Can’t get no sleep

I look back to the weeks before our second beautiful daughter was born. It was all planned out meticulously. The birth pool was ready, the positive affirmations were up on the wall and hours of hypnobirthing tracks had been listened to. In reality though, shortly after each and every calming piece of music started, I fell asleep! This was a time when I could. Well, until my alarm went off to pick Freya, our eldest, up from school.

Sophia’s homebirth was as serene as I had hoped and we were all snuggled up in bed that first evening. I was under no illusion on how the next few weeks would pan out in terms of sleepless nights but we could never have been prepared for the experiences we have faced as a family over the last nine years.

The early weeks were understandably blurry but I remember feeling the pressures of having it all together. Albeit nearly five years earlier; I had done this before, I knew what to do. How hard could it be – feed, sleep, change, repeat. I didn’t want to admit to myself and certainly not to people around me that I wasn’t coping and that our gorgeous bundle hadn’t just slotted into family life. Something was different but I did not have the answer and month after month I would beat myself up for not knowing what I was doing wrong.

Sophia was the happiest when she was being carried and this is where she slept best. It was my instinct to keep her close but I did not have a choice as she would quickly become distressed if she was placed in a chair, cot or on a playmat. I battled with well meaning advice to leave her to self soothe but she never did and I just couldn’t do it. I would swaddle her with safety whilst shouting at myself inside for giving in. I’d question whether I was making it worse and the start of some very dark weeks began. I couldn’t drop the many plates that I was spinning, I kept up the pretense that all was joyful but inside I was far from being at peace with the world.

I began to reach out for help and I clearly remember one afternoon, when a professional came to the house to assist with my daughter napping in her cot. I felt like a complete failure but there was no way I could leave her screaming and in an utter state of panic in her room whilst a stranger attempted to chat to me in the living room. I scooped her up, held her so tight and when our visitor had left, the flood gates opened and my own tears of despair poured out. This was the first of many requests for support, where I wasn’t listened to and our experiences misunderstood.

We have tried for many years to be a typical family with a large cost to our own physical and mental wellbeing and immense anxiety for both girls. Our parenting being questioned by professionals hurts, but then, the feelings of being beaten take hold and the anger rises. Why is everything so challenging? Why can’t we be more chilled? Why will my child not sleep?

“A summer bbq, how lovely, of course we will be there.” A warm afternoon turned into evening drinks and bedtime for Sophia. We thought we had all bases covered with a travel cot, sleeping bag and her dependable pink teddy but how wrong I was. I spent the entire evening in the bedroom trying to comfort her, torn between the want to meet her needs and the internal pressure to please others. I wish I had known then what I know now and I wouldn’t have hidden away feeling embarrassed and hopeless. Her anxiety around change and uncertainty, hand in hand with her sensory sensitivities of noise and smells were at extremes and she was trying her hardest to communicate these to me.

Fast forward to now and sleep for Sophia continues to be one of her biggest challenges and for many valid reasons. Firstly, going upstairs, putting on pyjamas, brushing teeth, listening to a story and actually switching off are all demands which she will usually avoid at all costs. When her anxiety levels are incredibly high, she is too frightened to be on her own upstairs and that has previously led to Richard and I laying with her for many hours until she has fallen to sleep. Her struggle to self sooth persists and her mind races. Panic sets in about the transition from one day to the next and sleep of course results in a loss of control over her surroundings.

The last couple of months have conceivably led to a worsening of this situation and we are using all our strength to get through. Sophia co-sleeps but even then she still finds it incredibly hard to settle before midnight. No amount of lavender, soft lighting or meditation music act as a remedy but usually understanding and emotional connection prevail.