Positive help to deal with anxiety around sleep deprivation

[morphette]

I suffer with anxiety mainly associated with my children's sleep, or rather lack of. They get ill a lot, have asthma and as such whenever they are ill, even if it's just a normal cold we go through nights of sleepless. We then have to undo things and get back on track again over the next week before it usually happens all over again. The coughing that comes with this I find really stressful so that I can't switch off to sleep even when I had the chance to! My kids are 5 and I also have 2 year old twins.

With that said, I am aware that sleepless nights come with the territory of parenting and I so I would like to tackle this anxiety I have. I would love to hear from other parents who suffer from sleepless nights but don't allow it to stress them too much. What is your attitude and approach to it? Perhaps I could learn something?

I have a terrible sleeper. I am at the point of acceptance now though. There's nothing I can do about DDs sleep, I can't control it BUT I can do things to help my own sleep so I focus on that.

I give myself sleep cues - so I'll use a lavender scent on my pillow, use an eye mask, sometimes one ear plug. I'll listen to a sleep 'hypnosis' track before sleep to relax me. And when im going to sleep ill stop looking at my phone and not pick it up again. I try do all of these things when sleep is good or bad, just being consistent with it is hard!

Thank you for your reply! These are all good suggestions, focus on what you can do not what you can't.

Embrace the 333 anxiety rule for parenting: Acknowledge three inevitable challenges, control three aspects of your response, and let go of three unnecessary worries to navigate sleepless nights with a more balanced perspective.