4 Tips for Coping with Newborn Sleep Deprivation
I’ll be completely honest with you: the number one thing that I dreaded when I got pregnant with my first child was the sleep deprivation of the newborn stage. I was more nervous about how I’d handle that than how I’d handle childbirth! And guess what? When I got pregnant with my second, I STILL dreaded sleep deprivation the most.
Even an “easy” baby is still going to wake you up at some point. There are varying degrees of exhausted parent, but one thing is constant: new moms are going to be up during the night at some point (usually many, many points over many, many nights). In talking to a lot of tired mothers, another common theme emerges: night wakings aren’t just physically tiring – they’re emotionally exhausting as well.
Many moms report that nighttime wakings cause some of their lowest points with a new baby. At the beginning, you’re completely worn out from labor and delivery and desperately need sleep to recover. You feel totally alone and isolated because it seems like literally everyone else in the world is asleep except for you. If you’re breastfeeding, you might be in physical pain and seething with resentment that your husband is still peacefully dozing with his useless nipples. If your baby is hitting that four-month sleep regression, you might be wondering if you’ll ever get a full night’s rest again. If you’ve been awake for hours at a time, you might even experience scary moments of wanting to shake your baby or visualize awful things happening to them.
None of these things mean that you’re a bad mom or that you’re doing something wrong – babies simply have a different sleep schedule than we do. They aren’t born knowing the difference between day and night, they haven’t learned to self-soothe and transition from one sleep cycle to the next, and their tummies are so small that they need to eat every few hours. Rest assured that nighttime wakings are a totally normal and expected part of new parenthood! However, I know that doesn’t make it any easier when baby is awake for the fourth time in one night. So, without further ado, here are some tips and tricks for emotionally coping with night wakings. If you can’t stop ‘em, you might as well learn to handle ‘em!
Make it as enjoyable as possible
Find a book or a new show on Netflix that you’re really excited about so that when you wake up, you think “Oh good, I get to find out what happens next!” Set up a comfortable spot with everything you need in arm’s reach: remote, phone charger, water, snacks, pillows, etc. A friend of mine told me recently that she actually looked forward to nursing her baby at night because it was the only time she could watch her shows without getting interrupted by her toddler. I’ve even been known to stay up reading even after my son fell asleep because I was too involved in my book! You know you’ll be awake, so you might as well make the most of it.
Check your thoughts
Our emotional responses follow our thoughts. If we’re stumbling through the dark thinking, “This is the worst thing ever! I’ll never sleep again!” (this is called catastrophizing, by the way, and it happens to be my favorite way of tormenting myself at night), then we’ll be emotional messes. Telling yourself, “This isn’t fair, I shouldn’t be awake!” only makes you more resentful and does nothing to convince your baby to go to sleep. “I can’t handle this anymore!” makes you feel like you’re at your breaking point.
Check your thoughts at the nursery door and gently challenge your thinking. Tell yourself, “This is totally normal. All babies wake up at night, and all babies eventually learn to sleep.” The most helpful thing that I repeat to myself is, “I will sleep again. I will not be awake forever. I am tired, but I can handle this.” Now THAT’S something that should be embroidered on a pillow for baby’s room!
Set a time limit
Let’s talk about those scary thoughts. If you ever feel that you might physically harm your baby or you start imagining terrible things happening to them, it is absolutely okay to wake up your partner or set the baby down and walk away. Sleep deprivation is literally used as a form of torture, so if you’ve been awake for more than a few hours, you might be approaching an emotionally unsafe state. My personal time limit is two hours. If I’m awake longer than that, my coping skills disintegrate. Our family arrangement is that I handle most of the night wakings, but my husband knows that he gets tagged immediately if I pass that two-hour mark (or if I’ve been up a certain number of times already).
I highly recommend discussing a backup plan for those really difficult nights. I know many partners are willing to help, but an exhausted mom often gets stuck and unable to find the escape hatch. Make the plan ahead of time so that you’re not trying to decide at 3 am if you should wake up your partner because you feel like you’re going to die if you don’t get some sleep (hint: you probably should).
Go to bed early
This one seems pretty obvious, but so many of us fall into the trap of staying up later than we should to clean up after dinner, veg out in front of the TV, or get a few more things done. When you’re in the baby trenches, prioritize sleep over all of that. You literally can’t function without sleep, so make sure you squeeze as much into your schedule as possible. I’m not going to tell you to sleep when the baby sleeps, because I know babies sleep at weird times and you do have a house/job/other children to care for. However, if you know the baby will be waking up 3+ times a night, go to bed as soon as you can. Nurse or feed the baby one last time, hand her over to your partner to rock/bounce to sleep, and hightail it to bed. Leave the dishes, turn off your phone, get a sleep mask if it’s still light outside, and sleep as much as you can before the night shift starts.
I know there will still be nights that you think you can’t survive another minute awake, but to my knowledge, no new parent has literally died of sleep deprivation (although many of us think we will *raises hand*). This phase is so hard, and while no tips or tricks will make it easy, I hope that these suggestions will at least make it a little more bearable.
Just remember: You WILL sleep again. I promise! Until then,
Take care of yourself!
