Fatigue & exhaustion | Maternal health | Motherhood | Surviving Broken Sleep

Mothers of wakeful babies, are you making this common mistake?

Oct 21, 2022 | 0 comments

If you’re a mother of a wakeful baby (or babies!), I’d be willing to bet you’ve made this mistake before. And you know why I’m so sure? Because I see it all the time in the mothers I connect with online and support 1:1 in clinic. It’s also a mistake I made as a wakeful baby mama too. But it’s an easy mistake to overcome and there are lots of other options we can turn to in its place.

The mistake

Our collective mistake: assuming that sleep deprivation is solely to blame for all our exhaustion in motherhood.

This is a belief that is rife out there in not just the motherhood space but also our culture more broadly. Many of us, and many of those around us, assume that we are only exhausted because we have a baby who wakes in the night.

As I always say, broken sleep especially when chronic will inevitably take its toll, but from my clinical experience having supported many mothers in this very same position, it’s usually not the only factor contributing to their fatigue.

It’s not uncommon for me to work with a mother who has a wakeful baby, who has been facing many months of broken sleep, we have our initial session together, go through some assessments, and get some blood work done, and we discover some other underlying factors like nutrient deficiencies or hormone imbalances (as I explain in this post here).

When we address these things (and it’s not always quick or easy, but when we get there) they feel much better, even while their baby is still waking through the night.

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What else is making you exhausted?

From a physical or biochemical perspective, there are many things that could be at play, including:

- Thyroid disorders (postpartum thyroiditis)
- Blood sugar dysregulation
- Nutrient deficiencies
- Slow or sluggish metabolism
- Poor quality sleep (which is distinct from broken sleep related to your child or baby’s wakings)
- Digestive disturbances or food reactions

See: Feeling exhausted mama? This might be the reason why

But it’s not just these physical factors that are contributing to our fatigue. It’s also things like:

- The social structures we are mothering within which are not set up with mothers in mind
- External and internal pressures to be perfect
- Lack of adequate support
- Mothering in isolated nuclear families
- Mental health challenges
- Anger + resentment

Three things you can do differently

Now that you know broken sleep is only one part of the puzzle, you can take steps forward to support your body in other ways and to get support and answers you need to questions you have.

Protect your sleep

In a time when we can’t necessarily control the amount of sleep we’re getting, we can be mindful of protecting the quality of the sleep we are able to get. This means we support our body to drop down into all sleep stages and complete as many sleep cycles as possible, which is where the real repair and restoration occur.

This often means removing barriers interfering with quality sleep and supporting our body’s natural sleep mechanisms. Some of the things we can do to protect our sleep include:

Be mindful of blue light exposure in the evening
Control your caffeine intake, especially in the second half of the day
Allow enough time in bed to get the sleep you need
Aim for a regular bedtime window
Regulate your nervous system
Create a bedtime wind-down routine, even if it’s only a few minutes long
Watch your evening alcohol intake
Keep temperatures cool in your sleep environment
Consider nutritional factors that might be impacting nervous system function and sleep
Get plenty of morning sunlight to regulate your body clock from the start of the day

Prioritise rest

For mothers of wakeful babies in the depths of sleep deprivation, it’s crucial to lower your expectations and do less so that you can prioritise rest.

Broken sleep is a huge physical and emotional stress on the body, so in order to survive through it, you must lighten the demands on your body in other ways and make room for rest.

This is not the time to be the perfect mother, doing all the things. Far from it.

It’s the season to do less. Be less. Agree to less.

Of course, this is so much easier said than done for so many mothers, because there are countless barriers preventing us from being able to prioritise rest – lack of support, doing the work that would’ve traditional been shared by many on their own, carrying an unrealistic mental load, feeling the pressure to be perfect.

These are all heavy mental and physical loads to carry, whether we are sleep deprived or not.

But some things are within our control. Some things we can change to support ourselves in this way. Like saying no to anything beyond capacity. Declining invitations when we’re not feeling up to it. Intentionally choosing to do less, to take on less. Letting go of expectations of ourselves and what we need to be doing in this phase of life and of what’s realistically achievable when we’re sleep deprived.

Look into other underlying causes

As related to many of the factors listed above, getting a thorough physical assessment is crucial to rule out any of the potential (and very common) biochemical imbalances that could be causing or worsening your fatigue.

Testing to see what’s going on instead of guessing what’s going on is always the preferred option.

Speak to your GP about having some blood tests run to investigate these things. If you get tests done and the answer is ‘everything looks normal,’ get a second opinion because sometimes the right tests aren’t completed or the interpretation of the test results does not account for the optimal range needed for optimal health (not just the ranges that indicate an overt disease state).

Don’t accept exhausted as the norm in motherhood

Despite what conventional thinking would have you believe, it is not normal to be completely exhausted in motherhood, even if you have a wakeful baby. It’s important to rule our any of the potential biochemical causes (nutrient deficiencies, hormone imbalances), or consider the non-physical factors that might be at play (pressure to overperform or be perfect, mental health challenges).

By protecting your sleep, prioritising rest, and seeking answers via further investigations, you’re reclaiming your power and saying ‘no more!’ to the exhaustion that we’ve all been told is normal.

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