Expert Series - The Sleep Cure
Welcome to Part 2 of our Expert Series, where we share thoughtful guidance from professionals supporting women through pregnancy, birth and postpartum. This week, Letitia Underwood offers honest reflections on navigating the early days with a newborn.
ABOUT ME
I am Letitia, a qualified Midwife, Health Visitor, NHS Safeguarding Practitioner and accredited Infant Sleep Consultant with over fifteen years of experience working within the NHS. But before all of that, I am a mum to identical twin girls, which as anyone with multiples will tell you, is a very particular kind of initiation into parenthood.
At The Sleep Cure, I support families to get the rest they need using evidence-based, responsive approaches tailored to their little one's temperament, their parenting style and the pace that works for them. I specialise in working with parents who are returning to work or already navigating working life alongside the beautiful, relentless demands of a little one who is not yet sleeping, because I know from my personal experience what that feels like.
My work is a little different from some sleep consultants in that my focus is not just the baby. It is just as much about the mother, alongside the baby. Because I have seen, professionally and personally, that you cannot pour from an empty cup and a mum who is running on empty cannot be the parent she wants to be, no matter how much she wants to be.
WHAT I WISH MORE MUMS KNEW
If I could tell every new parent one thing before their little one arrives, it would be that the chaos they are about to experience is not a sign that they are doing it wrong, it is a sign that you are doing it.
Newborn sleep is biologically and developmentally unpredictable. Babies in the early weeks have not yet developed a circadian rhythm, the internal body clock that tells us when it is day and when it is night. Instead, they sleep in short cycles, they feed constantly and they need a great deal of physical closeness. None of this is a problem to be fixed. It is simply what it is, for now.
What I wish more mums knew is that this phase is temporary, it is survivable and there is a difference between normal newborn sleep chaos and a sleep problem that needs addressing. You do not need to sleep train a newborn and you do not need a strict schedule from day one. What you need is information, realistic expectationsand enough support around you to get through it.
WHAT I SEE MUMS FINDING HARDEST
In fifteen years of clinical practice and through my own experience, the things I see mums struggling with most in those early days rarely come as a surprise. Feeding and sleep are deeply intertwined in the early months and the challenges in one almost always affect the other.
Whether a mum is breastfeeding or bottle feeding, the night feeds can feel relentless at times. Breastfeeding mums carry an additional physical and emotional load, their bodies are producing milk around the clock, their hormones are shifting dramatically and they are often the only person who can do the one thing that settles the baby. That is an enormous amount to hold.
Sleep associations develop quickly and without anyone intending them to. A baby who falls asleep feeding, being rocked or being held is not being naughty or manipulative,they are simply learning what sleep feels like and what it takes to get there. But when those associations become the only way a baby can fall asleep, night wakings that might otherwise be brief become lengthy, exhausting resettling episodes for the parent. That is when tiredness tips into depletion.
I also see a great deal of maternal guilt in those early weeks. Guilt about not enjoying every moment, guilt about struggling, guilt about wanting to sleep. And that guilt, layered on top of physical exhaustion, can become very heavy very quickly.
MANAGING NIGHT FEEDS WHEN IT FEELS OVERWHELMING
I remember lying in the dark at three in the morning with one twin feeding and the other beginning to stir, thinking “how am I supposed to do this?”
My first piece of advice for any mum who is drowning in the nights is always the same: share the load wherever you possibly can. If you have a partner, bring them in. The non-breastfeeding parent can take on settling after a feed, nappy changes, winding, anything that means you are not the only one waking every single time. If you are breastfeeding, there may come a point where expressing milk means your partner can take a feed while you sleep a longer stretch. That single longer stretch of sleep can change everything.
Beyond that, I encourage mums to stop watching the clock. I know that feels impossible but counting the minutes between wake-ups amplifies the exhaustion, particularly when you know it has been forty-three minutes since the last feed. Try to detach from the clock and focus only on the feed in front of you. Choose a Netflix series to watch, make a drink and enjoy a sweet treat as you feed.
SIMPLE THINGS THAT MAKE THE NIGHTS FEEL MORE MANAGEABLE
Practically speaking, there are some small but meaningful things that can make the nights feel less relentless. Having everything you need for a feed within arm's reach, a drink of water, a snack, your phone. This means you are not scrambling in the dark, whilst a hungry baby escalates.
A consistent wind-down before bed begins to lay the foundations of healthy sleep associations from early on. It does not need to be elaborate. A warm bath, a feed, a dimly lit room and a story is enough. The consistency is what matters far more than the content. You are gently teaching your baby's nervous system that this sequence means sleep is coming.
HOW MY OWN EXPERIENCE SHAPES THE WAY I WORK
Enormously and I do not say that lightly!
When I went back to work as a Midwife following my maternity leave with the girls, I was making clinical decisions, managing complex cases and caring for women at the most vulnerable time of their lives, all on broken sleep. I was doing the job I love but I was doing it as a lesser version of myself. I was slower, more emotional, less resilient and I was carrying the weight of missing my girls on top of all of it.
It was a sleep consultant who changed things for me. Within a few weeks, my girls were sleeping through the night. And the transformation was not just in them; it was in me. I was more present, more patient and more like myself. That experience redirected the course of my career and is the reason I feel so passionate about supporting mums who are in the same place I was. My clinical background means I approach sleep through a holistic lens,looking at the whole family, not just the baby. My personal experience means I can sit with a mum at her lowest point and say, with complete honesty, I understand, I have been there and it does get better.
IF A MUM COULD FOCUS ON JUST ONE THING
Perhaps the most important thing I can say to any parent reading this is something I wish someone had said to me sooner: asking for support is not a sign that you are not coping, it is a sign that you are taking your wellbeing and your family's wellbeing seriously.
We accept without question that we might see a physiotherapist for a knee injury or a nutritionist to improve our diet, therefore, getting support for something as fundamental as sleep, which affects every single aspect of our health, our relationships and our ability to function, should be no different. We live in a culture that celebrates the mum who copes quietly, who says she is fine when she is not, who scrolls through images of sleeping babies and wonders what she is doing wrong. I want to gently, firmly dismantle that idea because asking for support is not a sign that you have failed, it is one of the bravest and most loving things you can do for yourself and for your baby.Whether that support looks like leaning on a partner, calling your health visitor, speaking to a friend who has been through it or reaching out to a sleep consultant when the nights have become truly unsustainable, it all counts. None of it is giving up, it is about choosing yourself and your family.
The early days can be hard. You deserve to get through them with your wellbeing intact, not just surviving, but supported.
Letitia Underwood is a qualified Midwife, Health Visitor, NHS Safeguarding Practitioner and accredited Infant Sleep Consultant with over 15 years of NHS experience. She is the founder of The Sleep Cure, specialising in supporting working parents and those returning to work following parental leave. She is a mother of identical twin girls.