Anxiety at night with newborn

[Sunflowers2424]

I have a 10 day old baby and I'm a new mum. We spent the first 3 days in hospital and have been home a week. The first night home was hard and I was so sleep deprived from not sleeping in hospital, the baby didn't settle and I was up all night trying to get him to sleep

Ever since every evening I get really awful anxiety worrying about the night ahead, we have had a mixture of very unsettled nights and better, each night I'm learning, growing in confidence and figuring out how to care for my baby but I still get this awful heartsinking feeling, it starts around 5pm I can't eat my evening meal I feel sick with worry.

I tend to feel ok during the day time.

Does any one else suffer or have suffered with this and can offer any advice?

My husband is on paternity leave and does help out but I feel that it falls to me if all else fails to get him settled.

Thanks x

My daughter pony and this was exactly her. She became very ill and she still has this anxiety and her daughter is 4. She won't have any more children as a result. Now this is the extreme. I urge you not to let it escalate. If you feel it's taking over then seek help from your HV or dr.
If not try and share night times with your partner. Talk about it so he knows. If you can have grandparent support during the evening or overnight it will help a lot. You won't feel so alone.
Good luck and congratulations on your baby! X

I remember this feeling. I think it's the combination of exhaustion, uncertainty about what the night will hold and not feeling confident that you and DH will cope.

The sheer frustration that a clearly tired baby won't bloody go to sleep as well!

Try to remind yourself that you will cope, just as you have so far. When mine were very little, I used to go to bed with them early evening and sort of get enough broken sleep from 8pm to 8am or so to cope. I also always had a book on the go (pre smart phones!), so I could read to distract myself a bit.

It's really tough when they aren't sleeping and the nights can feel very long. My biggest vit of advice is while you are in this stage give up on aiming for a normal routine. If it helps your anxiety to get up and feed the baby downstairs with the TV in the middle of the night then go back to bed and sleep from 5 am to midday off and on to catch up on sleep then just do it. If you need to eat breakfast st 5 am to feel better then do it. The first few months with a newborn are brutal and you do not need to be a superhero or stick to a perfect routine. You have decades of time with your kids to instill good routines and you aren't going to break them by being a bit unconventional now.

What worked for me was that I just cuddled them all evening whilst eating dinner with one hand and watching box sets with dh. At about 10pm he took over cuddling and I went to bed and slept for a few hours. Then dh would bring me the baby about 1 am, he would sleep for the rest of night and I could cope with the rest of the broken night in the spare room because I'd had that lovely block of sleep. Sometimes I'd get up again and watch TV because it was cold, dark and lonely when awake feeding through growth spurts. Just experiment with what makes you feel better and more human again. It doesn't last long in the big scheme of things but it feels long and relentless when you are in that phase, hang in there.

The early days are depressing - it’s normal to feel this way. Your hormones Re all over the place and it’s a constant rollercoaster of feeding, changing, crying and no sleep and you can’t get off. Just know you will feel better when your baby is a few months old, doing longer sleep stretches and getting a bit more predictable.

it’s extremely hard and you’re doing great!

both times for me the early days and week were absolute horror shows. It gets much better x