Acceptance - the ultimate hack for infant sleep challenges
This is not a click baity title to sell you sleep training or a new technique to send your sweet baby off to slumberland it’s an approach that, put into regular practice might just save your sanity if your little one is sleeping like a newborn (frequent wakings).
If you’ve followed GentleBirth you’ll be familiar with the mantra of ‘control the controllables’ and it’s one of the most helpful approaches to labor and it’s even more important after your baby arrives. There’s a LOT we have no control over but we can control how we respond to what’s happening by changing our expectations that postpartum will happen exactly as we expect it to (stay with me and let me explain more…).
Sometimes during pregnancy and possibly even more so during the early postpartum weeks life can really suck and you feel like you want a refund.
Shi& happens and arguing with reality won’t make your baby sleep any longer but it WILL make your postpartum more challenging. You have a choice to make and it’s an important one.
Of course you’ve been warned that life is about to change after you have a baby etc etc but you probably haven’t realized exactly how much. Many parents find the first few weeks of new parenthood to be really hard with sleep challenges being at the top of the list – especially when it seems everyone else’s baby is related to Sleeping Beauty. You may have tried a few different approaches - or are getting to a point where something needs to change so maybe it’s time for a completely different strategy - one that supports you and your baby’s health and wellness.
The Secret to Stressing Less in Postpartum - ‘Amor Fati’
You can train your mind to accept that YES this is a really tough time in your life - AND also that it won’t last forever. Perspective is everything but when we’re in stress mode we can’t gain a healthy perspective. Acceptance has nothing to do with trying to positively think your way out of exhaustion - but a way to be ok with the difficult feelings that come with feeling overwhelmed and bone tired. Isn’t it hard enough that you’re running on fumes without rubbing salt into the wounds and allowing our own thoughts to make it even harder?
Watch this 3 minute video and to help you understand what Amor Fati is (it’s only 3 minutes….)
So what’s the lesson in this short video for coping with postpartum exhaustion? When we’re in the middle of stressful emotions we can’t see the forest from the trees, it can feel like the universe is conspiring against you and it all feels so personal. But if we can step back we can see that the only thing that’s ‘wrong’ are our expectations of how we’ve been led to believe newborns ‘should’ behave. The reality is that today your new baby’s normal sleep pattern is to sleep like a baby – and not an adult. What causes so much hardship for new parents is not this fact of biology but how we think about it. Western culture places so much emphasis on “your baby should be sleeping X hours” which often translates into self blame ”I should be able to do this”….”I’m not a good mom…”Everyone else seems to find it so easy”. There is no doubt that it can be absolute torture to be sleep deprived – but we just add more mental torture with our inner commentary of not feeling enough, not doing it right…etc. The mind can be our best friend or worst enemy - we all have that inner critic and it’s not the thoughts themselves that are ‘bad’ - it’s when we believe them that the real trouble starts.
Frequent night waking is normal healthy behaviour especially for breastfed babies. It doesn’t mean we have to like it. But if you can widen your perspective a little you can see that your baby doesn’t need to be ‘fixed’.
What needs ‘fixing’ is the mismatch between the expectations of Western world culture and the reality that newborns are supposed to wake to nurse frequently. Isn’t it reassuring to know that your baby is doing everything he/she is supposed to do? In Western cultures, the drive to make babies sleep longer causes so much distress - yet if you lived in Japan only about 7% of parents worry about infant sleep…they expect that newborns will wake frequently to nurse so most parents safely bedshare (Japan has some of the lowest rates of SIDS in the world).
Why is Mindful Acceptance Such a Helpful Strategy for Postpartum?
There is a well-researched link between maternal sleep disruptions and depression. And just as important is that when parents are at the end of their rope they are more likely to put their infants into situations that increase the risk of SIDs (moving baby to their own room, non-responsive night time parenting, moving from breastmilk to formula).
If you can add this approach to your mental toolkit today before your baby arrives it’s a game changer. If you’re desperately trying to find a solution to the intensity of the early postpartum sleep deprivation try it at 3am as your mind starts to gnaw into itself with visions of walking the halls with a crying baby for the next year (or two).
Just as acorns know how to oak your little human will sleep for longer periods as all kids eventually do. One of the most basic aspects of being human in this world is that nothing ever stays the same. Everything changes – the things we want to change and the things we don’t want to change.
Our mind tends to judge change (especially the anxious part of our brain) as not being something good so we get more anxious. However, as humans, it feels so much better to keep reaching for what makes us feel happy (more sleep!) while avoiding anything that causes us any pain.
This is just part of our humanness, but when we continually push against what we don’t want we expend a huge amount of energy fighting reality and making ourselves miserable in the process. The anxious part of the brain is a bit of a control freak as it wants to guess what’s going to happen in the future it can’t handle insecurity and right now you can’t control your baby’s sleep patterns. That doesn’t mean you just become a doormat to everything that parenting throws at you but for most healthy newborns NOTHING IS WRONG with their sleep patterns… and if nothing is wrong then you can mentally relax and maybe even enjoy this time a bit more. Author Eric Barker suggests taking the Amor Fati approach in this way.
“Accepting you have a broken leg doesn’t mean you don’t go to the doctor. It means you don’t waste time complaining and don’t kid yourself that you’re going jogging tomorrow. And maybe you embrace your reduced mobility by saying this is the perfect time to catch up on reading your favorite blog”
Stop Fighting with Reality
What we’re faced with something we can’t control - what’s the alternative other than embracing what we can’t change or at least muttering “this too shall pass” for the millionth time today? Can you fast forward mentally 6 months from now – 6 years from now…will everything you’re experiencing now seem so awful? Will you still think that refund on life was a good idea? Probably not – a little perspective can change everything.
Can you find a way to soften into that reality, to accept that right now this feels pretty horrible but it will change and you will get more sleep and frequent night wakings is a sign that your baby is doing great right now and doing exactly what he’s supposed to do. Talk to professionals, surround yourself with support and treat yourself with kindness. This is an incredibly intense time in your life but your mindset can change how you experience it.
What have you got to lose?
When you find yourself tired and overwhelmed today, be gentle with yourself. When we’re tired, we often react without reasoning so everyone around us feels gets a taste of our wrath - and that’s hardly what anyone has in mind when it comes to reaching our parenting goals. Notice your feelings throughout the day and practice taking a mindful pause as soon as you notice resistance to what’s happening in that moment.
It’s a lot easier to practice with the small stuff such as irritation rather than waiting until you’ve gone nuclear and regret your words and actions.
Be gentle. You’re doing the most difficult job in the world - trying to nurture and raise a good human (and it’s all ‘on-the-job’ training).
Tracy
Note:
In a recent study on mindfulness and postpartum coping. Almost all mothers (94.5%) considered that a mindful parenting intervention would be useful in the postpartum period. Approximately 91.5% of mothers reported that this type of intervention should be available to all parents in the postpartum period, instead of only being available to parents with moderate or high levels of parenting stress.
