Advice on my own sleep anxiety for night wakings

[Mrsharper88]

Hi
I would like advice around my own sleep anxiety with baby/toddler night wakings. I suffer from anxiety and have always had difficulty with insomnia.

My anxiety around sleep became unmanageable after having DS1 (now two) and by the time he was one I could not manage his night time wakings without suffering anxiety and verging on panic attacks so my DP had to take over almost every time which was unfair and made me feel useless. It stemmed from worrying about getting back to sleep myself (which I rarely manage) but became irrational.

I am about to have DC2 and am worried about how I will manage this again and I know it would help my self-esteem if I felt capable of managing some nights without DP having to step in every time. I suffered PND after having DS1 so I really want to try and get into good mental health before this baby arrives.

I cannot find any guidance online about how to tackle this, does anyone have any advice/experience or able to direct me to somewhere that does?

Thank you xx

Not sure I can offer much advice but I am suffering exactly from what you describe.

I have a 7 week old and I literally find night feeds torture. I spend the whole day dreading the night. It’s the unknown that’s terrifying. I’ve no idea if I will get any sleep or not. For me the nights where he is fussy and I can’t settle have an enormous impact. Like you I have anxiety which is made way worse by lack of sleep. If I don’t sleep my moods hit rock bottom and dh will most likely find me sobbing my heart out the next morning. I also find sleeping in the same room as the baby extremely hard as I’m always on edge.

I do t have a solution but I do have a bit of a strategy that helps. We manage to share the night feeds so we both get 4/5 hours solid sleep. I go to bed in the spare room at 9.30. Dh feeds baby at 10ish when he wakes and sleeps with him till he wakes at 2.30/3am. Then we switch rooms. Sleep after the night waking is really hard to get as he will often wake up wet around 4 and his waking time varies after that between 5.45 and 7.15. But if I have managed to sleep between 9.30 and the night feed I have a bit of energy to cope. I feel a bit useless too as dh had to work and get up at 2.30. But I wouldn’t cope otherwise plus he can sleep until 8.

It doesn’t always work and out baby is quite a good sleeper. He is bottle fed breast milk and formula so this may make it easier too. But the principle is to try to ensure you and dh can get enough sleep to cope on.

The other thing is to wear earplugs or headphones. I can still hear the baby but muffling him out a bit helps me sleep. Sometimes I listen to sleep hypnosis to switch me off.look it up on you tube.

Good luck!

I'm sorry, that sounds really rough.

I don't have personal experience of this specific problem, although I have had anxiety issues in the past. I do think that if something is having a debilitating effect on you then it's definitely worth considering some sort of professional help. Maybe you could benefit from some counselling or something like CBT? My midwife made me aware of some local mental health resources (although I didn't end up needing them, so I can't give any experience of them) - maybe yours can point you in the right direction?

I also found transcendental meditation helped with my anxiety a lot, although I would warn you that I went to a class to learn it, and there was a lot of strange spiritual type stuff surrounding it that I found off-putting. But the actual technique was useful!

@Mrsharper88 before I had children I had always suffered on and off with anxiety and insomnia. After a bad bout of insomnia I actually became fearful of going to bed and would have panic attack’s at the very thought of going to bed. After 2 weeks without sleep I went to the doctor and was put on Citalopram. It saved me and i recovered after a few months.

I had exactly this and it is a symptom of post natal anxiety. I started sertraline and it really really helped.
Also what I would say is SLEEP TRAIN your baby as early as you can. Good sleep habits will help your baby but more importantly you will safeguard your own mental health.

Thank you your replies. It's so good to know I am not alone. I think I will book an appointment to see my GP to see what support can be offered, I hadn't considered doing that.

Thank you again xx

Hi I was/am the sane!when lo was tiny I would start to panic from around 5pm ,I couldn't put him to sleep as worried he wouldn't sleep for me so oh had to do it . I would literally feel sick . I went to doc for this and generally pnd am on citalopram now. Lo is 8 months now I still worry evey night but no where near as bad as before .I used to think if he wouldn't sleep I couldn't solve it ,then he hit 4, month regression and woke every hour and I realised I had little control of him waking and was part of the baby thing so it actually made me relax more as what I was worried about actually happen and we still here . Very tired but still here !! Sleep is so stressful esp when sleep deprived. . Hang in there . An def go to gp it def helped me.

If I wake up at night and feel anxious, I stop and say to yourself, "everything is going to be alright" over and over in a slow and calm voice.