Why You Cannot Sleep When the Baby Sleeps

There is a kind of tired that cannot fall asleep. You are exhausted to the bone, the house is finally quiet, and your body behaves as if someone has to stay on watch. That someone is you.

You lie down and your hearing takes over. Every rustle from the bassinet, every pause between breaths, every car door out on the street. You check the monitor, then check it again in case the picture froze. If you do drift off, you wake twenty minutes later with your heart pounding, sure you have missed something.

This is not a bedtime routine problem. It is a nervous system that has decided it is not safe to stand down.

• 01

  Listening for the baby long after they have settled, even with the monitor beside you

• 02

  Getting up to check breathing you could already hear

• 03

  Muscles that stay tensed in bed, as if you might need to move fast

• 04

  Being unable to let your partner take a night, or letting them and lying awake anyway

• 05

  Dread as the evening comes on, because you already know how the night will go

Some alertness after birth is built in: a newborn needs someone listening. When the birth was frightening, or anxiety was already running high in pregnancy, that alertness can stick in the on position. Your body learned that things go wrong quickly, and it does not intend to be caught off guard again.

Night is when that alarm has the most room. The tasks stop, the house goes dark and quiet, and a system tuned for trouble has nothing to do but listen. For some women the dark carries its own charge, because the worst hours of the birth happened at night.

Then the night starts to feed itself. You lie awake worrying about how little sleep is left, which keeps you awake. Every check of the monitor ends with the baby fine, and your body credits the checking rather than the baby, so the urge comes back sooner.

• 01

  Hand over the watch out loud. If someone else is on duty, say so plainly, 'You have the baby until two,' and put the monitor in their room.

• 02

  Make your out breath longer than your in breath for a minute or two. A slow exhale is one of the few direct lines you have to a braced body.

• 03

  Set a checking rule in daylight, such as one look when you wake and then back to sleep. It is easier to keep than a decision made at 2am.

• 04

  Let rest count. Lying still with your eyes closed is still rest, and calling it a failure gives the alarm more to work with.

• 05

  Keep your phone across the room. A late-night search will always find something to be frightened of.

If you get the chance to sleep and still cannot, night after night, tell your doctor or midwife. There can be physical reasons for sleeplessness after birth, and they deserve a proper look.

If this has gone on for more than a few weeks, if you have started to dread bedtime, or if the bracing follows you through the day, this is more than newborn tiredness, and it is worth working on now rather than waiting for the baby to sleep through. I start with the body rather than the worry: somatic work and Brainspotting meet the bracing where it lives, in your shoulders, your breath and your startle. If the alarm was set during the birth, we work with that too, and you stay in charge of how much you say about it. Sessions are in person in Prince George or by telehealth anywhere in Virginia.

If Your Nights Look Like This

The consultation is free and it is only a conversation. Fifteen minutes, no pressure, and you decide afterward.