BooksandTrees

Thank you very much @Ikar, @D_Cozy, and @wheatbiscuit. I appreciate the responses and honesty. I am sorry to hear about your families and history of abusive behavior as well. I feel like it definitely shapes us. I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing i think. We're so exhausted. I just don't have the energy in me to get through the week and then go down and visit people on the one or two days i have to recover from the week. And they're just vampires. I feel a lot better about this now. I'm just gonna keep focusing on the 3 of us and looking for little victories along the way. I'm also giving up on the hope of him sleeping through the night. I think that's hurting me because if he doesn't sleep then it feels like someone punched me in the face and I want to give up. My wife suggested little victories like 2 or3 hours of sleep and continue to celebrate small things to get me out of my current depression. I've been leaning on porn a lot more again. I was watching it once a month for all of summer and spring. Now I'm watching it every night again from the past 3 weeks. It's like my only form of quick release again. So I'm just gonna try to bring that back down slowly.

Good to hear about your health. I'm curious if you've considered self a nutritionist too? I've gotten a lot of help from mine.

This is a great concept. I've always heard letters to your past self but I think that only helps you in the present and not drive you into your future. Keep up with this.

That's such a cool idea. My wife and I would voice act the scripts I wrote before I got too busy. I'm writing a book now but I miss doing that with her.

This was a good weekend as a family. I have a dilemma because my grandparents haven't met my son yet and pressure is mounting to do so before they die. The issues I have are that I don't really like my grandparents. They treated me poorly growing up and treated their kids poorly. I always hated being around them. They live over an hour and a half from me, they only want to see him because it's *their* grandkid. They never ask me how he's doing or how my wife and I are doing even though we're struggling with depression and anxiety. The weekends are the only time I can visit them and I use the weekend as m my time to spend with my son the most because I only get a couple hours a day during the week. If I bring him over, 10 of my relatives would also invite themselves over to see him and I don't want him being around them. They're not good people. Am I a bad person for not bringing him? I think my family benefits more from weekend time together.

It's highly discouraged to sleep in the same bed here because of sids and the potential to roll over onto your baby. So he's in our room but in his crib. He sleeps better when he's on us or with us but we are afraid to and won't have him sleep with us. You're probably right though, he'd sleep better lol.

Sorry you're going through a sleep regression as well. We're going to be a little more brave with getting him on solid foods so he can sleep longer as well. He gets a good amount of tummy time and is developing a ton so I have to imagine all of this development is causing a regression. I'd pay for 4 hours of sleep lol.

Thank you so much. I'm replying during a wake up feed as we speak. I bought a book called the happy sleeper and I'm hoping that helps. But I feel like the only real way for him to sleep longer is solid food and then the self soothing like you mentioned.

You're doing good. Keep with it. There's a very small percentage of people in the world that actively try to improve themselves and you're one of them.

I've come to the conclusion that I'll never sleep more than 3 hours in a row ever again. My son has been up for hours crying, being happy, being angry, being hungry, not being hungry, being in pain, not being in pain, you name it. I have no idea. We fed him and bottle, breast fed him, sang to him, gave him massages, held him, let him sit there and work it out, let him play with toys, changed his diaper, burped him, did leg exercises so he could fart out trapped gas, played music, read to him, give lots of kisses and hugs, you name it. I'm starting to hate people who say their kids sleep through the night right away. The more I talk to them and ask questions, the more I realize they're either painfully lucky and telling the truth, or they're ignoring their kid or feeding them cereal milk which is a choking hazard on every pediatric website. My friend told me his daughter sleeps through the night and finally he admitted that he put her in her own room at 3 weeks old and doesn't go in to check on her if she cries. She's a year older than my son and my son is heavier and taller than she is. I will say that parenting is a real eye opener to the type of people your friends are.

I got my son shots on Friday and it ruined his sleep routine lol. We got maybe 2 hours of sleep that night but the next day he caught up and now we're good again.

It's really hard at first. It took me 10 years to detach from my family emotionally and be able to do that.

True. My dad asked if he could stay with us for a week while he moved to a new house and i said no because we have fundamental parenting differences and I'm not exposing my son to them or reliving anything.

Have you visited the doctor? You could have an underlying health issue causing it. You seem too young for this kind of issue.

Nice job. I'm glad you're getting more time with your son too. You have a lot more purpose on your journey this time and it's nice to see. Great job.