I LIE AWAKE WORRYING EVERY NIGHT – HERE’S HOW I LEARNED TO SLEEP LIKE MY HUSBAND

I had never struggled with insomnia – until I became a mother, seven years ago. Interrupted sleep is par for the course when you have young children but unfortunately for me, though we’re way past the baby years, I’m still suffering.

Our three-year-old now only occasionally wanders into our room in the small hours, and my sleep hygiene is as squeaky clean as you could get; our room is dark, quiet and not too hot, our bed is comfortable. Yet I often find myself awake at 4am, my mind whirring and done for the night with sleep. I look over jealously at my husband, who falls asleep easily and seems to stay that way, snoring peacefully till the alarm goes off.

The accumulation of broken sleep has taken its toll: one day, I broke down in front of my cleaner when she asked how I was. After a bad night, staying on top of deadlines felt like wading through mud. Exercise and eating well would go out the window, and I’d have a short fuse with the kids. I’d be the worst version of myself.

I tried all the known strategies – exercising more, as advised by my GP, taking herbal sleep tablets, keeping a sleep diary, taking regular relaxing baths, cutting down on alcohol and screen time. But nothing seemed to work. I kept coming back to the fact that my husband’s sleep seemed so effortless, so I started looking into the gender sleep gap.

One of the reasons he could sleep and I couldn’t was glaringly obvious. I had spent the first year of both our children’s lives waking up with them in the night to breastfeed. Used to being summoned at all hours, I still wake at any noise my kids make, effectively making me the standby night parent despite my husband now taking the lead on childcare.

But there is more to it than this. It’s now internationally recognised that women need more sleep than men – 20 minutes more, according to studies – but women are also much more likely to experience problems with it. A 2024 study by the University of Southampton found that women of all ages rate their sleep quality lower than men’s – a trend that was confirmed in a 2023 pan-European study.

Firstly, sleep is affected by the menstrual cycle and issues are exacerbated during menopause, with the 2025 Menopause Review reporting that hormone changes during this period contribute to a decrease in the quality of sleep in women. While infuriating, this was also reassuring to know that I’m not alone, and biology was to blame.

However, there are social and psychological reasons, too. Research has shown that the disproportionate burden of emotional labour women carry, both at home and work, is another reason women suffer more sleep loss than men. A study by the University of Colorado Boulder found women are significantly more likely to “ruminate”. My husband’s ability to simply switch off and leave the day behind him is almost iconic, while, though I wouldn’t call myself a worrier, my own “ruminations” are often the soundtrack to my night.

When my sleep crisis was at its worst, I spoke to Dr Kat Lederle, a therapist who studies human sleep patterns and runs sleep consultancy Somnia. She pointed me to research showing women’s brains tend to demonstrate a stronger connectivity between emotional areas and areas that involve associating external information and experiences back to yourself.

“Our brains want to catch up on the thinking we were too busy to do during the day,” she says. “At night, these thoughts can more easily turn negative without any other input to process them with. This can activate the stress system, making falling or staying asleep more difficult.”

Societal expectations then compound the biological reasons, she says, like reproductive or hormonal status, PMS, and even polycystic ovarian syndrome.

So far, so depressing. What I wanted was a solution. The best advice turned out to be pretty straightforward: let it go.

We can’t change a lot about what women experience and men don’t, certainly not biologically, but what we can change is our mindset, according to Lederle. Apparently, obsessively following sleep hygiene “rules” – as I had been trying to do – can actually set you up for failure. Our expectations become so high that when there’s no payoff, it can become distressing.

Lederle’s philosophy is to accept the situation you’re currently in. If sleep doesn’t come, focus on just relaxing, rather than panicking about the bad day ahead you think will be inevitable.

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“Instead of thinking, ‘How can I fix this?’, can you say, ‘I hate it, but this is where I find myself’?” she says. “Think how you can adapt your daily life so you have more of an opportunity to be in bed during your personal window.’

Instead of following a strict, long set of rules, she advised me to focus on developing some long-term healthy habits – for example, having a screen-free period before bed. But if it’s not possible, say, because of work or life admin, it isn’t the end of the world.

She also helped me unpick and debunk another sleep “rule”: aiming for eight hours a night. This is not necessarily what everyone needs, Lederle says. Everyone has a different “sleep window” – the time of night when they naturally feel sleepy, then naturally wake – and importantly, this changes over time.

This was so useful for me to understand. Before having kids, I would sleep from 11pm to 7am with no issues, and pressuring myself to get back to that – a bit like trying to get the old pre-baby body back – is pointless. I have since had to learn how to make do with four or five hours of sleep at night at times.

Lederle’s advice was liberating. Once I let go of my expectations, I was able to find the headspace to introduce one small change at a time – then just get on with my day, rather than try to track everything. Honestly, I was tired of treating sleep like a project, more than I was tired of being tired.

I started by turning my phone off after putting the kids to bed. I used to think it would be useful to check my emails at night, but now there’s nothing that can’t be dealt with in the morning.

I also tackled my “revenge procrastination” habit – common among frazzled mums, where we stay up late even when we are tired because it’s the only time we have to ourselves all day. Now, when my kids have gone to bed – even if it’s 8.30pm or 9pm – rather than sitting alone watching TV or scrolling on my phone until midnight, telling myself it’s “me time”, I’ve started biting the bullet and going to bed. It’s the obvious solution to the 5am wake ups, but one I had been resisting. I’m not perfect, and I’m still working on getting closer to 10pm, but going to bed even an hour earlier is still progress.

Other smaller habits include: taking magnesium tablets, watching my caffeine habit carefully, and trying to keep alcohol to weekends only. But let’s be real, sometimes a mid-week glass of red is justified.

It’s not like I’m now sleeping a blissful eight hours each night, but things have improved. I’ve managed to scrape up to six hours – seven if I’m doing really well, which I’ll take. Leaving behind my “Operation Sleep” approach, and just not worrying about sleep – and not comparing my sleep to my husband’s – feels like a burden off my shoulders. There’s no point losing sleep over losing sleep.

2026-02-10T12:34:12Z