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Pregnancy

Talk about every stage of pregnancy, from early symptoms to preparing for birth.

Tired of not getting a good sleep at night

5 replies

91mana · 21/11/2022 09:42

I am one of those people who really love to sleep, and can't function the next day if don't get a good sleep the night before. I am currently in the 6th month of pregnancy with my first child and I am so sick of waking up 3-5 times a night to use the toilet.
Not a single morning I feel rested and ready for a new day. I feel I just drag myself throughout the day hoping I will catch a good sleep the next night.

I really start to worry about how will I handle this routine for the next 3 more months and then even more once I will deliver a baby. I start to question if I will be a good mother because I am afraid that I will blame the baby for my bad sleep and restlessness. Just for a record, the pregnancy was planned and I have always been looking forward to becoming a mother.

OP posts:
WineIsMyCarb · 21/11/2022 09:46

I slept better once baby arrived all 3 times OP. When baby is out then your DH can have them for the evening, so you get an early night. Helps counter getting up 2or 3 (or more!) times for baby. My quality of sleep was better too... if baby was asleep I was dead to the world, whereas when pregnant I just couldn't drift off and was only lightly asleep. With regards to blaming baby, yes, I've said some rather rude things to my babies but they don't remember and it's amazing what sort of rude names you can call a baby if you do it in a soothing loving voice 😂

ChocoFudge · 21/11/2022 10:07

Pregnancy sleep is awful. You will sleep so much better when the baby arrives!

Newlifestartingatlast · 21/11/2022 10:33

Ok, maybe not what you want to hear and based on my experience and that of friends….

I reckon pregnancy lack of sleep “ trains” you for when baby arrives . If you’re BF you’re going to get woken lots in the night, and if you have a baby that is colicky or just a poor sleeper, you’ll be awake with them for an hour a time or even more. and it’ll be 3-4 years before you get uninterrupted sleep again. For me I Got very worked up during pregnancy worrying about sleep. I’m sure part of my PND was sheer sleep depravation. I never really got back to a full uninterrupted 8 hours after 2 dc and 7 years of broken nights whilst they were young

and then that trains you for waking lots with perimenopause- night sweats, restless legs, or even stupid overwhelming anxiety in middle of night. And then bladder issues again

i used to react very badly to not having 6-8 hours uninterrupted pre kids - very short tempered, frazzled, believing that I could not cope.

but By the time I was premenopausal and having to hold down a job that included regular international travel included sleeping in strange beds and jet lag, I realised I can function adequately on as little as 4 hours sleep for 2-3 days/ nights. After that I struggle and will crash out. But 4-5 hours at a single stretchy, followed by 1-2 hours awake, followed by another 1-2 sleep is my norm now ( post menopausal). It’s not ideal, I’m very aware that poor sleep is now thought to be a cause of altzeimers and managing on 4 hours sleep routinely ( as per Maggie thatchers brag), is not healthy or desirable. I make a point still of early bedtime so I can get my 6-8 hours min in the 2 stretches, but still get up at 7am.

best thing is to accept night your sleep will be broken from now on and figure out what works best for you to adapt to it. Almost certainly, you’ll need to Go to bed a bit earlier and train your body to adjust to earlier bedtime. If you struggle to get back to sleep once you wake in the night (my issue and very common for women and elderly), find what works best for you. There’s all sorts of advice out there on internet- I personally use audible or podcasts with spoken voice - distracts any anxiety that starts to build about random shit, and a single voice becomes a bit of mono tonal white noise. There some recent research out there about blue noise not white noise- not looked into that yet

You will adapt to this. You may be lucky and able to restore your sleep post birth like some of posters here. But it is also better to accept it may not, and that’s relatively normal.

TokenGinger · 21/11/2022 10:39

I agree with the PP that the pregnancy lack of sleep trains you for the reality of a baby. I thought pregnancy sleep was bad until I had a baby who would not sleep for longer than 30 minutes at a time for the first six months, and after that, only for two hours. It was an absolute killer and I did resent the situation at times but we muddled through and it's a distant memory now. He didn't start sleeping through until he was 2.5 years old, so it was a long stretch for us. I don't want to lie and say it'll all be okay. Some people have great sleepers, but we weren't lucky enough for that. It was tough, but I took the advice of sleeping when baby sleeps. Bugger the washing pile or the vacuuming etc. If he slept, I got into bed with him.

trrk · 21/11/2022 12:07

i was up every 2 hr or so during pregnancy but did get used to it. After 3 days of no sleep in the hospital and a few weeks when baby was nocturnal my sleep did improve again. A positive that came out of not managing to breastfeed was that my DH could take a more active role in night feeds and did the 9pm-1am shift for the first 2 months allowing me at least 4 hr of uninterrupted sleep, usually more depending on the time of the next feed. I did have a period of terrible post-natal insomnia around 3-4 months when I just couldn’t sleep after the first night wake up at ~1am (which made me worried it was peri-menopause as was very similar to the symptoms described by pp above). Luckily that has passed and DD (now 4.5 months) is either sleeping through the night or waking for one feed that my DH often does (he is better at falling asleep afterwards) so I’m sleeping quite well again. Just dreading the 4 month sleep regression now! So for me it’s been a pretty mixed bag sleep wise and I expect it will continue to change over the next few years.

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