I really appreciate you trying to help me problem solve, I genuinely do. But I don't think you realize how insane my kid is at this age, and that even buying him a new play pen is not going to prevent him from throwing hissyfits, banging his head on the walls and ultimately preventing me from getting down time. Independent play would be great, but right now I don't see how it would give me hours alone. Maybe at a younger or older age, but not at 11 months, no way in hell. This is the age of hissyfits, meltdowns and extreme neediness. I have and do try to leave him alone with himself to play (I do have baby gates and baby locks, etc). But you know what he does? He bangs his head against the wall, screams bloody murder and doesn't stop until I let him come into the room with me. He'll start hyperventilating and I genuinely fear he will have a heart attack. He wants CONSTANT attention, 24/7.
Earlier he was fine, but he's morphed into a monster. Literally in the past week or two - that's why I was able to cope before and now I'm not.
You are right -- parents all over the globe DO need downtime. But I don't see any way to get real downtime in the foreseeable future. I can and will try to go through a DBT book after work, at night, and sacrifice the few hours of sleep I get. That's really the only time I can do anything.
While my kid is awake, I definitely could not work through a DBT book, even if I left him in another room. Because I just can't focus on anything while my kid is screaming his brains out and banging his head on things. I just can't. Maybe some parents can, but his screaming sends me into complete meltdown mode and hysterics. It's genuinely, excruciatingly painful. And ridiculously stressful.
As it is now, I do leave him alone to try and get alone time. But it always ends the same way - he'll freak out, I'll try to ignore him but then he gets too loud, so I go in to calm him. He calms down, I leave again and try to resume what I was doing .... and it starts all over again. This can go on for entire days. It's not the kind of environment that would allow me to focus on DBT, or really anything that requires some degree of calm.
And yes, there are ways -- babysitters, nannies, family members. That is what every single doctor has told me -- "You cannot physically or mentally do this entirely on your own. It's not possible without some sort of support network." And they've all said I have to get AWAY from the baby, as in out of the house, somewhere where I won't hear him screaming and crying.
I didn't believe them at first, but now I see they were right. And I guess that is my frustration, because even when I try to explain how hard this all is, it's like people don't believe me or they think I'm just self sabotaging and not bothering to look for solutions. I am, I swear. My whole plan was to use the money from my grandma's house to pay for a babysitter/daycare. I was counting on it, and that was my lifeline. But for whatever reason, the aunt that evicted me has now not even taken any steps to sell the house. So it looks like she may have thrown me out so that someone else could live there. Who knows.
Anyways, sorry for the length of this. It turned into a vent rather than a response, and I probably babbled. I hope I didn't come off as defensive in any way; I'm just frustrated with the situation.
