This is hard for everyone right?

I’m having a rough couple weeks, feeling like nothing is going easily and I have no idea what I’m doing. You know misery loves company and it would be nice to know I’m not the only one having a hard time.

It’s so hard seeing the influencer moms with their schedules, and their babies that sleep independently and husbands that do all the night feeds. That’s not realistic, right?

For context, my baby was born prematurely at 33 weeks. She was in the NICU for 4 weeks with no issues, just learning how to eat. So technically she’s 4 months old, but developmentally she’s 9 weeks. So it feels like we’ve been doing the newborn stage forever, and I’m so tired!

She’s still eating every 2-3 hours, even at night, and she refuses to take a bottle , so I can’t leave her for more than an hour and get no help at nights. We were just at a lactation consultant appointment to work on the bottle feeding, where I found out that her weight gain has slowed down, from 28g/day to 20g, which just feels devastating because I feel like I’m feeding her constantly.

Furthermore, she’s not a very independent baby. Originally she wouldn’t even let us set her down for 2 minutes before crying, so we were co-sleeping and every nap was a contact nap. She’s gotten better, she’ll sit in her mommaroo swing and entertain herself sometimes up to 30 minutes. And I’ve gotten her sleeping in her bassinet (attached to the bed) most nights now. But still every nap during the day is usually in her solly wrap. If I get her down in her crib or bassinet, she will only sleep in there for 15-20 minutes before she wakes up wanting to be held, versus she’ll sleep for 2 hours on me. When I told our doctor that she wouldn’t sleep unless she was being held, she looked at me like I was crazy. And everyone always say to put them down drowsy but awake, which has never once worked for us. She has to be dead asleep for me to set her down.

I just feel like I’m doing something wrong, but I’m giving every ounce that I have and it just feels like it’s not enough.