Sleep | How to cope when you aren’t getting enough…

Sleep is the main topic of conversation at almost every workshop I hold. It comes up for me and my Mum friends when we speak. For me, the mothers I work with and my friends, it is something that we are thinking about often. Daily, if not hourly. 

Sleep is the magic drug. Good sleep makes you feel fantastic. It is healing. With it comes peace, joy, emotional resilience. 

Not getting enough sleep is brutal. Especially when it is taking place over weeks, months, years. Especially when even if your baby is sleeping, you aren’t able to find that deep rest. Lying awake wondering when you will next be woken up. Spending hours scrolling on your phone, distracting yourself. 

How do you cope during the day if your baby won’t nap.  You aren’t getting any time in the day where you are off duty. That precious time where you can nap, get a shower, read, garden, exercise, cook, organise, work, put a wash on and/or dance around the kitchen. Getting some time where you can just think about yourself for a few minutes. 

There is so much noise and so much judgement about what to do here. What drives me crazy is that 99% of the conversation is about the baby. YOU MATTER TOO. 

The most important thing that your baby needs is their mother. You need to be there day in, day out. Often night in, and night out too. To be able to be there consistently for your baby, you need to have your basic needs met. 

It is possible to live on reserves for a while but eventually they will start to run out and you will start to feel really depleted. Really exhausted, low, unable to find the joy in the day. 

I’ve seen lots of mothers handle sleep differently but the main thing is that you are meeting your needs. 

So if you are thinking about sleep training, please know that it isn’t a bad thing. Please give yourself the grace to have a holistic view. What overall is going to be best for your family. If you would like some evidence based analysis, I recommend reading Cribsheet by Emily Oster and/or a wonderful long read from the Guardian, The diabolical genius of the baby advice industry by Oliver Burkeman. 

If sleep training isn’t the right thing for you and/or isn’t working for you, what do you need to have in place to support you? Someone to come and take the baby for a walk some days so you can nap? Do you need to go to sleep with the baby each evening, so you have a big window of time to patch together enough hours? Do you have an eye mask and ear plugs and you and your partner swap from night to night so you are getting a few nights each week where you get to sleep? Can you plan for easier days so you can spend more time resting to compensate for long nights? Do you need a very full snack cupboard to keep your energy levels high when experiencing a brutal period of sleep? 

The main thing I want you to reflect on is what is the right thing for you and your family. That will be a different answer for everyone (and, of course, that’s okay). What I want for you is for you to have a strong feeling that you are choosing, from your intuition, the right thing for you. Have you given yourself the space to really consider which path is right for you and your family? Are you and your partner in agreement? Do you have a plan in place to ensure you are getting what you need? 

If you would like some more support, help choosing what might be the right approach for you please do get in contact or have a look at options for having a session together. 

You could also have a read of this blog post which is around baby massage techniques and sleep. This might help with some ways of gently improving your baby’s sleep (and hopefully by extension, yours too). 

Sending you so much love and support as you navigate this journey. Please know that pretty much every mother I know is struggling with sleep too. It is normal for it to be hard. You aren’t doing anything wrong and are the perfect mother for your baby. 

It is one of those things that looks so simple on paper but in reality is so much more complicated and intuitive to master than simply finding the perfect nap gap, bedtime routine, number of minutes before intervention, night weaning etc etc etc.