“If we are to wake up out of our patterning, a key element of that is to be able to pause, recognize and open to a larger space than the cocoon that our mind is creating in thought.”

Tara Brach

It’s somewhere between the hours of 1 and 3am. I can feel it in my bones. I’m purposely not looking at my phone to see the time as this messes with my head when I try to fall back asleep. I’m at the door to my bedroom, leaning my right ear against the wall to see if I can detect a sound coming from my daughter’s bedroom. We share a wall so it’s not too hard to tell when she’s up and when she is sleeping. Lately I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night, thinking I’ve heard a sound (a shrill cry, a yell, a strange outburst, etc.). However, when I give it a few moments the sound tends to dissipate, which is likely a sign that either I was hearing what’s called a “phantom cry” or that she is self-soothing and “rocking” herself back to sleep.

I knew that sleep deprivation would be an issue in the immediate postpartum weeks and months, but I never stopped to consider how one’s relationship with sleep would be forever changed once having a child. 

I’ve never been a great sleeper. Since as far back as I can remember, I have fallen asleep with the aid of white noise. I remember replacing my beloved white noise machine with a cheap clip-on fan my freshman year in college as I was embarrassed to bring what I used to call a “snore machine” into my dorm room. I attached it to my metal lofted bunk bed and would turn it on high every night to try and drown out the eclectic mix of sounds in the hallway. When traveling before the advent of smart phones, I would get creative and try different tactics to help myself fall asleep. For a semester in college while studying abroad I listened to Enya every night on my Walkman CD player until I nodded off. I remember my obnoxious foam headphones were not comfortable to sleep in but they were preferable to having no noise at all.

Now all these years later, and with multiple sources of white noise at my disposal (air purifier, white noise machine, and cell phone apps all playing simultaneously), I find myself in a new conundrum. My sleep is not my own anymore.

Since having my daughter I have become keenly aware that my sleep is all relative to her needs. In her first days, we would be lucky to get a couple hours of sleep in a row before being woken up. Once she would settle after an early morning feeding, I would try and give myself permission to drift back to sleep. But it was hard to do this with regularity as every night could end up looking a little different. Eventually my wife and I realized we didn’t need to be up at the same time and so we started taking different shifts, sleeping in our guest room when we weren’t “on.” We would switch places somewhere around 3/4am in time for the other one to “sleep in” past our daughter’s pending 5/6am feeding. On good days, she would go back to sleep after that feeding and we could either get ourselves up and showered, changed, etc. to get ready for work or we could crash and sleep all the way to 8/9am when she next woke up (a blissful treat when it happened).

Back then, the hours sort of melded together most days and we just hoped and waited for it to get better. As it turns out, we were one of the lucky ones. Our random assortment of sleep training techniques actually worked. Our daughter was sleeping 7/8 hour chunks by 3 months. And it’s only gotten progressively better.

Somehow though, as my daughter’s sleep has improved over the last 18 months, mine has gotten progressively worse.

So what’s going on here? Perhaps some of it is natural age-related changes to my body (I did just turn 40 after all). If I’m being honest with myself though, I think much of my sleep disruption is cognitive and presents itself in the form of mind games and self-manipulation. Just knowing that I could be woken up by a shrill cry or wail at any moment is enough to keep me in a sleep deprived trance most nights.

How is stress playing a role in exacerbating this dynamic? According to Nikki Trojanowski of mic.com, children’s crying can increase the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) arousal. This can mean instantly being awake and simultaneously feeling our hearts pounding, our palms or bodies sweating and our minds on high alert. Trojanowski explains, “One of the classic findings in stress research — initially done by endocrinologist Hans Selye — is that prolonged SNS arousal… wears the body down, essentially, but also puts a person in a permanent state of vigilance, which is wearying.”

As I’ve also been exploring in therapy, the narrative I tell myself about sleep (and if I’m being honest, about much of life) may be having the most profound impact on my sleep and well-being than any other factor.

I have a tendency to get stuck in a negative feedback loop and then lose a grip on what’s real and what isn’t. For example, my daughter wakes up one night due to teething or some other myriad of issues and I’m convinced I’m never going to sleep again. This negative, pessimistic voice then catapults me into a heightened, anxious space which then reinforces the negative thought. Pretty soon I’m on high maternal alert and ready to wake up the whole house. It’s a form of catastrophic thinking according to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) therapy and is one of many different automatic thought patterns that can send someone down a rabbit hole. 

Another helpful concept which I’ve been aware of for years is the idea of the “second arrow.” Taken from Buddhism, the “first arrow” is the unpleasant experience we have that is not in our control, in this case, being woken up by a real or phantom cry. The second arrow is the more dangerous one though. As renowned psychologist and meditation teacher, Tara Brach describes, the second arrow is the judgement and self-blame that we shoot ourselves with as a result of the first arrow. (For example, “there must be something wrong with me if I keep waking up to phantom cries and can no longer catch a good night’s sleep.”) As Brach encourages, if we can show ourselves grace and compassion during these uncomfortable and unexpected moments, we will come to realize the second arrow is completely avoidable and in our power to control. 

Building on Tara Brach’s teachings, I can’t help but think about how to extinguish the proverbial second arrow by following in my daughter’s footsteps.

As noted earlier, when she wakes up repeatedly throughout the night (which I’ve come to learn is completely natural), she does not ruminate or cast blame on herself. She calls out if she really needs something. Otherwise, she breathes through it. Her self-soothing techniques of the moment include laying on her belly, sucking her thumb, and giving her (stuffed) “doggy” an extra squeeze. And then eventually she falls back asleep.

The middle of the night is not the time to go through all the “what-ifs” in my mind. Instead, when I wake up and feel pangs of anxiety, or wonder if I’ve heard something, I will try sitting up, acclimating myself to my surroundings, perhaps drink some water, and take some deep breaths. I will commiserate with the other phantoms of the night who are surely out there and if all else fails, start brainstorming about my next blog post. Sleep tight, everyone.