The mental and physical toll of parental sleep deprivation can be devastating. (Picture: Getty)
Strapping her baby son into his high chair, Ivana Poku knew she had to get away from him.
As she shakily grappled with the clasp to secure him, she could feel a headache pulsate behind her tired eyes.
Ivana also felt something else that day – the urge to harm her almost one-year-old boy, Henry.
Night after sleepless night had left the mum-of-twins literally frazzled to the core. She knew she had to place him somewhere safe – away from her – for fear of acting on the intrusive thoughts that had crept into her sleep-deprived mind.
‘My twin sons were both colicky and slept badly,’ explains Ivana. ‘It took a massive toll and by the time the boys were around one, things had become so bad I felt the urge to hurt them.
‘Henry was sat on my lap and I just had an intrusive thought about harming him. So I strapped him into his high chair, locked myself in the bedroom and called my husband.
‘Thankfully, I had a friend coming over and she let herself in and found me sobbing on my bed.’
While sleepless nights may be considered part and parcel of a new parent experience, in reality, the mental and physical toll of sleep deprivation can be devastating.
Earlier this year, the Suicide and Maternal Mortality report in the National Library of Medicine, worldwide, claimed suicide to be a leading cause of death in the perinatal period, with sleep deprivation cited as a large trigger.
Ivana was scared she might harm her children as she was so sleep deprived (Picture: Supplied)
‘There were moments when I was convinced everyone would be better off without me,” Ivana tells. Metro.co.uk.
The doctor of philosophy and author of Motherhood – The Unspoken suffered badly with sleep after the birth of her twin sons Mason and Henry in 2016.
‘After a few months, I was having suicidal thoughts. Not necessarily about how and when to end my life but just intrusive thoughts that convinced me everyone would be happier if I was out of the picture. I felt I was a burden on everyone I loved.
‘My husband and I had no family around to help on a day-to-day basis and we were struggling on three hours of broken sleep a night.
‘My father came to visit when my twins were about six months old. We’re so close and when he left, I could feel my heart breaking and I just collapsed in tears. A dark cloud come over me.’
At her lowest ebb, Ivana, 39, admits she felt hopeless and let down by the lack of help and advice on offer.
‘I reached out for help with the sleep but my health visitors would constantly assure me things would improve if I just gave it time. I felt brushed off,’ she explains. ‘When my friend found me that day, it was a turning point. I realised we needed to sort out the twins’ sleep and make all our lives easier.’
Ivana and her husband, decided to try the cry it out method, where an infant is left to cry and check in on at regular intervals.
‘It was hard but it had to be done and thankfully for us, it worked,’ says Ivana. ‘If not, I really do think things could have ended tragically for us. I was pushed to the edge but yet I felt I had nowhere and no one to turn to.’
Ann-Marie had to give up her career in advertising because she couldn’t cope on the little sleep she got after her son was born (Picture: Supplied)
45-year-old Ann-Marie Kinlock tells Metro.co.uk that lack of sleep not only destroyed her mental health but also impacted her career as a business owner.
‘My son didn’t sleep until he was four and woke three to four times a night,’ she remembers. ‘My mental health was pretty much broken. I thought breast feeding might be causing him to wake so at eight months, I stopped. But he still woke just as frequently.
‘It drove me crazy and made me feel like I was doing something wrong. We gave him cow’s milk to replace the breast milk but was told by health visitors we were “rewarding him” for waking so tried to wean him off that. It was a horrific ordeal and he would spend almost an hour screaming until he’d eventually drop off.
‘But he’d soon wake again. We eventually weaned him onto warm water but he’d still wake up throughout the night. It just felt never ending.’
Parents are fed up with the lack of support surrounding sleep deprivation (Picture: Getty Images)
Ann-Marie, who is the founder of family club Kindhaus, was working at an advertising agency at the time, and says she felt that sleep deprivation cost her work on important projects.
‘I was irritable, tired and struggled to focus on anything,’ she remembers ‘I just couldn’t focus or find the mental energy to crack any of the problems my team was facing.
‘I went to the GP for help but they just offered me talking therapy, which certainly wasn’t going to help my son sleep better. I knew what was breaking my mental health and it felt like they wanted to treat the symptom and not the cause. I honestly felt hopeless and so let down by the lack of support.
‘When he was about three, my son went down to waking up twice and by the time he was turned four, he naturally started to sleep through.’
Although Ann-Marie says she’s hugely relieved that her son can now go through the night, such severe sleep deprivation has left a lasting impact.
‘I’m so used to being awake through the night that I now struggle to sleep for longer than three hours a time,’ she explains.
‘We’re are so let down by the lack of support and I feel there needs to be a dramatic overhaul with how we help struggling parents. I couldn’t afford private help or an expensive sleep consultant and I feel like help and advice for your child’s sleep should be accessible and free.’
‘It would be great for the NHS to offer a tailored approach, however I do think with how stretched the system is, it isn’t a priority,,’ one expert tells Metro.co.uk (Picture: Getty Images)
However, the chances of this happening are slim, according to Georgina Sturmer, a counsellor who often works with new parents and volunteers with Home-Start – a charity that supports families through challenging times.
She believes the NHS is sadly just too underfunded to offer parents the kind of sleep support they so desperately need.
‘I work with a lot of parents who are really struggling,’ she tells Metro.co.uk.
