Sleep and Grief

Is the ability to sleep connected to grief? Especially the grief involved when placing a child for adoption? I believe it is and so does my social worker. I was recently at a workshop for pre-adoptive parents and on the walls were hanging lists of pros and cons that they believed first parents faced. One of the pros they believed first parents have is sleep, which we get, while they are up nights with a newborn baby.

I am here to tell you that isn’t always the case. When a woman places her child for adoption her body automatically prepares for taking care of that child. One of the things it prepares itself for is sleepless nights. For the first six weeks of my Punkin’s life, I rarely slept at night. I would crash sometimes during the day from exhaustion, but nights were usually spent laying in bed, trying to sleep, while fighting back tears or, worse yet, waking up from extremely vivid dreams that I was holding Punkin and feeding him only to wake up and he wasn’t there.

What were some of the ways I worked on my sleep issues? Well it was tough for me, because my bipolar II also affects my sleep patterns. I worked on things like counting. I know that sounds crazy, but lying in bed and counting helps me focus my mind on one thing. Or I would play the alphabet game. I would try to come up with a three-letter word for each letter of the alphabet. Some nights I would try to come up with a four-letter word. Some days I would read the most boring book I could find for awhile. Other nights I would drink a glass of warm milk or chamomile tea, which was soothing, settled my stomach and relaxed my body.

I never did have to take a sleep aid, although my psychiatrist did offer them to me at one point. I opted not to take them because they are addictive and I do have an addictive personality. So I went without the sleeping pills, for my health’s sake, believe it or not. If I absolutely couldn’t sleep I would get up and write or do needlework or read. That was always a last resort though; I preferred to sleep some during the night.

So remember, if you place a child for adoption and you aren’t sleeping well immediately afterwards, don’t be surprised. It is your body adjusting to the birth of your child and your body working through your grief. Take some time, focus on trying to sleep and if you can’t sleep in the end, sometimes getting up and doing something “productive” helps. Remember you aren’t alone in this; many first moms go through sleeping problems. If worst comes to worst, please contact your doctor about a sleeping aid. They can be prescribed safely in the short term.

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