Man's marriage falling apart because baby won't stop crying; 'My wife is going insane; our 5 yo hates us & the baby.' AITA? UPDATED 2X
When this man is concerned about his marriage since the birth of his second daughter, he asks the internet:
"I have a Difficult Crying Baby and my Marriage is on Rocks, our Child is Going Insane and my Wife Wants to Leave our Baby at a Fire Station, AITA?"
Since our second daughter was born three and a half months ago, she has not stopped crying. There's nothing wrong with her, the doctor suggests that it is a bad case of colic (edit: we have seen several doctors, all say no allergies, no broken bones, just back luck of colic).
She sleeps for an hour at a time but then wakes up and starts screaming again. How can such a small baby make such horrible and loud sounds? At first I felt heartbroken that my child was in such discomfort but now I am numb to it.
Our five-year-old daughter used to be a happy girl but she is constantly miserable because she never gets any peace or sleep at home and both her parents are zombies.
She doesn't fully understand that the baby isn't doing this on purpose and tells us that she hates her and that she is a 'selfish brat' and while I try to explain that the baby doesn't mean it I can see why she is upset.
She gets testy when it is time to leave school and her teachers have spoken to us several times about how she has changed and is no longer the happy girl she used to be. She sees the school's counsellor twice a week now. When she is in the house she will either want to play outside at the bottom of the garden.
She won't even call the baby by her name, she calls her 'the selfish brat'. We have resorted to driving her half an hour to my brother's house so she can sleep there and she gets dropped off to school in the morning with her cousins.
She says she hates coming home and wants to live with her uncle and aunt until we 'fix the baby or give her away'. Honestly, it is a terrible solution but I take it because it means that every other night I get an hour of peace in the car and our daughter gets a good night's sleep.
My wife is not suffering from depression, she just also hates (edit: hate is a strong word, I mean, she hates the situation) the baby because she won't be quiet ever. First she felt guilty, now she just wants to give the baby up to care.
We had the police called several times in the first few months because the neighbours thought we must be abusing the baby (they have since moved out at the end of their lease, and the property owner can't find a new tenant, that is how bad it is).
The last time the police came, my wife outright said that if they suspected that we were abusing the child then they should take her and put her in care.
Our marriage is also falling apart because we are both sleep deprived, on edge, tired, and eager to spend time away from the house just to get some quiet.
She works from home and I work close by but I am spending late nights in the office just to avoid the noise. (edit: I take the baby all weekend, and am on night duty on Mon, Wed, Fri, but on Tuesdays and Thursdays I often go back to the office for an hour after dropping my daughter to my brother for an hour of quiet.)
My brother or his wife will occasionally come and babysit her while the three of us just get out of the house but my wife mostly wants to sleep, my daughter hates that she gets no attention from either of us, and that is understandable.
No sitter in the local area will babysit for us and I can't blame them. The sitter who used to look after our oldest quit within a month of the baby being born because she couldn't take it.
At the start, my wife even pestered the hospital because she was sure that our baby had been switched at birth because our first was such an angel.
About two or three times a week sits me down and tries to convince me that we should give the baby up for adoption or leave it at a fires station. It feels like she's threatening me. and tells me that she loves me but if it comes to it thinks that it is better if we separate and she will take our daughter and leave me with the baby.
I can not lie, I do not love the baby. Nor does my wife. I wish I were deaf. Has anyone been through this? Please offer some advice.
Before we give you OP's two major updates and relevant comments about his wife, let's take a look at some of the top responses:
eclectofile writes:
Yep. I've been there. Almost exactly. Here's the good news: you're almost out of the woods. This won't last much longer; you're more than halfway through.
Here's even better news: for some reason, the anecdotal evidence suggests that hard first few months = easy next few years. Babies that are hell tend to be kids who are easygoing. YMMV, of course.
Our son SCREAMED whenever he was awake, and he didn't sleep much. My wife, a very well adjusted, strong, intelligent woman, was at her wits end. So was I, and I'm the big, mellow, "wave and smile at the guy who just flipped me off" type.
