Hi, I’m Brittany Winfrey, certified sleep coach for moms.

After I had my daughter my life changed dramatically. She would cluster feed all night, waking me up every hour. When she wasn’t awake eating, I was checking on her to make sure she was still breathing. My anxiety was continuing to creep up. My midwife showed up at my house for the 2-week postpartum check-up. As she was asking me how I was doing, I started complaining about how little sleep I was getting. I wasn’t able to take naps and my nighttime sleep was extremely broken up. Her advice was to sleep when the baby sleeps. 

This only added additional pressure to sleep. My postpartum journey took a wild turn as I fell deep into a spiral of anxiety that led to a long-lasting battle with insomnia. It started off with a combination of having a baby coupled with life stressors of selling/buying a house, starting a new job and signing up for an Ironman.

If you look up sleep, you see how ‘important’ it is for well-being, and all the numerous benefits. Being a health coach, I especially could emphasize the importance of sleep and rattle off all the facts to my clients. So when I couldn’t sleep, I was distraught. I quickly became more and more obsessed with sleep. I started taking every over-the-counter supplement and tried every sleep hygiene trick. I kept trying. Hoping the more effort I put in, the easier sleep would come.

But strangely enough the opposite happened. The more stuff I tried, the less I slept. I thought I was going crazy. My baby was starting to sleep through the night and I was awake in desperation. I was scared, lonely and emotionally exhausted.

I went to my midwife and was prescribed sleeping pills. They worked initially…until they didn’t. I tried a few different types but it would always end in me discouraged and very confused. If ambien doesn’t work for me, then there must be something really wrong with me. The hardest part was the isolation and feeling alone. That nobody else knew what I was going through or could understand. My body and mind were breaking down.

But when I thought I couldn’t handle it anymore, things got better.  I learned about insomnia. I started hearing stories of others in my same shoes. I learned that instead of trying, I needed to let go. I started to change my thought patterns, to feel hopeful, and to sleep again.

It’s been over 3 years since my battle with insomnia started. I have learned so much about what insomnia is and what it takes to get better.

No matter how long you have been struggling, you still have the ability to sleep. My goal as your coach is to get you back to a point of sleeping well and getting your life back for good.

Insomnia is personal to me. I understand the struggle, I’ve been there.

 

 After having my daughter, I struggled with insomnia for two years. I was desperate and felt like there was something uniquely wrong with me. But after lots of trial and error, I finally found relief and was able to sleep again. It wasn’t from sleep meds, sleep hygiene, blue lights,  blackout curtains, or even meditation. 

My journey was a process of learning about what insomnia really is and letting go of all the fears that continued to contribute to the cycle of sleepless nights. There isn’t an easy button to recovery. But when you put in the heartwork it leads to  transformative change.