Part I: Sleep Challenges After Children
Your kids sleep. But now you don’t.
I’d be rich if I had a nickel for every time I heard from parents “I’m so exhausted, I used to sleep fine before I had kids but now my sleep has gone out the window (sigh). And I guess that’s just the way it is…”
This statement is both true and false. Studies show that new parents face up to 6 years of sleep deprivation after their children are born - sleep is worst at 3 months postpartum and has a stronger effect on women. And while parents reported a gradual improvement in their sleep as their children grew older, their sleep was reported to never be quite the same again.
This may resonate with you. When you have a baby, it’s natural that your sleep will be disrupted. When they’re sleeping, you’re trying to steal moments to complete household chores, do work, take a shower or take time for yourself and it becomes difficult to just “sleep when the baby sleeps.” During this time, parents often sacrifice their own sleep and well-being for that of their children and this can have a compounding effect later on - after those first couple of years, you find your children are sleeping well but you seem to have lost the ability to do so. Furthermore, you may start to undo any pre-kid positive sleep habits due to the increasing demands and stressors of parenthood - you might exercise and get outdoors less, spend less time preparing nutritious food (for you!), engage in more revenge bedtime procrastination activities, and take less time to actively manage your own stress levels and/or work on your own personal development.
So yes, it’s true that sleep may suffer for parents with young children. But it’s false that it has to be that way forever. Sleep difficulties can effectively be treated and they are usually never absolute. My own experience is testament to this. While I was never a perfect, sound sleeper, my sleep got exponentially worse after the birth of my child and continued this way long after my son was sleeping through the night. Due to work pressures, parenting demands and a few other factors going on in my life, after two years this culminated in full-blown insomnia with a side dish of burnout.
Looking back, I didn’t realize how much my sleep disruption was affecting every aspect of my life, especially parenting and the day to day stressors and experiences that come with it. And what I discovered is when people experience sleep challenges, it’s usually not sleep itself that is the issue, rather there are a range of other factors going on in a person’s life that are impacting their ability to sleep well and once we address these factors, sleep will eventually follow.
Why does our sleep get so messed up after we have kids?
Sleep is complicated. Poor sleep could be the result of a medical condition, medication or hormonal imbalance; it may be due to a vitamin or mineral deficiency; it could be due to nutritional choices. It’s always worth examining these potential factors with your doctor if you’re worried about your sleep.
In most cases amongst parents, however, there are some common (and good news - modifiable!) reasons as to why their sleep got out of whack. Below are the top 5 factors that I notice when working with clients who are parents of young children:
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When babies are born, there is a flood of hormonal changes that happen to mothers that are designed to put them in a hypersensitive state to their babies’ needs (which include comfort, changing and feeding). Parents become biologically wired to be responsive and when a parent hears their baby cries, it triggers a physiological reaction in their body that is designed to wake them up quickly - even in the deepest of sleep, mothers are quickly rocked out of it with a racing heart rate, shallow breath, increased body temperature, tightening of the muscles and an activated mind (which btw is the exact OPPOSITE physiological state we need to be in to fall asleep!). Unfortunately for some, this constant pattern of waking up makes it hard to get back to sleep and many find it difficult to exit that hypervigilant state, even once their children are sleeping through the night.
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The stress of parenting can be absolutely enormous. There are so many unknowns and potential things to worry about. Women especially take on a lot of both the physical demands of childcare and the mental strain. Every parent has to sacrifice their time and energy for their children but what can happen over time is that if they’re not taking care of themselves, sleep can suffer as a result. Stress and sleep have a bidirectional relationship. You need sleep to balance your stress hormones and regulate your emotions. But stress and anxiety can make it hard to sleep. Even though you’ve been racing around all day at work, then soccer practice, making dinner, tidying up, making lunch, putting the kids to bed and then you finally get into bed and you’re physically exhausted but SNAP! Your mind is racing thinking about future worries and ruminating about past events. And you can’t shut it off. Which leads me to my next point:
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Sleep does not operate like a light switch. Getting to sleep is a transition. It’s interesting because most parents I know are very mindful about their child’s sleep and bedtime routine. Majority of parents would never finish up dinner and then say “Ok Jenny - PJs on and straight to bed!” and expect their child to fall asleep immediately. There is a bath, a story, a song, some cuddles in bed. Well, adults are no different. While we may not still need our elderly parents to sing us lullabies to get us to sleep, it’s helpful to create a safe, secure, consistent, repetitive and relaxing buffer zone of activities between our busy, wakeful activities, and sleep. Just like your kids, your brain and body need signals to help you transition to sleep and when you don't allow yourself time to wind down, it can become difficult to either fall asleep or stay asleep.
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One of the most common sources of sleep disruption is keeping an inconsistent sleep and wake schedule. Our body and brain likes to have a consistent routine (just like our kids!) - with consistency, all the different physiological processes in our bodies that need to happen in a 24 hour period, such as digestion, hormone release and sleep, get regulated. And when you’re not following a consistent routine, which includes when you go to sleep and when you wake up, your body gets out of whack and sleep suffers (many adults today are suffering from social jetlag). Parents in general feel like they have a time deficit and often sleep gets sacrificed as a result of revenge bedtime procrastination activities such as doom scrolling or watching TV, which can further exacerbate the issues due to…
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Light plays a HUGE role in our sleep wake cycle. Our circadian rhythm is what partly drives our sleep/wake cycle and exposure to light, both natural sunlight and artificial light (such as TVs, phones and LED lights), can affect and alter when you feel sleepy and alert. When light hits your eyes (ideally in the morning), it sends a message to your brain to wake up and your body then releases alerting and mood enhancing hormones, such as cortisol and serotonin and suppresses the production of melatonin. In the evening hours before bed, when light levels are typically low, the inverse happens. Melatonin gets released, which is a hormone that signals to our bodies and minds to relax and prepare for rest and those morning alerting hormone levels drop. Too much bright, artificial light at night can trick your bodies into thinking it’s daytime, suppressing and delaying the release of melatonin. Furthermore, the content of your doom scrolling may have a double-whammy effect on your anxiety levels, further worsening your chances of falling asleep.
So knowing all this, what can we do as parents to restore our sleep? Stay tuned for Part II - Resetting Your Sleep After Children.
