Parent's Sleep - Millpond

September 13, 2024

How to Overcome Insomnia After Becoming a Parent

Rebuilding the link between the bed and sleep

This is the third in a series of articles by Dr David Garley from the Better Sleep Clinic exploring why parents often struggle to get back to a healthy sleeping routine after having children.

In this post, we will look at the link between the bed and sleep.

You might have heard the story about Pavlov’s dogs. This man, Pavlov, used to feed his dogs at the exact same time each day, which happened to be the same time that church bells would ring. One day he was late arriving to feed his dogs, but noticed when he got there that they were already salivating. Even though he wasn’t there with the food, the church bells still rang which his dogs associated with feeding, so they reacted similarly.

It’s the same link with sleep that gets broken in insomnia.

In health, when we get into bed our minds and bodies associate this with sleep. We start to feel drowsy and when our heads hit the pillow, we should nod off in just a few minutes. This is how it is meant to happen.

If, through the experience of having a child not sleeping, you have spent so much time in bed worrying about your child, fearing they will have another bad night, or lying and waiting for them to cry – then this is what the bed will have come to mean for you, rather than sleep.

The bed will trigger stress and worry – which we know from the earlier article, has a fantastic ability to stop you from sleeping.

This is exactly why many people find they can fall asleep in front of the TV, but as soon as you get into bed – you’re wide awake.

How to rebuild the link between bed and sleep

The good news is that this link can be rebuilt – by only using the bed for sleep. There are four key points.

Only use the bed for sleep. Activities associated with wake should take place out of the bed. This means not using the bed to relax on during the day for reading or watching TV. Try to find somewhere else in your house for these other activities. The exception to this is sex.
Only go to bed when you’re actually sleepy. If you go to bed when you aren’t sleepy, you are unlikely to sleep. Feel empowered to watch an extra Netflix episode, or another chapter of a book until your eyelids feel heavy. Then go to bed.
If it’s not working, don’t force it. If, when you head to bed you find you cannot sleep, then stop trying. This sometimes feels quite jarring – ‘if I leave bed, how am I going to fall asleep?’. But if you lie in bed tossing and turning for hours on end, you will weaken the link between the bed meaning sleep, and likely get very annoyed in the process, threat will it self-make sleep very hard to come by.

A rough amount of time to try and fall asleep is around the 15-20 minute mark. It’s not exact, but if you feel that roughly this amount of time has elapsed, then get out of bed, leave the bedroom and sit in a comfortable chair in another room. Find a relaxing and distracting activity, such as reading, or listening to an audiobook and wait for the urge to sleep to naturally return.

The same approach should be used if you wake up in the night. It happens to us all – either we need a pee, or we hear a noise, or sometimes there’s no good reason at all. But don’t lie there getting irritated – get up, go for a sit downstairs (don’t do anything purposeful, like getting ahead on household chores) and give yourself a break.

It’s worth thinking about the practicalities of finding somewhere to go and relax if you wake up overnight and can’t get back to sleep. Do you have a favourite chair elsewhere in the house it would be good to sit in? Is it going to be cold? If so, have a dressing gown or slippers near your bedside so you can put them on without trying to find them in the dark. What are you going to do while sat in this comfortable chair? Read? Knit?! Make sure all the things you need are there already. How are you going to see it? Maybe a dim light with warm tones would be best. The idea is to make your midnight retreat as welcoming as possible, so you almost look forward to the idea of going there.

Lastly, in the morning when your alarm goes off, get up as soon as you can. Try to avoid continually hitting snooze, or loitering in bed. You might think that after a bad night’s sleep that the extra few minutes will do you good. The quality of sleep you get between snoozes is not great, and will only serve to weaken the association of the bed with quality sleep.

This process takes time, but persevere! Remember, every time you leave the bed when you feel wakeful, you strengthen the link between the bed meaning sleep.

If you feel you need more help with your sleep then consider booking in with an adult sleep clinic. The most effective treatment for these sleep problems is cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia, which The Better Sleep Clinic offers via online video sessions.

Written by Dr David Garley from the Better Sleep Clinic

To find out more visit www.thebettersleepclinic.co.uk

Information from the NHS on sleep problems

September 13, 2024

Coping with Nighttime Anxiety for Better Sleep

Dr David Garley from The Better Sleep Clinic explores why parents often struggle to get back into a healthy sleeping routine after having children, even when their baby or child is sleeping well.

How to manage anxious thoughts that occur at night.

Stress worry and anxiety are the three chief enemies of sleep. Such anxious thoughts can take many forms.

Commonly these involve lying awake and waiting for your child to cry, or having more anxious thoughts about your child in general.

Constructive worry

It’s natural for a loving parent to be concerned for their child’s well-being. However, there may be times when this concern creeps out of proportion and stops you from sleeping.

If you have spent a long time and put in a lot of effort getting your child back into a healthy sleeping pattern then it is quite natural to find yourself worrying that the sleep problem might return or lying vigilantly awake listening out for crying. Or sometimes you are listening out for any sound or noise at all, such as a creaking floorboard from next door, or a noise from outside. This vigilance is not helpful – it won’t impact your child’s health and can stop you from sleeping.

