Sleep on the brain. Every day, will she sleep tonight? Will I sleep tonight?

When I was in my late teens/early 20’s I slept well. I loved my lie ins and I slept like a log every night. I got to around age 22 and suddenly I was a light sleeper, every noise woke me up and lie ins were an occasional indulgence. My sleeping patterns became worse while pregnant, even before I got to the big (elephant like) uncomfortable stage I struggled to sleep more than 3-4 hours per night, this meant when I eventually gave birth I was already pretty damn knackered. Add to this having a baby who took a long time to sleep through the night and I can say quite honestly the past 2 years I have spent a lot of time in a zombie like state. I think sleep deprivation isn’t really appreciated by anyone who hasn’t suffered from it. You spend your days knowing you have a lot to do but finding it hard to actually do anything at all. You have a baby who needs/demands your absolute attention and you try your hardest to give it but I slowly starting to feel like I was losing my mind!

A few months ago we started to turn a corner with Izzy and she started to occasionally sleep thought the night or almost anyway which was amazing and it really made a difference. We would wake up feeling refreshed and every morning was a pleasant surprise when we realised she hadn’t woken us up. Yay.

Then about 10 weeks I had a traumatic nighttime experience. This will sound silly now but even thinking about it still makes me upset. At about 1am Andrew shook me awake, I had been screaming and was still screaming while awake, absolutely petrified. I was clinging to him and couldn’t calm myself. I wasn’t sure if I’d had a bad dream or if I’d thought there was someone there but I felt as if something terrible had happened – in fact I still do. Isn’t that so weird? Thinking about it in a sensible way I know nothing happened or if it did it was a dream. I spent the rest of the night sobbing with the tv and light on in our room and I was frightened all of the next day..and we’ll for quite some time afterwards. I had a few similar episodes after this in the following weeks, twice I was awake (kind of) and imagining there were obscenely large spiders falling onto me. I woke Andrew up so many times and needed him to reassure me. It was hard and he was amazing. I saw my doctor as I found this so scary, my heart rate was too fast and it was put down (mostly) to anxiety/stress. My nightmarish episode was called a night terror.Now 10 weeks on I’m finally starting to feel more relaxed about going to bed and best of all I’m getting some sleep. This has coincided quite nicely with Izzys new routine of putting herself to sleep each night in her own bed ( isn’t she a good girl? ) and I feel like I’m catching up on 2 years of sleep. I’m having lie ins ( thanks again to my oh) and naps when needed.

Sleep is so important, I often feel we don’t rate it highly enough.

I know this isn’t my typical blog post but I was thinking about it in bed last night and felt it important to write about it and share with others as apparently night terrors are very common. Feel free to ask me any questions or tell me if you have had similar experiences x