When Sleep Escapes You

Is your pregnant body – or preggie brain – cheating you of sleep?

- Margot Bertelsmann

One of the great ironies ofpregnancy is that, no matter how much experienced parents warn you to “sleep now, before the baby comes” with a glint of desperate jealousy in their eyes, you often simply can’t. Whether it’s back ache, toilet visits, or scenarios of dread keeping you up, those magic nine months of pregnancy bring with it a range of physical and psychological barriers to sleep and voilà – there’s your insomnia problem. Here’s what you can do to try to get some shut eye.

SLEEP STEALER

WORRY, WORRY, WORRY

You may wake up at night sketching horror scenarios in your mind, for instance about a labour and birth that most likely won’t go wrong, or about congenital conditions your baby most likely won’t be born with. Some anxiety, of the non-debilitating kind, is totally normal and appropriate; after all, you are facing many unknowns in your future.

SLEEP SAVER

Your best defence here is also a “back at ya” to your body. Try to accept your sleeplessness. If you can’t sleep, youmay as well be zen about it. Your disrupted sleep acts as a useful training ground for when your newborn baby is there. What you are enduring nowwill mean the shock of waking up every few hours won’t be that extreme then. Clever, isn’t it?

Chat to your doctor if the anxiety is debilitating. A few sessions with a psychologist can help deal with persistent sleep robbing fears.