‘When someone is battling anxiety, depression and stress, we should always be looking at the root cause and not just treating the symptoms. Some of my clients are suffering with their mental health as a result of the lack of sleep and therefore if we’re going to push for better mental health support in this country, we also need to push for better sleep support.’
Doctor and renowned female health coach Aishah Iqbal echoes Georgina’s concerns: ‘It would be great for the NHS to offer a tailored approach, however I do think with how stretched the system is, it isn’t a priority. There is a lack of understanding around children and sleep and particularly how much that impacts mothers.’
Lauren Frost, 33, welcomed her much-loved son Teddy in January 2019 after a heartbreaking battle with fertility and loss.
Lauren went through huge trauma before having her son Teddy (Picture: Supplied)
However, her baby bubble quickly burst when her son’s broken sleep plunged her mental and physical health into despair and her marriage into crisis.
‘We tried with IVF for six years before I became pregnant and welcomed a baby boy called Leo,’ Lauren tells Metro.co.uk.
‘He sadly died at eight days old and then I became pregnant naturally with Teddy just six weeks after the funeral. That was hard as we didn’t really take the time to have therapy or process the death and we were obviously grieving.
‘When Teddy was newborn, he lost weight and the health visitors advised we wake him every two hours to feed – it became a cycle he just couldn’t break out of and as I was breastfeeding, it felt like it all fell on me.’
Lauren adds: ‘There were so many tears, I felt I couldn’t cope. I stopped eating and I begrudged my son. I felt so guilty because all I’d wanted was to be a mum and our journey had been so painful. And yet I had this beautiful baby boy and my life felt like it was in tatters.
‘It massively impacted my relationship with my husband. We’d survived the death our first son and yet at the time, it felt like the sleep deprivation may be what ended our marriage.
I remember speaking with health visitors and even begging a doctor for help but they just suggested anti-depressants. What I wished was for someone to say they could help me with his sleep. To hold my hand and promise we’d find a resolution.’
It was when Lauren started opening up about her experience of baby loss on her Instagram page that she found an online community full of support.
‘I’d speak about the sleep deprivation too and when Teddy was 14 months old, a sleep consultant reached out and offered to help us for free,’ she explains.
‘She worked closely with us and solved the sleep issue. I knew how lucky I was to have her services free of charge. There are so many people desperate for help that just can’t afford that service.’
While Lauren was ‘lucky’ to receive free guidance, the lack of support for sleep deprived parents through the national health service, has left many feeling they have no choice but to turn to private sleep consultants, which can be hugely costly.
Not to mention that the industry is unregulated as sleep consultants don’t have to have specific qualifications to be able to start a business.
According to Rebecca doctors only get 1.5 hours of training on sleep throughout the whole of their medical degree (Picture: Supplied)
Rebecca Askew, who is a qualified sleep consultant with a BSc in Psychology and Ma in Primary Education, adds that even trainee doctors receive barely any training on sleep for adults or babies.
‘You can go longer without food than you can sleep, and yet the NHS spends millions of pounds on educating the public on healthy eating and reducing obesity; and yet lack of sleep can lead to obesity, diabetes, kidney disease, risk of stroke, and depression, among other poor health outcomes. It would seem the NHS uses a sticking plaster approach to treating the outcome and not the cause.
‘I have researched and found that on average, doctors only get 1.5 hours of training on sleep throughout the whole of their medical degree, and this is not devoted to paediatric sleep, just sleep in general.’
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After going through parental sleep deprivation herself, Emily Whalley decided to train as a sleep consultant, as she felt the advice and support on offer as a mother was limited at best.
‘I have two sons, now four and eight, and suffered horrendous sleep with them that affected me mentally and made me think I was doing a really bad job,’ she remembers.
‘With my first son, I battled postnatal psychosis following the extreme sleep deprivation so I know much of an impact it can have. I’ve worked with couples whose relationships have broken down and even a mum who crashed her car because she was too tired to function.
Sleep consultant Emily helps parents who have struggled with sleep depravation like she did (Picture: Supplied)
Emily, who runs sleep consultancy Fox and The Moon, adds: ‘I think we owe it to the children and parents in our society to educate NHS professionals more on infant mental health, sleep, infant feeding and external factors that can also impact on comfort, and therefore sleep when a child grows.
‘Speaking to many other parent’s who are so open and honest about how sleep deprivation can affect your physical and mental health, it is no surprise to me that the leading cause of death in new mothers during the first year is suicide.
‘So many parents I speak to feel like they just aren’t being heard. A complete overhaul of how we help mothers and babies is what is so desperately needed right now.’
‘The number of parents I know are struggling is staggering and they feel they have nowhere to turn,’ Lauren Frost insists.
After blogging about her experiences with son Teddy, she and her husband set up the online stationary company An Honest Family that aims to give parents battling with their mental health tools to cope. But she insists that our health services can’t fix the symptoms and ignore the cause.
‘When your child starts to sleep again, you can often forget how bad the sleepless nights were. How raw your eyes felt or how you were so exhausted you felt physically ill. Your body ached and your organs felt like they could shut down. A lot of parents suffer bad mental health because of the lack of sleep. But they don’t feel that support is on offer. People are crying out for help in a system that’s failing them.’
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While sleepless nights may be considered a normal part of parenthood, the toll can be devastating.
