For five years after the birth of her son, Jane Alexander averaged three hours’ sleep a night. “It was torture,” she says. “I’d get to sleep at 4.30am and then be woken at 6am by the baby. My husband would get up and look after him while I tried to catch up on sleep, but I was on a knife edge and woke at the merest whimper.” Even long after the baby was sleeping through the night, the insomnia seemed impossible to shift. “If I was under any kind of stress, I didn’t sleep at all,” says Alexander, 49, a journalist. She returned to work a few weeks after the birth and the next half decade was a blur. “If I drove, I had to pinch and slap myself to keep alert. I was dizzy, confused and unable to string sensible sentences together. All I wanted was to hide away.”

Everyone knows that babies equal broken sleep, but postnatal insomnia — the inability to go back to sleep when the baby does, or to fall asleep in the first place — is a widespread problem for mothers. The latest research has shown that new mothers typically spend 20% more time awake during the first six weeks after childbirth than is the average. In addition, post­partum women wake more frequently and have less dream sleep than non-postpartum women. “I see this problem a huge amount,” says Jenny Smith, a senior NHS midwife and author of Your Body, Your Baby, Your Birth. “And if the lack of sleep is chronic, it can lead you into postnatal depression.”

While, in milder cases, women can return to their usual sleep patterns once the baby starts to sleep through, for others the problem can become a habit. The causes are a mixture of the psychological and physical, and triggered by the shell shock of becoming a mother, says Smith. “New mothers are often very tired, especially if they’ve had a difficult labour. They may have anaemia or thyroid problems, and as the hormone prolactin comes in after birth, the oestrogen high of pregnancy goes. The exhaustion can lead to not producing enough milk, and then the baby becomes even more fractious.”

Insomnia spirals with anxiety, “worrying if the baby is okay, and if you’re being a good mother”. Then there is the agony of lying awake with a stream of miserable thoughts racing through your mind, which can undermine a mother’s confidence. That, in turn, creates more exhaustion and insomnia.

For Kate, 37, the problem started when her son was nine months old and developed separation anxiety. “Because he was my first child, I wasn’t good about leaving him,” she says. “I’d settle him and he’d fall asleep, but I’d stay awake. Or I’d be stressed about work and then he would wake up. “I became so deranged with sleep deprivation that I was convinced we were psychically linked — that I’d wake as a premonition of him waking.” One of the worst parts of the insomnia, she says — and others agree — is that “your brain goes to these really dark, twisted places, which, in the cold light of day, seem like nothing”.

Sophie, 36, a head of communications, was struck by debilitating insomnia for the first time with her second baby — even though he was sleeping well. “Sleep deprivation, which all new parents experience, makes you tired and grumpy. But this was a whole new ballgame,” she says. The slightest noise would wake her. “Then I got caught in a vicious cycle of exhaustion breeding anxiety breeding insomnia. I dreaded going to bed because I was so terrified of the insomnia, and, of course, that made it worse. In the small hours, lying awake, I really lost my mind.”

Kate’s insomnia lasted 18 months and was exacerbated by her high-pressure job in publishing. “The most horrific night, I was absolutely exhausted,” she remembers. “I’d stayed up to do the 11 o’clock feed, but had to go to Milan on a business trip the next day. I was a bit anxious about being away from the baby, so I’d planned to do all my meetings in one day, and had to leave the house at 5am. I was so nervous about not sleeping that I didn’t sleep. At 3am, I thought, ‘This is ridiculous. I have to get up in two hours.’ I went downstairs and got the brandy bottle out of the cupboard and downed three shots in the hope it would knock me out. I didn’t sleep — and at 5am, I had to get up, not only exhausted but hung over.”

The way out, survivors say, is to ask for help. For Alexander, a few doses of the sleeping pill Zopiclone were all she needed. “Taking that first tablet, I felt I had failed. But it knocked me out. It was as if my body had become stuck in a rut, as if the synapses had all become routed one way — like a series of traffic lights stuck on red. The sleeping tablets seemed to break the habit.”

After a couple of weeks, her healthy sleeping pattern returned and now, five years on, the nightmare is just a memory. “I could have kicked myself for waiting so long.” Ultimately, recovering is all about going easy on yourself, relaxing control and getting support. “Your husband saying, ‘Come on, you can cope,’ is often the last thing you need,” says Smith. You need someone to hold your hand and get through it with you; someone to give you a break, change the sheets and cook some soup. Once you’ve caught up on sleep, it’s easier to break the cycle — and we all know that, in the clear light of day, after seven hours’ sleep, the world looks a totally different place.

Middle of the night panic

Physically, at about 3am, the body clock shifts from deep sleep to a lighter, prewaking phase; being stressed and hyperalert can make a mother oversensitive to the body’s waking-up signals. “As a new mother, you’re hard-wired to be more responsive to hear kids breathing,” says Dr Neil Stanley, a sleep researcher. “It’s a natural defence, an evolutionary hangover.”

Being awake alone in the dark while everyone else is asleep can also trigger feelings of displacement. Deprived of familiar cues of daylight and communication, the mind has only itself for company. “In the day, you’re busy,” says Stanley, “but at night, you have no distractions. You’re alone and vulnerable. However hard you concentrate on fluffy bunnies, the worries come crashing through.”

Experts say the best way to deal with the spirals of fear is to avoid being woken unnecessarily. “I recently advised a sleep-deprived mum to use a fan in her room to stop her waking at every slight noise,” says Dr Nerina Ramlakhan, a sleep expert. “She now sleeps like a dream.”

Catching up on sleep will help break the cycle. “Ask your family or a nanny to take the baby for the night, to give you the opportunity to get a good night’s sleep,” advises the NHS psychologist Dr Courtney Raspin.

Destressing your life is also helpful. When negative thoughts surface, refuse to let them in. If you can’t withstand them, breathe slowly and keep your attention on your breath. Stanley suggests turning on the light and doing something comforting, like reading a favourite book, to bring back a sense of familiarity. Meditation, holistic therapies and practising self-acceptance can all help to quell anxiety and stress. “Forget about tidying, lipstick, shopping and being a supermum,” says Jenny Smith. “Get some DVDs and books and surrender.”