Postpartum insomnia

[W1ll0WLouise]

Hiya- looking for some positive stories to help me through. With my first child at around 3 months post partum I suddenly thought- what if I don’t sleep tonight? How will I look after my baby? So then of course I didn’t sleep and continued not to sleep for another two nights until I contacted GP. He prescribed sertraline and I went downhill very quickly. Made me extremely depressed/anxious for about 3 weeks (at the time I thought it was PND but I now know that that particular SSRI does not agree with me). But then everything started to lift and I went on to sleep normally again. I never felt depressed (until the sertraline) I just couldn’t sleep.

fastforward 3 years, and I have now had another baby 12 days ago 💕 but in my last couple of weeks of pregnancy I started worrying about the exact same thing again! If I’ve ever struggled with sleep in the past (I.e. before exams or high stress events) I would take a phenegarn, I’m talking like a couple of times a year maybe. However breastfeeding is super important to me and I know you can’t take things like that when BFing which I think is where the pressure then starts to come from? Like what will I do if I can’t sleep? So yes anyway she’s 12 days old and I’m struggling with the exact same thing again :( I started taking fluoxetine 2.5 weeks ago as the GP said it’s anxiety. During the days I feel fine! Don’t really feel anxious but just obsess about and worry about sleeping at night. It doesn’t help that bubba wakes every two hours at the moment for BF- so if I do drop off I wake up again to her.

just looking for some reassurance that things will get better. As right now it just feels like I’ll never sleep again

Hi there,
I can relate to your story and although I haven’t got a solution (I’ve just posted a similar question myself!) I thought I’d offer some perspective…
Things will 100% get better again as you’ve already been through all of this with your first one and you know that you managed to go back to your normal life! So stay strong…
This does sound like anxiety to me and having been in a similar situation myself I can tell you that CBT and relaxation techniques do help. Now, practising self care with a 12 day old baby isn’t easy I know but there are things you can do to manage your intrusive thoughts regarding sleep. What helped me was reframing my thoughts; so if your worry is that you won’t be able to look after your baby after a sleepless night, think of all the times you did that successfully with little to no sleep. So that’s your evidence that your thoughts aren’t telling you the truth! The next step is…let those thoughts go. Whenever a thought arise surrounding sleep ask yourself: is this thought helpful? Can I do anything right now to solve this problem? If the answer is no (as it’s likely to be), let that thought go like a cloud in the sky. Carry on with your day without engaging with intrusive thoughts, they will gradually disappear.
Good luck!

Thanks so much for your message!!
As I’ve been getting less anxious I am finding I’m sleeping better. It was just trying to break the vicious cycle I had got myself in.
It is interesting that you said they are intrusive thoughts.. I have heard of this before and never understood what it meant but that makes sense! I totally need to not feed those thoughts and look at them practically as you said.
thanks for your very helpful comment and taking the time to message 💕
xx

This is such a helpful comment, thank you!