It was hell. HELL. Here are a few things that helped:
Our boy wanted to be kept upright and bounced or vigorously jiggled. To this end, we did the following: 1: We could put him in one of those upright baby carriers, strap him in and walk/jog/bounce. 2: Purchased several yoga balls to sit around the house with. Easy to hold the baby and bounce.
3: I got a sling that I could use to carry him slung across my chest. I'd sit around and use the upper side hand to hook under the strap then jiggle it up and down. For hours. My arm is so strong now.
Swaddling. There are tutorials, and specific swaddling cloths. Use them. We could count on a couple hours extra sleep if we swaddled him tightly.
LOUD NOISES! We would play loud music next to his crib, leave the vacuum on while under his crib, and leave a white noise soundtrack on full blast sometimes. Supposedly, these sounds emulate the noise of the womb, and lull the baby. Seemed to work some.
Teamwork. Work in shifts. We slept in shifts. Sleeping is super fucking important right now. Leave the house with the baby for hours if you have to, or send your wife away to a hotel to sleep.
Fatigue makes absolutely everything 10x worse, and neither of you are (or will be) operating at your full capacity for the next few weeks. Team up to give each other breaks.
Call on your support network. Make sure that EVERYONE knows what you're going through. This is straight-up HELL right now, and you guys need all the support you can get. Treat this like a family emergency.
If you're at all social, you've had numerous good hearted offers to "let me know if you need anything." Well, you need meals, shopping, laundry, cleaning and anything else that gets in the way of you and your wife napping like motherfucking soldiers on deployment. Seriously. Get every ounce of sleep you can, and use your support network to facilitate it.
Here's what didn't work for us: Doctors. After several visits to peds, Dr's, specialists and dietary gurus, I realized that we were trading sleep for highly-qualified, highly paid sympathy. Nothing they gave us worked. Instead we focused on getting some sleep.
Food additives. Volcanic ash infused with Tibetan herbs. Purified charcoal. Some funky stuff from Greece. Some crazy paste from Indonesia. You name it, we tried it. Nothing helped. Shouting back. Yelling "I fd ur mom!" Sleep swings, bouncy seats, swinging cradles, non-killer robots. Scream fuel, all.
There is no fix here. One day, you'll notice that baby isn't screaming so much. You'll think you imagined it. You'll put baby down for a nap and it'll be 15 minutes before a screaming fit. It'll be a fg miracle.
Then it will progressively get better and better. That's it. That's the only way out. You'll make it. Your first step is getting your wife some sleep. Get on that right away. Sleep makes all this possible.
Our boy is 8 now. I am beyond pleased with who he has become, who he is growing into. He's "one of the easy ones," according to parents, teachers, sitters, etc. My wife and I are very grateful for this - but we always swap a glance with each other when hearing praise like this. We've paid. We know. We went through hell. Just like you are now.
I wish I could tell you that we found a cure. We tried! In the end it was just time, teamwork, stolen sleep, support network and sheer grit.
Good luck! If you want to talk about this with someone who understands, feel free to hit me up. I hope my response helps a little - even just to know that you're not alone.
nowetbread writes:
I have been in a similar situation. Our oldest daughter screamed bloody murder every waking second of every single day for almost 6 months. She slept for 15 spurts and never longer than an hour.
We saw every doctor and specialist that we could and they couldn't find anything wrong with her. We owned every gadget, sung every song, read every book to her, tried every single toy, soothers, different diapers, different wipes, more tummy time, less tummy time, every different way of holding her, wearing her, white noise machines, etc. Nothing worked
We had my parents watch her, thinking it was something that we weren't doing right, but they had the same problem.
It was the worst period of our lives ever and we have both been through some shit. This baby was making us lose our sanity very quickly. We had different coping mechanisms.
My husband took up mowing the lawn for a really long time, working really long hours and painted the entire outside of the house by hand. I enjoyed such fun activities as screaming in pillows and praying to not wake up when I did sleep.
