I’m sitting here rocking with a 6 week old on my chest because that is the only thing that will keep her from screaming. It’s no fun. But in 20 years or so it will be a little better.
I genuinely don't know what I'd do if my daughter was like that. I suppose I would have developed coping mechanisms by now, but because she's been so easy, I just haven't.
6-8 weeks* is pretty reliably the "OMG what have we done I can't handle this we're all going to
die" time on mom forums. The despair posts come up again and again.
I have read many of them, and I take comfort in the fact that it could be worse. The parents sharing stories about their (good) little ones are invariably worse than my daughter, so I feel like a schmuck.
Fussing is fine. Crying is fine. This purple-faced-can-feel-the-heat-radiating-from-your-face howling is something else. I've never experienced anything like it.
It gets better, and it gets better soon. They suddenly start sleeping longer, and gaining awareness of their surroundings - including you!
Second 7-hour night last night! Woo!
My wife got a bunch of colorful dinosaur stickers and put them on the wall over the changing table. (Her room is dinosaur-themed.) The first time she saw them, her face lit up in a huge smile, and now every time we go to the "pushing table", she alternates between grinning at her dinosaur friends and red-faced straining.
(Why are a lot of baby toys/tools so dull? We have this swing thing with a mobile, and the colors are so dull. Must be because parents do the buying, and they want stuff that "looks nice" in the room, which means no crazy colors, most likely. That's my working hypothesis anyway.)
Right now, you need to make sure you're getting enough sleep to function and to deal with frustration. No amount of catnapping is a replacement for true sleep. You need a 5 hour unbroken stretch. Your wife needs the same. Take shifts to get that. If she's breastfeeding, get her to pump some immediately before and after going to sleep, so that you have something to feed the kid while she sleeps.
We both sleep 6-7 hours a night. Sometimes more. A has been a 4-5 hour sleeper since her 3rd week. We've been lucky. My wife takes the 1-3am feeding, I take the 4-6am feeding.
I will say that having both parents home certainly helps. Going to stink after 3 months when we go back to work
I went back to work after 3 or 4 weeks, I can't remember. I worked 2 days from home last week, and took Friday off. My patience with my daughter was definitely lower this weekend. I'm glad I'm back at work, and I prefer to be in the office. Time goes by faster, and seeing my daughter in the afternoon is more of a delight than when I stay home. The separation is good for sanity maintenance.
Those first few weeks at home, I felt like a prisoner, tbh. I don't know how my wife does it. The days are all mostly the same. I know she feels trapped, too. She's a teacher, and she took off from Christmas until the start of the year in September. We're already talking about summer daycare just so she can have more freedom.
It was nothing really bad like abuse or putting them into any danger, but I still feel terrible about letting out things that I should have kept in.
This was me the other day, the first time it happened. The second time went better, but I still felt this incredible frustration that went from 0 to light speed instantly. Fortunately for my daughter, raging aloud has the opposite effect, so I learned that pretty fast. I think if it happens again, I'll just go get my earmuffs that I use for mowing and snowblowing and put them on to take the edge off while I blast the white noise app in her face and rock her. If I shushed loud enough for her to hear me, I'd pass out in about 30 seconds.
So anyway, share your ups and downs with parenting. Photos, whatever. Maybe this thread will become a teenager around the same time she does. Or maybe it won't. I know there's a shitload of parents on here. 
