Asking for help is no sin

In my hospital years as an early career doctor I did my fair share of shift work. Twelve-hour nights on a week on -week off ICU terms.

I did long days turning into long nights being called in for emergencies at all hours, and backing it up again the next day.

I thought, prior to having children, I was well prepared for broken sleep. I thought I knew what tired was. I was so wrong.

I have seen some bone-achingly tired mothers in clinic this week. It took me right back to the long nights with my first born.

Nights where I could only say to myself, “I can’t do this again. I literally cannot survive another night like this”, only to have the sun rise again, and another day emerge, and survived, back into the anxious night ahead.

I remember dreading going to bed. To the point of being tearful and not wanting my husband to go to sleep. I was so afraid of the broken sleep to come that I didn’t want to even go to bed.

I’ve been one of those mothers I see in clinic. Felt like a shell of my former self. Tellingly my i-phone facial recognition had to be reset as it couldn’t compute that these dark under eye bags, drawn-out face, could belong to the person I had been just a few weeks before.

My children are not the children who sleep through the night. Ever.

My oldest has started sleeping through, most nights, now – having recently turned five. (For what it’s worth; I think these kids often turn out to be the best. They spend so many extra (awake) hours with their parents they often have great language skills and cheeky personalities. There has to be a consolation prize).

So I relate to these mums I am seeing in the depths of true sleep deprivation. There’s a reason it’s used as a form of torture.

The biggest lesson I learnt between child one and child two was to ask for help. My first born being a much sought-after child after a battle of infertility, I felt that when my broken sleep was breaking me, I couldn’t ask for help. It felt like some sort of karmic lack of appreciation for this baby I had wanted so badly.

It felt like to complain about his sleep, to complain about him at all; was to be inconsiderate to all of those who would kill for a sleepless night with a baby of their own.

But if I look back on myself in my early throws of motherhood, I would say to myself – ask for help.

Your family want to help you. Your baby is adorable and anyone would be delighted to have a sleepy snuggle with that chunky squish.

You’re not a failure as a mother to need help. You don’t love your child any less because you’re finding this hard.

So to my beautiful, loving, tearyeyed mums. Desperate for a threehour chunk of sleep. Afraid of what tonight might bring.

I see you. I have been you. Take the advice from future you.

Ask for help.

Dr Elise Davey is a GP