[jk3775]

I have a 5 month old baby and I’ve been dealing with bad insomnia since about 3 months postpartum. Baby will wake up at odd hours still so there is not a lot of predictability each night. Essentially, I now wake up naturally around 11 or midnight every night, waiting for her to wake up. If she continues sleeping, it’s even worse because I’m essentially lying awake and waiting for her to wake up. Then, after the wake up, my brain is very awake and it takes up to 3 hours to go back to sleep. The cycle repeats with the next wake up. Best case scenario I’m able to go back to sleep within a couple hours after each wake up. Worst case scenario (most common these days) is I’m awake from 11 or midnight on for the rest of the night.
It’s gotten to the point that even if dad takes the night duties, I will still often wake at 11 or midnight and then not be able to go back to sleep. Any tips?

[hiker]

Hi jk3775, I am a 73 year-old man with no kids, so I can understand if you dismiss what I am about to say. But it sounds like you are dealing not with specific postpartum depression, but rather yet another example of sleep anxiety, which most of us can relate to.

No doubt you have a specific, present trigger toward awakening, i.e. baby cries and needs your help. But it sounds like this has morphed into a bigger problem. It’s not just baby is crying; I wake up and help; then go back to sleep; baby cries; I wake up and help….etc. —-but rather the anticipating the next time is keeping you awake in the interim. Even when you know you don’t have to get up next time because dad will be handling it.

Not sure I’ve got every detail right here, but I do recall reading about experiments with Buddhist monks with a researcher at the University of…Wisconsin? They were subjected to interruptions of some sort, I think even mild electric shocks. A second group of well, non-monks who had not adopted the practice of focusing on the present moment went through the same process. The second group showed more signs of ongoing anxiety, e.g. increased blood pressure than the monks.

Sorry if I’m not getting every detail right here, but the upshot is the monks were able to recover from the adverse stimulus more quickly. They were able to focus on the post-shock time, moment by moment, without apparently worrying about the next shock, whether that would be coming minutes or hours from now.

Wonderful, if only we could achieve this kind of serenity, right? But maybe to a degree at least? So that yes, baby may well wake you up again later in the night, but in this present moment all is quiet. Whether you call it mindfulness meditation, or exploring how our thoughts can intrude on our present as Martin does in his course….I think it does come down to living in the present moment, or at least giving it our best shot. Alternative: bracing for what might happen in the future, or ruminating about the past.

And no, I have not achieved total serenity by a long shot. Definitely easier said than done.

I hope you will read other posts and check out Martin’s podcasts etc. for other ideas also.

[Author]

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