Sleep anxiety a trap I see parents fall into over and over again.
This combination of sleep anxiety and it’s close cousin, sleep perfectionism, is about so much more than baby sleep.
It’s the crushing intersection of postpartum overwhelm, perfectionist tendencies, and real or imagined pressure to “get it all right.”
What is sleep anxiety?
Sleep anxiety is the fear or dread we feel around sleep as we attempt to control it. The feeling of unease as we realize that sleep is largely out of our hands.
In short, sleep anxiety is about what’s happening inside of you around sleep.
Racing thoughts.
A feeling of dread.
Obsessive tracking of wake windows and minutes slept.
“What if I mess this up?”
“What if they don’t sleep and I can’t function tomorrow?”
“I should know how to do this by now.”
“They should know how to do this by now!”
“Why isn’t this working, darn it I TOOK A COURSE!!!”
It can look like like
- Counting the hours of sleep you have left
- Spiraling about how you’re going to make it through the next day
- Blaming yourself (or your baby) when sleep doesn’t go according to THE PLAN
- Debating for days about whether to attend an event (that you want to go to) because it will interfere with bedtime
- Feeling guilty when you consciously choose to disrupt their normal bedtime for said event
If this sounds familiar, there’s nothing wrong with you.
It just means that your nervous system is probably in overdrive. It also means you’re likely dealing with a lot of stress, which is (duh) made worse by sleep deprivation.
And this makes so much sense.
Parents in the first year do not get enough credit (or warning) for how hard it’s going to be, on every level imaginable- and on many levels that are not imaginable until you’re in it.
For an entire year your body and mind are under constant stress. Without daily massages and mediation retreats, I might add, which means that the stress builds up, day after day.
Assuming you only have one child, of course.
For many of us, it’s one to two years of chronic, cumulative stress until we see that little plus sign on a pregnancy test and then the cycle starts all over again, magnified with a toddler in tow.
Blessings, yes.
Also, hard.
And this, my friend, is the perfect setting for sleep anxiety’s baby sister, **sleep perfectionism** to take a seat at the table.
What is sleep perfectionism?
Sleep perfectionism is expecting sleep to go perfectly, and getting stressed out when it… doesn’t. (Because, um… how do I break this to you? It never does.)
- Trying to get “perfect” nights or naps, down to the minute
- Feeling like a bad nap means you failed
- Believing that good sleep = good baby = good mom
- Feeling continuously disappointed or frustrated when each day’s sleep schedule isn’t exactly the same as the day before
The tricky little thing about sleep perfectionism is that you risk tying your sense of self-worth to how well your baby sleeps.
When sleep goes well, you carry a false sense of self-worth about what makes you a good mom. And when sleep changes, as it will (hi teething, travel, sleep regressions and normal development) you can kiss your self worth goodbye. Anxiety takes the stage again with her uber dramatic co-star, Self-Blame.
0/10 do not recommend.
Why sleep anxiety surfaces at night
It’s 7:03pm. Bedtime is approaching, and suddenly, everything feels like it might unravel. Why does this happen? Because you’re finally still enough to feel all the feelings you’ve been pushing down all day. This all starts way before bedtime.
Sleep is about surrender, and surrender means letting go of control. You can’t make a baby sleep. And that’s when everything rises to the surface: grief, disappointment, resentment, overwhelm. Sleep becomes the thing that cracks it all open… and that can be a hard pill to swallow.
It’s not just about the skipped nap or the missed bedtime. It’s the feeling that you can’t fix it. We tell ourselves, “If I could just get them to sleep, I’d feel okay.” What we really mean is, “If something would finally go smoothly, I could catch my breath.”
But not being able to control it, especially at night when the world is quiet and you’re alone, it feels even heavier. This is when it all rises to the surface: the invisible load, the pressure, the expectation to be calm, patient, and capable, while inside, you’re thinking, “I can’t do this anymore.”
Sleep pulls back the curtain. It shows us everything we’ve been carrying, and what’s truly on our hearts. It asks of us the very things we feel depleted of: surrender, trust, patience. That’s why it feels so heavy, so personal, so overwhelming. You’re not failing. You’re feeling everything you’ve clamped down all day.
