“My sleep has never been the same since I had kids”

You may have heard this, or even experienced it yourself.

It’s a statement that I heard from a number of people seeking treatment for their insomnia.

Especially women.

And it sounds like it begins during the first 12 months of their kid’s life.

Selective Attention

There’s a concept known as the Transdiagnostic Approach in clinical psychology.

It started when a group of researchers got together at a conference. One was an expert in rumination. Another in eating disorders. And another who started out in PTSD and then became an expert in insomnia.

What they noticed is that the same thought processes were occurring in the different groups they were studying.

They did something about it - and wrote a book called “Cognitive Behavioural Processes Across Psychological Disorders: A Transdiagnostic Approach To Research and Treatment”

This classic text demonstrates that the same thought (ie, cognitive) processes occur across diagnoses (hence the term ‘Transdiagnostic’).

And this blog is about one of those cognitive processes - Selective Attention.

Selective attention is easy to understand when it comes to something like PTSD.

Someone who has developed PTSD has undergone a life-threatening event.

One example I recall when working with a Vietnam Vet were objects on the road when he was driving.

That’s because when he was in a convoy of cars in Vietnam, a car ahead of him saw a can of Coke on the road. The driver of the car steered towards the can to see if he could crush it with his tyres.

But the can of Coke was a booby trap. An explosive device.

My client saw this happen. And ever since, his focus when driving has been off.

Instead of focusing on the car ahead of him, or traffic signs, he easily gets distracted when an object is on the road.

This is an example of Selective Attention - where one is constantly searching for threats in their environment.

The same can happen with insomnia - although the threats are not as life-threatening.

Sleep-Related Selective Attention

We need to be able to ‘let go’ of our environment when falling asleep - and allow ourselves to be vulnerable.

For people with insomnia, they can often be searching for threats.

Not necessarily a physical threat (eg, noises that sound like someone is breaking into the house).

But threats to their sleep.

Such threats include:

• How hot or cold a part of their body is

• A dog barking in the distance

• A wrinkle in their sheet

• The house/apartment creaking

• Tension in a muscle or feeling uncomfortable (eg, hips, knees, neck, even needing to go to the toilet)

• Whether they begin to feel hungry whilst waiting for sleep

• The light coming through their curtain/blinds

• A partner snoring or choking in their sleep

The focus of sleep-related selective attention has been on adults with insomnia - but not necessarily on the next threat in their environment that I wish to draw your attention to …

Your Baby’s Cry

Besides sleep apnea (where someone starts to pause their breathing during sleep - the brain senses the danger - and the person ‘wakes’ up), the other biggest factor that fragments an adult’s sleep is a sleep researcher. You know? The ones who purposely wake people up during experiments. Just so they can learn something about how sleep works.

Obviously I’m kidding. It’s actually a baby. To be more specific - a baby’s cry.

If you think about it - a new parent’s job goes beyond 9-to-5.

And when they’ve finally put their baby down to sleep, and they finally realise it’s '“their time”, that other thought may go through their head.

There’s Still The Night Shift Ahead of Me…

A baby cries out during the night because they need something.

It may be because they’re hungry, too cold, too hot, want a cuddle, are scared, wet their nappy, shat their nappy, shart their nappy, and so forth.

As a parent, we really don’t know what they need when they cry.

Whatever the reason, parents often get up and attend to their baby.

And regardless of whether they feed them, rock them back to sleep, or change their nappy (that’s a diaper by the way for all you US folks), the parent then goes back to bed and tries to fall asleep.

But for some parents, they ‘randomly’ have to get back up because their baby has started to cry again several minutes later.

In a way, this inadvertently teaches a parent that they cannot fall back to sleep yet - even after doing a mini-nightshift with their baby.

And over time, some parents go back to bed, their head hits their pillow, and they are listening out for a threat to their sleep.

They’re wondering whether their baby will cry again…

Conclusion?

I cannot find a single study that has investigated the selective attention of parents of an infant (to all the researchers out there - be my guest and go for it!).

What this blog has done is to set-up the theory.

That it is feasible for parents to develop sleep-related selective attention.

And thus, it is feasible for parents to develop insomnia.

And that their insomnia does not necessarily resolve after their infant begins to sleep better.

On LinkedIn, I’m writing a series of posts titled “10 things you should know about sleep before I die”. One thing is that “Sleep is similar across the lifespan”.

The point of this post was to highlight that if you work with infants’ or kids’ sleep - you can also understand how to work with the parents’ sleep (and visa versa).

Working on selective attention is tricky, but there are some cognitive techniques that can work (we teach this here).

But we seriously need some data on selective attention in parents of infants.

Because there’s still many nightshifts ahead for parents after their kid’s first year of life:

• Once they get out of their sleep prison (ie, cot [for you US folks, a cot is a crib]), they can come and visit you at any time of the night.

• When they’re a pre-schooler, they can develop a parasomnia - and sleepwalk-you or nighterror-you awake!

• When they’re in school, they can become anxious at night because a kid at school told them about a ghost story - or they saw a scary thumbnail on Youtube.

• And when they start driving at night, you may lie awake listening out to any sound that indicates they arrived home safely during the night.

Parents’ sleep matters!

• Prof MG

One Sleep Till $

I’m stoked (this means really happy for all you non-Aussies out there) to have finalised the line-up for Jan 2022 WINK Sleep Conference and it’s now gone live on our website (see here).

I’ve extended the deadline to get a free ticket to the conference to Monday Sep 13th at 11:59PM (your time).

To get a free ticket, you can join our community and become a WINK Sleep Member for just 16 bucks.

Only a couple of days ago a mate (that can mean ‘good friend’, ‘friend’, or a complete stranger you’re being friendly to when Down Under) called me to say he’s been given a CPAP machine for his sleep, but he feels like the company is treating him like a money bucket.

That they’ve forgotten he’s a human being.

And my mate is a class CPAP-wearing human being. He’s ripped off his CPAP mask after using it for a couple of hours. What psychological techniques help humans use their CPAP is one theme of our Jan 2022 conference.

I’ve seen hundreds of insomnia patients who have also had sleep apnea … but I didn’t know they had sleep apnea. So another theme of the Jan 2022 conference is the science behind treating people who have comorbid sleep apnea and insomnia (also known as COMISA).

If you help people’s sleep, chances are some of your past and future clients have COMISA.

Finally, in the theme of this post, parents are not immune to developing COMISA.

Everyone’s sleep matters!