How to fall asleep after baby wakes you up

[Arianna1]

Probably thanks to the fact that my 2.5 year old pretty much never slept through and these days wakes at least once and I need to get our of bed and put him back to sleep, I can no longer then fall back asleep (which is always around 1-3am). So I’ve slept for 3-4h, then I wake up, often before him (my body probably is anticipating his awakening), and then I can’t fall asleep for hours.. having that fake feeling that I’m awake. How do you cope with that?

I struggled with this when DS was tiny (although thank God he'd got over it by 2.5!) I found relaxing podcasts or guided relaxation etc really useful in telling my brain to switch off again.

I could have written that post! It is the most frustrating thing when baby is sleeping soundly at 4am and I'm willing myself to sleep but it just won't come.
Sorry I don't have any advice, just to say you're not alone!

The best bit of advise that helped me when I suffered with this was to not worry about sleep, just aim to rest. I found I was stressing about not being asleep and getting more and more agitated and annoyed at myself. When I stopped worrying about sleep and started just relaxing, reading a book, listening to something, whatever you find restful then sometimes the sleep followed, and if it didn't at least i wasn't as irritated about it wheh it was time to get up. Dont know if it will help everyone, but helped me.

I used to feel exactly the same. What helps me is sleep stories from the Calm app. No matter how awake I feel, I rarely get more than 10 minutes into one before I've drifted off. Agree with PP about focusing on rest rather than sleep.