In the end, we did get through it. We never did find out what was wrong. Once she became able to express herself better, it went away. It was hell though. I really feel for you.
althalia writes:
Sorry I can't offer more advice than this - but I saw you said "the doctor" - does that mean you've only seen 1 doctor about this? Can you get a second opinion? Is the baby breastfed or bottle fed?
If breastfed, have you tried doing an elimination diet? Neither of my kids could have dairy, my first spent the first 5 weeks of her life screaming, the day I cut dairy out of my diet, she calmed down.
I only thought to try it because one day my mom told me I couldn't have dairy when I was a baby (I was like why did you not tell me this weeks sooner????). I could tell when I accidentally ate dairy because her stomach would get rock hard and she'd cry/scream for hours. If the baby is bottle fed, ask your doctor about trying a hypoallergenic formula. It's expensive but it might help.
In the meantime, do you have ear plugs? Can your eldest daughter spend more time out of the house?
failmom writes:
Babies dont.scream for hours on end for no reason. The reason just hasnt been found. This is not anyones fault. Just a lack of being able to communicate.
Being so sleep deprived i get why you all feel that way. I nearly gave up my middle child for adoption because my older son would not stop attacking him. I understand those feelings all to well.
I also soldiered on for years and had a mental breakdown where i signed my. Kids into voluntary care for 8 months because i could not care for them. Everything is peachy now two years later. I even have another baby and all my kids full time. None of this comes from a place of judgement. Ive been there.
Call social services. They can and will work with your family. I wish i had earlier. I needed support and they were able to give it.
They were able to by pass long wait lists and access services my kids would have had extended waits for had they not be involved. They got me in therapy, my mental health diagnosis etc. That is ideally how they want to work with families. Not swoop in and steal children. Best choice i ever made.
Then, OP provides this update:
UPDATE: Thank you for the immense support that was offered in the previous thread. I was encouraged to hear of so many parents who have gone through this and come out the other end and my heart goes out to all of the other parents struggling with the same thing.
I think the key thing to keep in mind is that none of us know five year old kids who cry all day, so at some point this will stop.
A lot of you were right, we got a prescription for ranitidine on a four-week trial which we can pick up tomorrow. Apparently, because of NICE guidelines, they try not to prescribe this stuff too much to babies but I cried in front of the doctor and this really is the last resort.
To solve the family problems my wife is going to take a two-week vacation to see her sister with our oldest daughter on Friday, over the weekend the baby and I are going to stay at a friend's empty cottage to see if it is something wrong with the house.
We also contacted the fire department about carbon monoxide and they said that they can send someone to check the house out.
My boss is really understanding, his baby went through a similar thing, and I am taking two months for paternity leave so that my wife and daughter can move back into the house and I can stay with the baby at the cottage.
One big bit of progress was that we managed to somewhat calm her down and get her to sleep a lot easier by following the suggestions in the thread and taking her in the bath. I took her in the bathtub with me and held her in the warm water.
Someone suggested a colic baby white noise track and I had the brainwave that maybe the sound of the water was what was calming her.
The colic track made me wonder whether a heartbeat white noise would work, so in the bath I played a heartbeat and womb noises track quite loudly and she was calm for about half an hour and then fell asleep.
I suspect that some of the commenters were right in their idea that the noise of her own crying was hurting her, so we ordered some ear defenders for her too.
When she wakes up in the night we can usually soothe her within about 10 minutes back to sleep, but during the evening we ended up in the bathtub three times because it was making a difference. I'm blown away that it makes such a difference and I wish we had tried it sooner.
I feel so guilty that we hadn't considered reflux earlier, we could have saved her so much discomfort, she has been crying literally her entire life. I feel like an awful parent, but hopefully, we can make a difference.
My question is, would it be harmful to her if I just had her in warm water for considerable periods of time throughout the day? If it calms her I'll gladly spend an hour at a time in the tub.
OP's next update, a few months later:
First I just want to thank everyone for the support that they showed in my previous thread, and also offer encouragement to the parents who said that they were going through similar things. I was so touched by the outpouring of support and offers of help.
