I sit here in tears - again - as I'm lost and overtired - again. I'm a useless mum

I've had every breastfeeding issue possible besides mastitis (although we suspect that the antibiotics for the staph in my nipples was the only thing that kept it at bay) and I'm on an array of drugs to keep my supply up and help eleviate the pain I feel from the nipple vasospasm. Although we finally seem to be getting somewhere, it hasn't been much fun to say the least.

I thought I had a placid baby. Well I guess we did, we had a very sleeping baby who had to be woken for feeds. In the early weeks, DD would have slept for 5 hours at a time had we let her. Now I struggle to get her to sleep let alone keep her asleep and she cries a lot. I guess you could say that she is high maitenance.

I can't work it out. DD sleeps pretty well at night and generally settles quite easily but her day starts very early and she is extremely hard to settle for day sleeps. Until her growth spurt started early last week, she was going down in the evenings at 7pm but now she just won't settle and I find I'm topping her up around 9.30 or so then finally getting her down. After her middle of the night feed, she will only sleep for an hour or two and then is up for a feed and ready to start her day with another feed at 4 or 5am. And then the day just goes downhill from there.

Generally DD will not settle again after her early morning feed. I see her tired cues and swaddle her and pop her in her bassinet but she just screams at me, she just hates going down. I often have to feed her or her rock her to sleep but then she usually wakes again once she is down. Often it can take me a couple of hours to get her to sleep and it isn't rare for her to stay awake until almost midday before she finally gives in - all that time I have been trying to settle her and feed her. It's so exhausting.

When she does finally go to sleep, I attempt to sleep too but she often wakes and needs help to resettle so my nap is interrupted constantly. The only way I can get a sleep to is if someone else watches her while I nap. This is just so strange as she generally sleeps really well at night.

The problem is worse when we are out an about as she seems to constantly get overstimulated. I've had several attempts at shopping but it's been a disaster each time. Although fed and sleepy when we arrive, once in her pram (which has a bassinet), DD just screams and screams. Yesterday I resorted to the sling and she finally fell asleep. It's so frustrating to see all the other mums walking around the shopping centres with their sleeping babies in their prams. Why won't my DD do that?

I got about 5.5 hours sleep last night (that's about standard) and I've been up since DD's 4am feed, trying to settle her since 5am. I put her in her bassinet at 5am as she had fallen asleep on me. At 5.15 she started crying and that continued until 8.15 when I popped her in the sling and she's been asleep for about half an hour now. I would love to sleep too but I don't want to risk waking her by putting her in her bassinet. So I will fight through the sleep deprivation yet again.

So why is this happening? I have no doubt she gets overtired but if she won't sleep when I put her down, then how can I stop her from getting overtired? I just feel like such a failure - on a daily basis. I've gotten to the point where I'm starting to dread each day as I just know I will fail yet again. I'm hopeless at this.

I'm slowing losing my marbles. I cry daily now due to the stress and sleep deprivation. We are doing a day stay at Ngala (a parenting help centre here in Perth) where they will spend the day seeing how we feed, settle and sleep with the focus being on settling. I hope so much that it will help.

I'm getting to the point where I'm too scared to go anywhere as she becomes so unsettled, overstimulated and overtired that it's a nightmare for both of us. I also feel like I should just stay at home so we can both catch up on some sleep but it's not doing much for my sanity. Although going out doesn't help my sanity either.

I guess I should be pleased that the breastfeeding issues are almost resolved (I cried daily over them too) but I think those issues have only made all the sleep and settling issues so much worse as I just feel like I have failed my DD since day dot. Will things get better?