One of the concerns of new mothers returning home after giving birth involves the baby's sleep, on which will depend the chance to have those moments of rest she needs, especially at night. Even though some newborns, from the very start, sleep through the night for four or five hours at a stretch, mothers should be prepared to know that it is unlikely a baby will manage long pauses, since generally, during the first weeks, he feeds often, especially if breastfed.
But it is not so much waking up to feed him that worries mothers, as the situation many find themselves in and that pushes them to their limit: never having any "real" moments of rest, because between one feed and the next the baby stays awake, whimpers, demands their constant closeness, or, if he does manage to fall asleep, has frequent awakenings in which he cries, wants to be held, where he may drop off again until he is put down in his crib.
A vicious circle quickly forms in which the mother's stress feeds the baby's state of constant alertness, and vice versa.
Sleep problems (which make up about 30% of the psychosomatic problems of the first year of life) do not, however, concern only the baby, but also the people close to him, since the tension that prevents him from sleeping peacefully is related to the fears and unconscious desires of whoever is taking care of him (particularly the mother). It is not rare, in fact, for a child who usually has trouble sleeping or wakes frequently to manage peaceful stretches of sleep if put to bed by someone who offers him more reassuring "holding", because it allows him to more easily manage the anguished feelings he experiences at the moment of separating from the other person in order to sleep. These are archaic anxieties of falling, of losing contact, of loneliness, whose intensity varies not only according to each individual's own "makeup" but also according to the surrounding environment, characterized, especially at the start, by his mother's inner world. She is not always able to take this on and to send him reassuring messages capable of calming him. Indeed, the child's separation anxieties often bring to light unconscious childhood fears, experiences, desires that motherhood has stirred back up and that unknowingly create an obstacle in her contact with him. This means that, however much the mother consciously tries to be close to him, the deep contact is fragile: the inner space in which the baby should be welcomed is occupied by her unresolved conflicts.
When, instead, the mother gives herself the chance and the time to work through her unconscious issues through analytic psychotherapy, she spontaneously finds a way to attune herself to her baby, who has no trouble perceiving her as able to contain his anxieties, present, no longer distracted by something that had nothing to do with him.
The repetition of positive experiences with the mother allows the baby to internalize the reliability of her presence, which, during sleep, is not lost. Once the certainty of seeing her reappear upon waking has been established, it is no longer necessary to have her always close by, for fear that she might disappear for good!