My friend Lilian called me one afternoon during those early weeks. I picked up the phone, said hello, and then nothing. Complete blank. I couldn’t remember why I’d answered. I couldn’t remember if I’d called her or she’d called me. I stood in my kitchen holding the phone to my ear like a foreign object, genuinely confused about what was happening.

That wasn’t baby brain. That was six weeks of sleeping in ninety-minute fragments doing what prolonged sleep deprivation does to a human body.

This Isn’t “Mom Brain.” This Is Drinking & Driving

We love to laugh about “mom brain” like it’s this cute, quirky side effect of having a baby. Forgot where you put your keys? Mom brain! Drove past your own street? Mom brain! Left the stove on? Ha ha, mom brain!

No. When you’re sleeping two hours at a time for weeks on end, your cognitive function is operating at the level of someone who is drunk. Your memory consolidation is shot. Your emotional regulation is nonexistent. Your ability to assess risk is compromised.

And we just normalize it. We make jokes. We tell new moms to “sleep when the baby sleeps” and then laugh about how impossible that is, as if the impossibility isn’t actually a crisis.

The Postpartum Mental Health Connection No One Talks About

Postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety don’t exist in a vacuum. They have triggers, and the biggest one (the one doctors gloss over with a pamphlet and a “get some rest” comment) is chronic sleep deprivation.

When you don’t sleep:

• Your anxiety spikes. Every noise is a threat, every silence is suspicious.
• Your mood crashes. Everything feels hopeless and overwhelming.
• Your ability to bond with your baby suffers. You can’t connect when you’re running on fumes.
• Your physical recovery stalls. Your body heals during sleep that isn’t happening.
• Your relationships deteriorate. You’re short-tempered, resentful, withdrawn.

PPA whispered terrible things to me in those early weeks. Intrusive thoughts. Catastrophic scenarios. The absolute certainty that something was wrong with my baby, with me, with everything. And the less I slept, the louder it got.

Fixing Sleep Fixed My Brain

I’m not saying sleep training cures postpartum depression. I’m saying that when I finally got my baby on a schedule, when I started sleeping four, then six, then eight hours straight, the fog lifted. Not all at once. But measurably. Noticeably. Like someone slowly turning up the lights in a room I’d been stumbling through in the dark.

The paranoia quieted down. The memory loss stopped. I could finish a sentence again. I could enjoy my baby instead of just surviving him.

This is why I get angry when people tell me sleep training is “selfish.” Taking care of your mental health so you can actually be present for your child is selfish? Getting enough rest to not drive your car into a median because you fell asleep at a red light is selfish?

Your Mental Health Is Not a Luxury

It’s not a bonus perk you get if you’re lucky. It’s the foundation everything else sits on: your parenting, your marriage, your ability to function. And sleep is the non-negotiable input.

Mom Awakened isn’t just a sleep training book. It’s the book that connects the dots between your baby’s sleep, your mental health, and the version of yourself you’re terrified you’ve lost forever. Because I almost lost her too. And getting her back started with one decision: my baby is going to learn to sleep, and so am I.

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Clara Harper has been through the PPA fog and come out the other side with two sleeping kids and enough clarity to write about it. Her book Mom Interrupted is the unfiltered memoir no one warned her she’d end up writing. Follow her on TikTok for mental health meets motherhood content.

If your child is the anxious type who struggles to separate or settle, I Can Overcome My Sadness (Mom’s Choice Award winner) gives them language for those big, overwhelming feelings.