An effective approach for dealing with this is called ‘constructive worry’. This acknowledges that some anxious thoughts about your child’s health are reasonable, but it allows you to have these concerns in a more sustainable way that interferes less with your sleep.

A few hours before you go to sleep ideally after you have put your child to bed, give yourself 20 minutes or so to sit down with a piece of paper or a book and write down things about your child’s health that are on your mind.
Acknowledge that you have spent a lot of effort getting your child back to sleeping again, and be honest about how much this might be on your mind. Write down any fears you might have about the sleep problem coming back. Write down what a constructive approach would be if that happens – such as acknowledging that sleep problems are temporary issues with children, and that help on hand to get children back sleeping well.
If your child has recently been sleeping well, then make sure you acknowledge this in the book. Spend time thinking about anything else that is on your mind. Then, once you have come to the end of the 20 or so minutes, write down a time the following day, when you will think about these worries again.
You can now symbolically close the book. This way, when any concerns about your child come up in the night – either worrying about them crying, or about them in general, then you can think “I know I have these things to think about. They are important, and I will think about them, but not now when I’m trying to sleep”.
This is a very powerful way to clear your mind when you are trying to sleep.

If you feel you need more help with managing anxious thoughts about sleep, then it might be worth booking in with an adult sleep clinic. The most effective treatment for these sleep problems is cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia, which The Better Sleep Clinic offers via online video sessions.

To find out more visit www.thebettersleepclinic.co.uk

August 7, 2024

My child is sleeping through-why can’t I

Join us for part one of our series helping to improve parents’ sleep.

In this episode, we’ll explore why it’s hard to sleep even when your child is sleeping well.

It is very common for babies and children to pass through periods of struggling with their sleep. This can place significant stress on you as a parent, especially if you have other children or have returned to work.

Thankfully most issues around sleep with children are temporary, however, it is not uncommon to find that after your children have gone back to sleeping through the night, you struggle as a parent to get back into a good sleeping pattern.

This can be very frustrating after having succeeded with the challenge of getting your child sleeping again. It can also feel very lonely, to be the only one left awake in the household.

Why do parents struggle to get back into a healthy sleeping routine?

The reasons for this vary – sometimes you can find yourself lying awake, waiting for your baby to cry. Or sometimes you feel that after such a long time with interrupted nights, you’ve just forgotten how to sleep.

Looking at the first cause – lying awake and waiting for your baby to cry. This comes back to one of the common reasons behind insomnia – stress, worry and anxiety.

This is thought to be evolutional in origin. As mammals, we are very vulnerable as we sleep – lay on the floor with our eyes shut, not listening. Almost anything could walk up to us and eat us. To offset this risk, in the pre-sleep period, if we perceive any risk at all then our body’s reaction is to stay awake.

If you could imagine when we were cavemen sleeping in a cave, and a Sabretooth tiger walked past – our bodies would react to be completely alert and completely awake.

If we fast forward to 2024 we don’t sleep in caves and we don’t have Sabretooth tigers – but we do have smaller stresses and worries, which aren’t going to kill us, but on that same spectrum of stress worry and anxiety and with that same potent ability to stop us from sleeping.

Such stresses can be anything. Relationship trouble, financial worries or health concerns – or worrying about your baby. Either through being vigilant for them waking, or worrying about them in general.

A weakened sleep trigger

Another common reason parents can struggle to get back into a healthy sleep pattern is through a weakened sleep trigger. What does this mean?

We are often told that sleep is more important than eating or drinking. Certainly, you can last longer without eating than you can with sleep. But unlike these other vital processes, sleep is placed outside of our voluntary control. How does the body know when to fall asleep?

Generally speaking, it is the process of getting into bed that triggers us to fall asleep. This is similar to the story of Pavlov’s dog.

Pavlov was a man who fed his dogs at the same time each day which coincidentally was the same time a church bell would ring. One day he was late to feed his dog but when he arrived they were already salivating. This is because they had associated the bell ringing with food.

For us, the bell ringing that triggers sleep is getting into bed. However, if through the experience of having a child who doesn’t sleep, or through having extended periods of hypervigilance waiting for your child to cry, you may have found yourself spending more time in bed awake than asleep.

When this happens the bed no longer acts as a trigger for sleep. More often it has become the trigger for worry about your children, or for listening out for crying, or perhaps for trying hard to sleep and becoming very frustrated in the process.

How to get yourself back into a healthy sleeping pattern?

Our next two articles in the series look at practical steps to get you back into a healthy sleeping routine; addressing anxious thoughts around sleep and your children and rebuilding the link between the bed meaning sleep.

The Better Sleep Clinic is an online clinic treating a variety of adult sleep disorders, including insomnia and sleep apnea.

To find out more about adult sleep problems, visit www.thebettersleepclinic.co.uk

For more information on adult sleep explore the NHS link