By Sophie Harris - Pregnancy & Postpartum Psychotherapist

Monitor Your Sleep

Monitoring your sleep is helpful to get a baseline understanding of how much sleep you are actually getting and the patterns that may be happening each night. Write down - either on a piece of paper, journal or in the notes on your phone - how much you are currently sleeping, what time you go to bed, when in the night and how often you wake up, and monitor how long it takes for you to fall asleep. This will help you with the following tips too.

Challenge your anxious thoughts

Often when we are experiencing sleep problems, we develop faulty or catastrophic thinking patterns about how bad it is to not sleep. We all know that the more that we worry about sleeping, the more likely it is that we are unable to sleep - it's a vicious circle. 

Notice what thoughts you're currently having about sleep. For example, you may feel like it will be really awful if you don't sleep and start dreading the next day ahead and this tends to make your anxiety worse when you're trying to get to sleep. However, we need to try and shift this mindset and remember that it’s not a big deal if you don't get a good night's sleep. 

Yes, it's uncomfortable and we would all prefer it if we did get enough sleep, but we can all function on limited sleep and it's not going to harm us. If we let go of some of this anxiety around feeling tired then we're much more likely to be able to get a good night's sleep in the first place.

Start writing your worries down

Writing down any worries or anxieties that you have, usually before bed can help get them out of your head and onto paper, which means that they're less likely to circulate when you’re trying to sleep. If you wake in the night with racing thoughts, you may also choose to write the thoughts down to get them out of your head. Try and experiment with what works for you.

Finally, how to treat insomnia in third trimester conclusion.

Remember that insomnia and sleep problems during pregnancy are extremely common, as uncomfortable as they may be. Try to remember that they will not last forever and by following these simple tips you are highly likely to be able to get a better night's sleep. 

If you’d like to explore this further in CBT sessions with me, feel free to contact me to discuss this further.