Struggling with motherhood at 8months and trying to work out how I’m going to go back to work
Hi, I’m just hoping for some advice or wondering if anyone is going through the same thing? My baby is 8months old and I am beginning to really struggle with motherhood. My partner works 13 hours a day and often gets called into work on weekends too. I don’t have any brothers or sisters to come round and help me, my friends all have full time jobs and the only support I get is my dad having my baby once a week (this does vary it could be once every 2 weeks or 3 weeks depending on his holiday plans). When I found out I was pregnant the plan was that when returning to work and whilst on maternity leave my mum would be supporting me, she would have looked after my baby whenever I needed without hesitation but sadly 3 months after my daughter was born my mum I was taken to hospital, never left and passed away last month. I’m completely heartbroken and I feel so alone. My dad listens to my crying down the phone that I’m struggling and I don’t know what I’m doing and offers little support other than “why don’t you put her in nursery and go back to work” my mum would have moved mountains for me if she was here and my dad is watching me go through the hardest time of my life and basically telling me “this is what it’s like being a adult, deal with it” my partners have been divorced over 10 years so i had to plan the funeral alone and im still trying to sort out my mums estate but im finding it very hard whilst looking after an 8 month old.
The next part im struggling with is her sleeping. For the past 4/5 months she’s refused to sleep in the cot, she doesn’t even necessarily cry when I put her in there she just thinks it’s play time. So when I put her in sleepy she instantly leaps up and grabs the top of the cot and stays stood up - I repeatedly will lay her back down and she just gets back up. She doesn’t get tired she gets more and more alert. I’ve tried putting her down after she’s in a deep sleep and she wakes instantly too. I can spend hours trying to do this and end up giving up and she sleeps in my bed and wakes a few times in the night. If I were to go back to work, I would need to be up at 5:30am to get her ready and me ready, drop her at nursery for me to get to the office by 7:30am work till 5pm, collect her and be on my own with her again all night on repeat. I feel I need to get her into a sleeping pattern and sleeping in the cot to have any chance of going back to work.
I dread waking up, I’m struggling to keep on top of house work and I was previously a very house proud person so this really gets me down. I feel like I’m failing my daughter because I don’t know what I’m doing. I feel like I need to go back to work to get some of my self back but logically don’t know how anymore because my mums not here. And then I go to bed, baby sleeps in bed with me and I just sit and cry for my mum. Please someone help me
Thankyou