So it seems like it was a combination of reflux and discomfort at the sound of her own crying. Very loud white noise, being in the water and reflux medicine all helped her.
I am still staying with her at my friend's place and my daughter and wife are at home. The plan is that we will live apart until the end of August. Though I am a bit worried that my wife doesn't seem to want to bond with the baby, that is a hurdle for another day.
More relevant comments from OP about his wife:
My wife just wants to give the baby up full stop. I have tried to encourage her to go for therapy but after a lot of frank conversations, she isn't depressed, just fed up, she is rational about the situation and just doesn't want the baby, she wants our family back to the way it was before.
She was so excited during the pregnancy so has taken the disappointment quite well. I am worried that if we give the baby up to care my wife won't want her back.
My wife wasn't able to breastfeed either of them due to inverted nipples, it upset her the first time round but now she doesn't even like to swaddle the baby.
Her baby matress is on an incline as that apparently works very well for colic babies but not for her.When will it pass? When I reasoned with my wife that it won't last more than a year, she said she would rather just cut her losses now for the sake of our older child.
I know she (baby) isn't doing (crying) it on purpose, but my older daughter still does feel that way and she doesn't understand. My wife and I just don't feel the same love for the baby as we do for our oldest.
It isn't any of those things, we do take care of her, she just cries regardless.Water is an interesting one because she does calm down for a little bit at the beginning of a bath when we put her in warm water, but then she cries again.We take turns with headphones and it solves the volume but not the relationship.
My wife takes the weekend off and my daughter stays with my brother's family every single night. No one will sit for us so it is either me or my wife. Our old sitter quit because of the baby and my wife just wants to give the baby up or leave me and take our daughter until this stops.
If she (wife) does leave, then I will have to take my paternity leave and just deal with the baby 24/7. I feel like a monster but I don't love the baby. I wish I were deaf. But I don't want to give her up either. Maybe I do want to give her up, I just don't want to live with myself for the rest of my life knowing that we did?
It makes me feel hurt but I can see where she is coming from. Neither of us have bonded with the baby the way that we should have or did with our first because she just cries and cries and cries.
We show her affection but it seems like it doesn't register to her. She isn't so much a baby as she is a noise making robot it feels. If my wife did pack up her bags and leave tomorrow, I would have to take paternity leave to care for the baby 24/7 but obviously I love my wife and want to keep our marriage together.
But that might just be the best thing for our older daughter. I don't want to be on my own but I also don't think I could live with myself if we gave our daughter up. We got bad luck and now we have to deal with it.
She has discussed this with the home visitor but she just says that there are groups to join and that this will pass.We have approached a few nanny agencies but they said that they couldn't provide a sitter for a baby that fussy, and we have had our usual sitter quit on us, and several others refuse.
Thanks for the advice, she is seeing a therapist but it doesn't seem to be making any difference because she tends not to get overly emotional, just gets quite 'logical' as in tries to solve a problem rather than getting upset about it.
I don't think we need couple's counselling, there's nothing really wrong with our relationship per se. We still love each other very much and neither of us want to separate or end our marriage.
Edit: I think you've changed your post? She didn't kick me out, we thought it would be best for both our kids if we had some space, and originally thought that the house might be part of the problem for our baby in terms of allergies or something.
Thanks for your support and your understanding. I do see that we are taking an unequal burden when it comes to the baby but with all things considered, my wife is working while I am not...
so she is the sole earner in our family now, and she is looking after our other daughter who until now had essentially been unloaded on summer school and relatives, and she needs attention too.
She understands why I am not around at the moment. We facetime together, and she is used to me being away for a little while at a time so is not distressed at the separation. I guess this is the time of strife in our family where we need to put 'needs' first and not bother with 'wants'.
Hypothetically she could take some turns but she's already working closer to full time than part time, and she has our daughter home all week.
I guess it wouldn't be as unusual if the genders were swapped because a lot of women are permanent homemakers while men work and have a fairly low amount of childcare duty. 'Me time' would be nice but I can live without it, so, for now, I'll be fine.