Lack of sleep giving me terrible anxiety

[Aussierose2]

I have a nearly 3 year old and a 4 month old. The 4 month old is a terrible sleeper at night. He is up every hour at the moment and I'm exhausted. We have no family around to help as we emigrated and 3 year old is in daycare 2 days a week ( there is no space for him to go more ). I feel like it's having a terrible affect on my mental health and I'm not sure what to do. My mental health has never been great and we had a stillbirth back in 2020 which made me more anxious generally. Baby refuses to take a bottle so it's all on me. My husband does let me rest when I can but most of the time it's like I'm so overtired I can't sleep ? My anxiety is so high all the time 😭 not sure what I'm looking for just some solidarity I guess ! Thank you if you read this far !

I feel you OP.

I'm 9 months in with an hourly/two hourly waker. DP happy to supervise awakw times on the few days he's off but I'm both too tired to sleep, and have the huge responsibility of working on a self employment project so as I don't have to consider returning to work, so I don't regard myself as having the time to sleep. That stress is beginning to cause me significant anxiety the closer to the end of maternity leave I get, combined with the lack of proper rest.

I think something that's probably helping me is going for a 30 minute walk in the mornings when DD is due her first nap. Walking has a naturally calming effect due to the unconscious eye movement that occurs; that combined with some sun and fresh air on days like today are all scientifically backed ways to influence how you're feeling.

Whether you consider the GP or not is personal choice; it sounds like you know what the biggest contributor is (lack of sleep), which neither medication or therapy are going to help with. If there are other things going on though, or it's affecting your ability to function, then it's probably worth a visit.

I feel what you’re going through but don’t have any easy answers I’m afraid other than to take all the help offered by your DH and maybe persevere with the bottle so you can get a longer break.

I went through a really terrible period of insomnia which also led to constant anxiety at around 4 months and my baby wasn’t even sleeping that badly. The night feeds really messed with my sleep and it got to the point where I couldn’t sleep at all after the first night wake up at midnight. I came close to trying medication (sertraline) but didn’t in the end although it might be right for you.
The only thing that helped me was taking sleeping pills for a short period of time and letting my DH take over the night feeds for awhile (I never managed to breastfeed despite wanting to initially but FF has had some advantages). I feel so much better now and am sleeping a lot better.

I was desperate and tried other things like vitamins and magnesium supplements but don’t think any of that had an effect.