Tips for Sleep Anxiety
Here’s what I’ve done over the years that helped me feel so much more relaxed about my babies sleep:
1. I validated myself
I started telling myself “of course I feel this way. It makes so much sense that I feel this way.” Instead of blaming myself, criticizing myself or trying to push through, I accepted my feelings. I gave myself permission to feel them.
“This is hard. And it makes sense that it feels hard.”
2. I zoomed out
I stopped treating every nap or bedtime like a test. One bad nap or rough night didn’t mean I failed. It took time, but I learned to see sleep as a longer story, not a moment-by-moment report card. Gradually, with a lot of patience, I started looking at the pattern instead of the moment. That helped me breathe again.
3. I worked on my inner voice
I didn’t try to silence the anxious thoughts. Instead, I learned to speak to them. Calmly, confidently and assertively.
“I’m doing enough.”
“My baby is safe.”
“We’ll be okay.”
“Nothing is going to happen if we don’t sleep tonight.”
And sometimes, on the nights when I was very tired and worn out, a simple “Go away. I don’t allow you in now.”
It didn’t work the first time, or the second. But with time, that voice started to feel more real. And now that voice is the leader in my head. It’s my go-to. It took time and work, but I changed the voice that speaks up at night.
4. I brought regulation into the room
I couldn’t force calm. What I could do was practice sitting with myself through the fear.
A deep breath. A hand on my heart. Softening of my clenched jaw. Whispering “It’s okay.” These tiny little gestures made a big difference.
5. I tracked sleep a LOT less
Sleep tracking can help identify patterns. It’s helpful for nap schedules and bedtimes. BUT – I see parents fall into this trap over and over again: obsessing over schedules and wake windows and minutes slept and the time left til bedtime… it becomes the absolute thief of joy. A first class soul-sucker.
The only time I track sleep now is when something needs to be adjusted. Otherwise, I go with the flow.
6. I depersonalized sleep
This is cringe, and I’m warning you in advance, so please try not to laugh at my first-time-mom-self. Go easy on her, ok?
Sometimes I would take it personally if a nap was short. Or a morning started too early. I felt like my baby was punishing me. I made my baby’s sleep all about…me.
When it was really all about… baby sleep.
It was a normal, natural EXTREMELY INCONVENIENT biological function that I was learning to cope with.
Plain and simple. Once I learned to separate the two and completely remove myself from the equation, I was so much more equipped to handle the hard nights and short naps.
Because tired and insulted is a lot harder to handle than just plain, factual, simple… tired.
Sleep isn’t good or bad. It just is. Our job is to offer sleep. Their job is to take it. Or leave it.
7. I recognized what is developmentally normal and how that clashes with modern society.
It’s not a judgment, it’s just the reality we live in. Babies wake, need contact, and develop at their own pace – but our world expects schedules and independence way too soon.
That mismatch can make parents feel like they’re doing something wrong when they’re not.
Yes, there are absolutely tools and strategies we can implement to help lengthen sleep, but at the bottom of the toolbox is a deep surrender towards biology. Which is that infants often wake frequently for the first three years and beyond.
Mantras for Sleep Anxiety
Here are some of the (many) mantras I’ve repeated to myself through the hard nights. This, along with surrender, is what helped soften my approach towards baby sleep.
🌙 “My baby’s sleep is not a reflection of how good of a mom I am.”
🌙 “My baby is a person with their own thoughts and feelings. I cannot control them, but I can support them.”
🌙 “My baby is not defined by how well they sleep. I love my child no matter what their sleep looks like.”
🌙 “This stage won’t last forever.”
🌙 “Connection matters more than a perfect schedule.”
🌙 “Babies aren’t meant to sleep like robots.”
🌙 “We’re exactly where we need to be.”
🌙 “I refuse to measure my worth by a clock.”
🌙 “I am not failing and my baby is not broken.”
If your stomach clenches at bedtime, if you’re counting the hours and bracing for the worst, I know how hard this feels.
You’re not weak and you’re not broken.
(Well on second thought, we’re all a little broken inside, but you’re just as broken as everyone else is, ok? Don’t worry about it.)
There’s nothing wrong with you, and you’re certainly not a bad mom.
It means your system is maxed out and trying to protect you.
And you may want to spend some time unlearning these old ideas about sleep and internalizing that our goal isn’t perfect sleep.
The goal is to feel a little safer in your own body again, to be there for your baby when they need support, and to remember: no one’s worth is measured in wake windows.
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