In her article in the Huffington Post on sleep and postpartum depression, Kim West makes a recommendation for brand new moms with postpartum depression with which I wholeheartedly agree:
Split nighttime baby duty so you each get at least one five-hour uninterrupted block of sleep. One of you is “on” from 8:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m., and the other from 1:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. (adjust these figures to your family’s schedule). When you are “off duty,” sleep in a separate area, and try earplugs, a fan, or a white-noise machine. The on-duty parent can sleep, too, but he or she will be the one who has to wake up to respond to and feed the baby.
That’s what my husband and I did when I had postpartum depression and OCD. It made a BIG difference.
And yes, he was working and had a full-time job at that time. Still, he made the sacrifice for our family willingly. Which was far better than the sacrifice he would have had to make if I had had to be hospitalized, at which point he wouldn’t have been able to go to work at all.
Just in case you get that argument against helping you out at night …
For more stories on sleep and postpartum depression:
On Postpartum Depression & Insomnia
Moms Need Sleep To Help Stave Off Depression
Photo credit: © Carol Hyman – Fotolia
We tried this with our son. It was easy since Dh was laid off a week before the birth and didn't start a new job until a month later. It helped…but just so you know it was still hard only because Babyhead was difficult! LOL He ate about every 2 hours…but wouldn't go back to sleep. It would literally take you the entire 2 hours to feed him, change him and rock him and he would be asleep for about 30 minutes before you had to do it all over again. Even when he stopped having bottle at night when DH went to work he would still wake up and be awake for what seemed like forever. He was just a terrible sleeper. Heck…he still won't sleep and he is 5. We struggle to keep him in HIS bed and not ours every night.
My daughter on the other hand…I only "needed" DH once or twice with her. Those nights she was sick or cranky and had to be held all night. Once I had a vision of throwing her on the floor and I just put her in the bassinet and woke DH up and told him he needed to take over… She pretty much slept while she was eating so I didn't have to get her back to sleep! I just fed her, changed her and put her down and she was good for 2 or 3 hours. I can say it was sooo much nicer with my daughter than my son!
So…after that looong comment I agree to get as much sleep as you can. You aren't a failure as a mom if you need some sleep! Remember, sleep deprivation is a form of torture during wartime…why people expect women to go through it with babies mystifies me.
If you need to get someone to stay with you like a relative to help out so you can get some rest as well. I didn't have the option…but I think it would have helped a lot with my son if I did…
If a mother does have to be hospitalized for PPD related issues can the father use that to say she is a unfit mother and use it as grounds to take the child away?
Thanks
I really believe sleep deprivation was a major factor in my PPD/A. My issue was breastfeeding. We need better guidance when it comes to breastfeeding besides "breast is best." I would have loved to split the night duties, but my son ate so much and so often (every 2 hours) and I wasn't producing enough to pump. So if he needed to eat during those hours, I had to wake up – there was no other option (was how I felt at the time.) I went to a lactation consultant and they put me on drugs to boost my production (and interestingly, the side effect of these drugs was depresson.) Looking back, I would have not fought so hard for breastfeeding. He was starving, I was exhausted and in the end, nobody was happy. I feel like they should do a better job of coaching you in both directions depending on your situation – rather than pushing you to keep with it. Anyway – that got off track, but next baby – I will be getting more sleep FOR SURE!
I couldn't agree more! Sharing nighttime baby duty with my husband was a huge saving grace. Getting those few hours of uninterrupted sleep is critical. My postpartum anxiety symptoms really seemed to let up after I started getting sleep (and lots of help, too).
Thank you, Laura, for your comments. Breastfeeding difficulties were a HUGE component in my PPD. Switching to bottlefeeding was absolutely essential to coping and managing my situation–although the harassment I received over this decision created unnecessary aggravations. It breaks my heart to hear of women suffering so badly because they've been convinced by the breast-is-best juggernaut. Lactavists must be forced to confront the reality that in many cases, bottlefeeding is the best solution.
Seriously, it was the hardest part of motherhood for me. I am the type of person who rarely fails and the advice I received over and over (from books and people) regarding breastfeeding was, "just do your best." Well, what does that mean??? I always felt I could do it if I tried hard enough. I felt like if so many women before me could do it, I could certainly do it. I thought it must be normal for people to sleep for 2 hours at a stretch for weeks. I thought it was normal for babies to wake up every hour for 9 days straight. I thought "my best" was always another day's try at it. And then I fell off the end of my rope. There needs to be some sort of accepted guidelines for pushing yourself too hard. And lactavists (never heard that before – love it!) need to give the rest of us a break. It's not like we don't love our kids any less, but they certainly make us feel like it.
Every kid is different, aren't they!!
Sometimes when there are difficult relationships between family members, a father or family member will attempt to use treatment for postpartum depression as a negative. I would say that if the mother reached out for treatment from a professional healthcare provider, has followed that treatment while working closely with her doctor, and is able to properly care for the children, the doctor could speak to that to help mitigate custody issues. Have you been working with any local advocates for women with perinatal mood and anxiety disorders? You can find them at http://www.postpartum.net.
Sleep is definitely an issue for women who wish to breastfeed. I'm not sure how to reconcile that. I think the mom needs to do whatever makes her feel best. The rest of us should support whatever decision she makes and help her out as much as possible.
