Insomnia's Emotional Toll: A Young Mom Shares Her Struggle With Sleep and Stress

For a person with chronic insomnia, the only thing worse than tossing and turning all night might be struggling through the day. A consistent lack of sleep can cause physical and emotional problems, affect relationships, and impair your social life.

Insomnia compounds other health problems
Rebecca Wiseman, 26, started having sleep problems during her last pregnancy when she was put on hospital bed rest for preterm labor. After she gave birth to her second set of twins in two years, her insomnia gradually got worse.

Prescription sleeping pills helped, but Wiseman didn't want to medicate herself into a deep sleep while the babies needed her. She could only use them three nights a week when her husband, who works long shifts for the military, had off the next day and could stay up late to attend to the children.

Averaging just three hours of sleep a night, Wiseman was also put on medication for postpartum depression. "At first I thought the insomnia was due to either the babies having colic, me adjusting to the stress of four babies, or a side effect of my depression," she says. "I thought it was temporary, that it would just get better with time."

Her depression subsided, only to be replaced by chronic migraines, and soon, symptoms of mild restless legs syndrome at night. Then she ran out of pills. "I realized things were bad when the babies started sleeping better than me," she continues.

Wiseman's family had just moved to Sumter, S.C., and her new family doctor did not want to prescribe medication. "He said that pills caused more problems than solutions," she remembers. "But in the same breath he told me that my migraines were caused by lack of sleep. Not the answers I wanted as a frustrated new mom."