Postpartum Insomnia - 3 months PP

[SophieB9]

Help! As soon as my baby hit 3 months I have developed sleep maintenance insomnia. I have no trouble getting to sleep as I'm usually so tired but as soon as I'm woken up no matter if I've been asleep for an hour or 4 I can not get back to sleep again at all or for at least 5 hours. I am running on between 2 and 4 hours of sleep a night depending how bad the insomnia is.
I don't understand it because I practice good sleep hygiene. Before this kicked in I was having a sleep from around 9pm to 11pm when my partner would pass LO to me and I would cosleep and breastfeed and pop him on breast when I woke and would have no problem falling back to sleep and we would both then get up around 8am. My sleep was broken but I felt rested the next day. I don't drink caffeine or alcohol, I limit screen time before bed, I read before I go to sleep. My mood has been fine and I've been enjoying motherhood but now the insomnia is affecting my mood and I find it hard to have energy to entertain LO all day.
My doctor won't prescribe me with sleeping tablets to break the cycle because I'm a new mom and cosleeping and I don't know how I'm going to break it otherwise. I keep reading that you should stop trying to sleep after 15 minutes and go and do something else to stop a negative association forming between the sleep space and me but I can't do that because I'm breastfeeding and cosleeping.
I guess I'm just looking for reassurance that this is hormonal and this will resolve on its own if anyone has experienced this? I don't know how long I can cope like this.

I certainly found at the beginning that the breastfeeding hormones made me want to go straight back to sleep after feeding the baby, and over time, that wore off! I now keep an eye mask by my bed because the bright mornings make it so hard to go back to sleep if I wake up after 4am.

You might be able to safely take melatonin (check, I don't know for certain when BFing) at an earlier wake up to try and help you go back to sleep for those crack of dawn wakes?

One thing that worked for me - and might not suit you - was that my partner would get up and pop the baby in the pram bassinet downstairs at about 5 or 6am and the baby would nap there until 7-8 when I would get up again. He would work on his laptop while the baby slept next to him. He used white noise to help the baby sleep.

It's part of the reason cosleeping never worked for me. I just couldn't do the "sleep when baby sleeps" thing and I needed to wind down etc. I needed the bed to be mine. I'm still breastfeeding at 8 months and it would be useful to not have to get up and go to his room every time he wakes up but i got less sleep trying to cosleep. We moved baby to his own room at 4.5 months.