I could never hate my daughter (3 y.o). Does it get frustrating that she purposely tests boundaries every second and malicious compliance is her middle name? Sure! However, the unconditional love is the best feeling in itself. Especially days like yesterday when I only saw her for 15 min, due to work, and we cuddled and read bedtime stories.
Not sure how it changes when they get older, but from personal experience growing up, think it’s always important to embrace them for who they are and guide them the best you can. What helps is a lot of personal reflection, because it’s so easy to want to mold them into a specific individual to feel in control when everything around you is falling apart or you got personal trauma that is not addressed properly. However, that’s so counterproductive. You just got to let your kid be themselves.
It gets better, I promise.
We had no direct family help and our little one was the same for 12 weeks. We ended up finding a rhythm of three hour shifts overnight. It tremendously helped that I had paternal leave for 14 weeks, so I really hope you or your partner have something similar. It turned out that she was full of gas because of issues with breastfeeding, so we switched to formula. Couple weeks later she slept through the night like a champ.
A big motto we adopted during the time is: “I got to take care of myself, so I can take care of her”. So alternating sleeping times was the biggest benefit, since sleep deprivation was a hellscape.