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Our Antenatal and Postnatal Depression forum is a supportive space where you can share your postnatal depression experiences.

Antenatal/postnatal depression

Frustration at lack of sleep seems to be initiating a setback in my PND

1 reply

horriblerumpus · 25/02/2014 13:06

I had been coping pretty well since I went on Sertraline for my PND, but my LO is now almost 1 and he still doesn't flipping sleep. The only reason for his lack of sleep appears to be severe separation anxiety, or in other words a tendency to scream his head off to the point of making himself sick if I leave the room. If I sleep in his room he sleeps through the night, if I go out he will wake several times and scream the house down. There is literally nothing else wrong, proven by fact that he sleeps pretty soundly when I am in the room - even though not touching and rarely having to even utter a shush. I hear him stirring but just noticing I am in the room appears to be enough to make him just lie back down and close his eyes.
We have tried taking it in turns, but Daddy being in the room does not have the same effect, nor did our disastrous sharing experiment with his elder sibling.
I am now starting to feel really down again, and I am linking it into this. It's not so much lack of sleep, as I could sleep theoretically in his room, we have a fold out bed in there beside the cot and it is perfectly comfortable, but I find myself just lying awake stressing about what I have done wrong and how am I ever going to get out of his room and get to sleep in the same bed as my husband again! Then I end up in a vicious circle of lying awake stressing, makes me very tired, makes me more stressed and is now making me feel continuously anxious, which is how my PND manifests itself predominantly.
Has anyone got any advice on this? Either to help him to sleep so I can get back into my own bed and hope that this helps, or to help me to get back on track myself as the anxiety is now getting really bad again.
: ( Totally at my wits end and no idea what to do.

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violetbubbles · 25/02/2014 15:50

Hi there horriblerumpus - I could have written this a couple of years ago. My daughter was (and still kinda is) a rubbish sleeper. After trying everything (EVERYTHING!), we ended up buying a double bed for her room and I sleep in with her most nights. She will be 4 in June and although we are now stuck in this ridiculous situation I think I would have gone bat shit crazy if I hadn't started the co-sleeping at about age 2. I also had to start taking Sertraline as my mental health was suffering from the constant hourly wake ups.

Co-sleeping might not be the right path for you but I will say it helped us a lot. We went from nobody getting any sleep to all of us sleeping through the night because my presence seemed to calm her and help her to get back to sleep if she started stirring. As my husband and sister say, you do what you do to survive!

Good luck with everything x

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