I am ANTI-HARASSMENT. Thankfully, many of the women I know, lots of whom are very pro-breastfeeding, are very supportive of moms who need to stop, just as they are of moms who want to breastfeed exclusively.
It was amazing the difference sleep made in my recovery. As a new mom, I seriously underestimated the importance and am quite sure why my PPOCD escalated as quickly as it did. We've got to find a way to get out this message. More importantly, the pressure we put on Moms to breast feed is out of control. A healthy Mom who can care for her baby is more important to the long-term well-being of a child than breast milk. I breast fed my children, but my husband fed the 2nd and 3rd formula or pumped milk at midnight, giving me that good stretch of sleep and ultimately providing a much quicker recovery from PPOCD.
I'm so glad that Kim suggested the split-shift for nights. This is exactly what we did for Baby #3 — I would go to bed when the "older" children (ages 4 and 2) went to sleep, and I would sleep in the basement guest room with earplugs, towel under the door, ceiling fan on. Meanwhile, my amazing husband — who is a night owl — would stay up with the baby and give her a bottle or whatever it took to keep her happy so I could have uninterrupted sleep. I always woke around 1 a.m. because of my physical need to breastfeed her. Wish we had done this for babies #1 and #2.
FYI, sleep researchers recommend at least 5 hours of uninterrupted sleep. I tell all the new moms at our support groups that this is something to aim for, not fixate on. To those who say that the father is working and therefore not able to help with nighttime feedings, I remind them that they are working overtime keeping two people alive. I also remind them that this is temporary — a few weeks — and that it won't last forever. That seems to help give them the willpower to ask their partner for relief at night.
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This is a great idea. Even better, alternate shifts so that if your baby always is up a 2am, you get it on alternate nights.
Our daughter has always been a horrible sleeper. When my wife was diagnosed with PPD, the doctor made me promise to take a month off work, sleep in a different room (so as not to wake my wife when our daughter cried) and I was the only one to take care of her at night. Of course that just dumped the problem from one parent to the other without really solving much.
As for the breastfeeding, I would have to say that "it is the best thing in an ideal world." If your world is not ideal, then sometimes you have to adjust. I know some friends of ours set it up so that their baby got breast fed during the day and a bottle of formula at night so that Dad could fill in for Mom. It had the added advantage of making the baby sleep deeper than breast milk. In the end, you have to find something that works for everyone. While breastfeeding is definitely great, there is no point in breastfeeding your baby every 2 if it makes it so that the Mom can no longer function. While others can offer advice, no one else is in your exact position.
Precisely. Split the nights up however you can. Half and half. Alternate nights. Whatever. Just get the sleep. It is so precious to your mental and physical health.
Great advice Adrienne. Listen to what Adrienne says.
Adrienne, were you able to continue breastfeeding in this way? Did your husband feed the baby formula when it was his turn or pumped milk? Did this affect your milk supply at all? I breastfed my first throughout the postpartum depression and until she was 18 months. And I am so glad I stuck with it. But it was HARD and I know the lack of sleep due to breastfeeding every 2 hours contributed to the problem. Breastfeeding is really important to me and I really need it to work this next time too – but I'm trying to figure out a way to do it with less pressure on myself. If that means formula for half a night – that's fine for me. As long as the baby will take the confusion and it doesn't have a negative affect on my milk supply for the rest of the day. 🙂
I’m a staunch breastfeeding advocate but totally understand the importance of sleep, especially when a mom is struggling with a postpartum mood disorder. There are ways to continue breastfeeding AND get sleep. Even if you occasionally sleep a five-hour stretch and a bottle or two is offered, it’s possible to keep on breastfeeding. It’s not all-or-nothing. For some moms/families, it may work to bedshare and do side-lying nursing (I, personally, have no idea how anyone gets sleep otherwise!). If that’s not enough, offering bottles while you sleep can be done occasionally without having a long-term effect on milk supply (it is doing it on a regular basis that will tell your body to stop producing milk), and I think even the occasional five-hour stretch of sleep can do wonders for mental health.
You could also consider hiring a postpartum doula for help during the night or during the day. Such help makes a great baby shower gift, if anyone’s looking for a gift to give you!
I had trouble sleeping starting quite early in pregnancy, leading to leaving my job earlier than planned (I would have been un-eligible for FMLA anyway, so it was most likely that I wouldn’t have returned post-birth). Luckily that was financially okay for us, since it was definitely needed for the early PP period in general for me. DD is still BFing, at just past 4, and I know it helped that I was home with her and not working regarding sleep. There are still nights when she or I am sick and sleeping so poorly that I don’t know how well I’d manage if I was also working, and am glad it’s not something I have to do right now. I had existing sleep issues before pregnancy/parenthood though, and co-sleeping definitely has been helpful as well as choosing to sit and read/internet during naps when they still happened rather than run around doing chores.
Breast feeding was something that made me feel confident as a new mom, as it was one of the only things I felt I could do for baby that made me a party of baby. My husband helped a lot, however, with changing and resettling baby. We also roomed in with a bassinet and then moved to a sidecar crib with baby starting out the night in the nursery and coming into our room.
I think there are ways to have partners split nighttime parenting and still have mom EBF, if that is what she chooses to do. Had my care providers told me to give up EBFing, it would have done a number on my self esteem because it was my lifeline to being a normal, functional mom.