Yeah, that was me too. Still is.
Pediatricians and psychologists all say the same thing, and the goal is to sleep without crying. But after a few reasonable attempts at some solutions, we finally just accepted that our role as parents is to take this. It can’t last forever, right ?
But I can tell you that she’s 3 and probably won’t have a younger sibling.
I can only speak for myself but I had no idea what to expect from being a first time parent. I didn’t read up on infant sleep until I was already losing my mind. All of my friends that had babies before me never talked about if they had problems or they had babies that just went to sleep.
My husband works with heavy machinery, is on anti-seizure meds and gets up at 3 AM every morning, which all meant that I was the primary caretaker at night. He let me get a few hours when he got home and then it was 45 minutes at a time for many, many months. It wasn’t until I stopped pressuring myself (and her) that I realized she wasn’t really abnormal. i also threw everything I thought I knew about baby/toddler sleep out the window. We sleep together in bed now and have began to string 4-6 hours of rest at a time. She’s a lovely, normal child and I have started feeling like a human being again. I realized she’s just a high needs kid that loves to snuggle and be with her mom and dad.
But I totally 100% empathize with you. We both want another kid but that will be it. I can’t keep doing the infant thing. Always said i felt like I was a shell of myself for the first 6 months of her life.