Sleep deprivation - help!

[Giraffe14]

Hi all. I have a 4 week old baby girl. We had an unexpected stay in NICU when she was born which resulted in 3 nights of zero sleep at all for me followed by the last 3 A
and a bit weeks of broken sleep due to the night feeds/nappy changes and mostly because of how loud she is at night. Grunting, straining, squealing. We have a 3 year old too who is up for the day at 7 and I think all this broken sleep has manifested I to insomnia. I can't even seem to nap in the day no matter how exhausted I feel. I have been diagnosed with post natal anxiety but I can feel this escalating to PND and can see how much worse I get the more tired I am. I'm literally not getting nor have gotten more than 2 hours uninterrupted sleep in the last 4 weeks. Does anyone have any advice or ideas or even just a similar experience to share?? Tia

Congratulations!

Postnatal insomnia and PNA/PND certainly exist. Are you on medication for these. It might be that a prescription change is needed, might be worth a trip to your GP this week?

Babies sometimes are noisy. Maybe try a swaddle and dummy to see if it helps?

Assuming the baby is sleeping next to your bed, ear plugs and an eye mask may help you relax. You should still hear baby with ear plugs in if she's next to you, but it downs out background noise. White noise does similar.

Is your 3 year old napping? A cosleep nap with baby at the time toddler is napping may help.

I struggled massively with insomnia when doing night feeds. I would wake on alert to all her little noises and couldn't get to sleep after a feed as I knew I would be up again soon. I generally didn't nap as I either couldn't sleep or I would nap and then couldn't sleep at night.

What helped a bit for me was sleeping in another room as much as possible e.g. I would go to bed and DH would bring DD in later, either when she woke for a feed or I woke. In the early hours when DD was extra noisy I would go and sleep on the sofa bed and DH would bring her for feeds (breastfed bottle refuser). I would also fall asleep on the sofa often in the evening as this was easier than the bed, and developed my own routine (eye mask, ear plugs etc).

Not sure any of this will be helpful for you, but maybe might make you feel less alone. I found it isolating when people talked about falling straight asleep as they were so tired. It should gradually get better as night wakings space out. Are you breastfeeding or can you share any feeds?