Learning to Let Go of Sleep Anxiety

Six months in, I'm still working on it.

I can’t remember exactly when it happened, but a few weeks into my daughter’s life, I became obsessed with her sleep. It consumed me. To the point where I often thought about nothing else all day. Every single decision I made was predicated on how it might affect her naps or her sleep at night. When the sun would start to set, the Sundown Scaries would begin. Every evening, I sat around and worried about if she’d go to bed easily, how many times she’d wake up crying before we went to bed, and how many times she would wake up throughout the night. This, obviously, was not healthy.

Looking back now, I did a lot of things that clearly indicated that my obsession with her sleep was not good for any of us. For example: If she was in bed, I’d scold my husband for flushing the toilet… because the bathroom and the nursery share a wall. I wouldn’t use the ice dispenser on the fridge—an entire floor away from the nursery—if she was sleeping. I taped the curtains to the wall when she was still sleeping in our room, and then eventually started paperclipping her curtains together in her room (OK fine, I admit I still do this, because morning light wakes her up early!). I was on edge watching TV at night, wondering if the volume was a little too loud and she’d hear it upstairs and stir. I reprimanded my husband for turning the volume up too high, not closing doors softly enough, using the bathroom fan in the bathroom directly below the bedroom (you can hear it faintly through the ceiling), and turning the upstairs hallway lights on.

Yes, I was an absolute blast to hangout with. Desperate for sleep, I was ready to commit myself to a life of silent darkness if it meant I might get more of it. Because I truly didn’t think I’d ever be well-rested again.

This also isn’t even touching on the added anxiety I felt about her safety when she did sleep. The first couple weeks our daughter was home, we would sporadically get up to check and make sure she was still breathing in the bassinet next to our bed. My husband and I would by lying there, convincing each other we were crazy for worrying, and then one of us would be like “let me just quickly check.” (Usually it was me, but in my defense, a few times he let the anxiety get the best of him too!) When she started sleeping for longer stretches, I’d still wake up frantically and check the monitor to make sure she was OK.

I slowly became confident that she was sleeping in a safe sleep space alone, without any loose blankets or other soft items, and would be just fine, and stopped obsessively checking for signs of life. (I still sometimes zoom in on her on the monitor during naps and make sure I can see her little body rising and falling. I’m working on doing that less and less.)

Once my daughter started napping well (around 4.5 months) and going to bed at a certain time, I clung to her sleep schedule for dear life. I was convinced that if she went to bed too late, she’d wake up more throughout the night. Or if she didn’t nap enough during the day, she’d have a false start at night (when the baby wakes up crying like 45 minutes after going to bed). This made me become really neurotic about her schedule. Nothing would get me to delay a nap, wake her up early from a nap, or push back bedtime. I worried that if all sleep-related things didn’t go perfectly, we’d be up together again in the wee hours of the morning. Who knows if that’s true—baby sleep experts online say so, but there’s often no way to know what’s actually causing your baby to wake up in the middle of the night.

Now, six months in, CJ is a champion sleeper who takes two solid naps a day and sleeps through the night (for now! bracing myself for inevitable change!). She’s on a good schedule. And I am slowly letting go of a lot of my sleep-related anxieties, but I’m still admittedly a little over the top about some things.

The curtains are still paperclipped and I can’t help but wince when a movie is really loud—my husband often notices and turns the volume down a few notches without me even asking. But I no longer tiptoe around my house. I enjoy icy drinks during naptime, and let the microwave beep when it’s done. I even am OK with my husband taking showers in the upstairs bathroom when the baby is sleeping—a huge leap from when I forbade toilet flushing and demanded he keep the sink to just a trickle (yup, it’s true). Hell, I now even cut naps short when we have somewhere to be, and on occasion, I roll with a later bedtime so we can stay out a little longer. (Though I still firmly believe that schedules are good for babies—or at least my baby who gets very cranky and scream-y if she is kept up late when her little body needs sleep!)

And I finally look forward to the time after she goes to bed each night. I can actually relax and enjoy it, without my thoughts spiraling as I anticipate what might happen hours later. Because I’ve learned that the truth is, if she is going to wake up, she is going to wake up. Wasting the little time I have to myself worrying about what might happen won’t change anything. Simply accepting that has been so freeing.