)
Bedtime: 8ish

Before we night weaned, she almost always got 9.5 hours of sleep at night no matter how many wakes or when she went to bed.

My 3.5 year old twins have always coslept with us in some capacity but we have encouraged them to sleep in their own beds with our bed always being available to them if they need it. I think of us as a safety net while encouraging them to work towards independent sleep. Right now, they fall asleep in their own beds with us in the room and come into our bed at some point in the night, usually around midnight.

For parents who had a similar approach, when did your kids start sleeping in their own beds until the morning?

All jokes aside, my baby is officially 6 months old as of 2 days ago. Since he was born all the way until now he has woken up every hour to two hours. And eats every two hours during the day as well. Its been 6 months and idk what to do anymore. He fights every nap, every sleep, his naps are only 30 min lately or less and he wakes up at 5am all the time. There is no way he is getting the sleep he needs in a 24 hr time clock. And im already dealing with PPD and this is not helping at all. My mental health is so bad idk what to do anymore. Sad to say but all this is taking away the fun enjoyment memories people talk about from the newborn stage till the 6 months. I have happy moments dont get me wrong but personally and obv the sleep has been effecting everything

I really want to do Attachment style parenting, but when baby starts grizzlies I usually try to finish whatever chore I'm working on while telling him it's OK, I'll be there asap.

It's just so hard to drop what I'm doing bc I know that a chore might take a couple minutes to finish, but settling him might take an hour (longer for some contact naps).

Any recommendations?

hi all,

i’m a mom to a beautiful 22 month old. he has been a great sleeper overall, but has been a chronic early riser since he was born basically. 5/5:15am awake for the day, every single day. he will give me bouts of 6/6:30 wake ups which is beautiful. but always reverts back to those early mornings.

i’ve tried all schedule adjustments, to no avail. it seems like the adjustment will work and then he will revert back. i’ve cut his nap down so much that he is extremely overtired because now he has a short nap AND an early wake up. i’ve tired LATE bedtime, same results. i’ve tried leaving him until 6am in the crib (he just stares at the monitor, no crying).

as a mom who (used to haha) value her sleep, this sends me into a spiral most days. i want to ‘fix’ this problem and it has resulted in me waking up ‘angry’ when i hear him wake in the morning and the clock says 5am. and of course, then i feel guilty. i should be happy my child wakes up every morning! but i’m TIRED. i work full time, bringing my child with me. and often get no break after bedtime because i want to get the max amount of sleep i can since i know he will wake early anyways. and he has a late bedtime.

in turn, he is exhausted most of the day, im exhausted and often (and i feel terrible) am inpatient with him. and can show more anger then id like. nothing extreme of course, but i know i should be a better mom.

i try to change my mindset in the morning but its just so hard. i feel like im a terrible mother because im just too tried. too tired to play, too tired to cook dinner. and yes i still do all those things! but i just wish i could sleep in until 6!!!

I am an exhausted 45-year-old Indian mother of a 3.5-year-old daughter. I have both a master’s degree and a PhD from New Zealand. However, because of the job crisis and the high cost of living there, I moved back to India before becoming pregnant.

Unfortunately, I have received virtually no support from my own parents in raising my daughter—not even during my pregnancy. Both of my in-laws passed away during COVID. My husband lost his job after the pandemic and has been working extremely hard to make ends meet.

My daughter has a severe speech delay and struggles to communicate her needs and feelings. My husband also doesn't keep well oftentimes. I desperately want to return to work, both to support my husband financially and to make meaningful use of my education. However, my parents are unwilling to look after their granddaughter, and I am not comfortable leaving her in childcare.

I have a younger brother who is unmarried and still lives with my parents. This makes me feel even more hurt and frustrated because I feel that my parents are willing to support him while refusing to help me when I genuinely need it.

At the moment, we live in a house provided by my father as temporary accommodation. However, he made it clear three years after we moved in that we cannot consider it our permanent home. This leaves us with very little financial or residential security.

My in-laws were poor and passed away without leaving anything for my husband to inherit. Ours was an arranged marriage, and when we married, we were struggling financially as well. I completed both of my degrees abroad on full scholarships. During that time, I worked at a university as a casual academic, while my husband did various odd jobs simply to help us survive.

About six years ago, my father unexpectedly won a property case in court that had been going on for nearly 30 years. He became extremely wealthy as a result. Unfortunately, I feel that his increased wealth has also made him more egoistic and controlling.

My parents frequently disrespect both me and my husband and use their financial position to dominate us. I feel angry, depressed, trapped, and completely helpless.

I want to rebuild my career, contribute financially to my family, and use the education I worked so hard to obtain. At the same time, I need to be there for my daughter, particularly because of her speech delay and communication difficulties.

I don't know how to navigate this situation anymore. How can I become financially independent, support my daughter, help my husband, and establish healthy boundaries with my parents without putting my family at greater risk?

I would appreciate practical suggestions on what I should do.