Returning to Work When Your Baby Still Isn’t Sleeping: What Can Help?
Going back to work when your baby still isn’t sleeping well can feel really hard. Broken nights are exhausting anyway, but once you add an alarm, nursery drop-off, commuting, meetings and a full working day into the mix, those night wakes can suddenly feel much harder to manage.
A lot of parents I speak to reach this point after months of thinking sleep might improve on its own. While they were on maternity leave they were tired, of course, but there was sometimes a little more flexibility in the day. Once work starts again, trying to concentrate after being awake several times in the night can feel very different. It’s often around this point that parents say to me, “We can’t keep doing this.”
I totally understand that. Returning to work is a big adjustment in itself, and your baby’s routine may be changing at the same time.
Why sleep can change when you go back to work
Starting nursery or spending more time with another caregiver can change the rhythm of the day. Naps might happen at different times, they may sleep for longer or shorter than they do at home, mornings might start earlier, and evenings can suddenly feel much more rushed.
That doesn’t mean nursery has ruined their sleep. Babies can sleep differently with different people and in different environments. I regularly hear from parents whose baby naps beautifully at nursery and then refuses the cot at home, or does the complete opposite.
What matters is how all of those changes fit together. If your baby has had less daytime sleep than usual, for example, they may need bedtime to come forward a little. If they’ve had a later or longer nap, bedtime may naturally need to be slightly later.
This is why I always say, keep one eye on the clock and one eye on your baby. Their routine can still have structure without every day needing to look exactly the same.
Busy evenings can have a bigger impact than you realise
The after-work period can be full on. You finish work, collect your child, get home, sort dinner, think about baths, bags for tomorrow, washing, lunches, and somewhere in amongst all of that you want some actual time with your child too.
Even on a rushed evening, it can help to find a few small moments of connection before bedtime. That might be singing a silly song together on the way home, having a quick dance in the kitchen while dinner is cooking, reading a story, or just sitting with them for a few minutes and giving them your full attention. It does not need to be elaborate or take ages. Those little moments of connection can still matter, especially after they have spent the day at nursery or with someone else.
Bedtime can easily drift later without you really noticing.
Parents sometimes assume that keeping their child awake a little longer will make them more tired and help them sleep better. That doesn’t always happen. If a baby or child reaches bedtime overtired, they may find it harder to settle and sleep can become more unsettled.
I don’t think bedtime needs to be exactly the same time every night. I tend to think of it more as a window, with some flexibility depending on naps, wake-up time and how the day has gone. What I would keep predictable is the bedtime routine, with the same familiar steps in the same order every night if you can.
If evenings have become much busier since you went back to work, it can be worth checking whether bedtime has gradually crept later and whether your child is coping with that.
If a later bedtime can’t be avoided on working days, that’s real life. On days when you have a little more flexibility, you could bring bedtime forward, particularly if your child is clearly tired or hasn’t slept as well during the day. Parents sometimes worry that an earlier bedtime will automatically mean an earlier start the next morning, but that isn’t necessarily the case. If your child is overtired, bringing bedtime forward by 30 minutes, or sometimes up to an hour, can give them a bit more opportunity to get the sleep they need.
You do not need to change everything
When parents are exhausted, there can be a temptation to overhaul the whole routine in one go. I rarely think that is the best place to start.
I would usually look at how much daytime sleep your child is getting, when their naps are happening, how long they are awake before bedtime, how they currently get to sleep, what happens when they wake overnight, and whether anything has changed since nursery or work started.
Sometimes there are a couple of fairly small things that can make a difference. Other times the sleep problem has been there for months and going back to work has made it much harder to live with.
I prefer to make changes that actually fit family life. There is no point creating a perfect sleep plan on paper if nobody can realistically follow it when they are getting home from work at 6pm, cooking dinner and preparing for the next day.
What about night feeds and needing help to get back to sleep?
Night waking is normal, especially when babies are little, and returning to work does not suddenly mean your baby should be sleeping through the night.
Some babies will still genuinely need feeds overnight depending on their age and individual needs. There are also babies who wake and feed because feeding has become one of the main ways they know how to get back to sleep.
I had this with my own daughter. I would try other ways of settling her, sometimes nothing worked, and I would end up feeding her back to sleep. That was fine while it worked for us.
Eventually it stopped working. I knew she wasn’t hungry every time she woke, and I reached the point where I wanted to help her find other ways to get back to sleep. That did not mean taking every feed away overnight. We could start introducing other ways of settling and make changes gradually.
If feeding, rocking, cuddling or lying with your child is working for your family, there is no rule saying you have to stop. You only need to make a change when you want to, or when what you are doing is no longer working for you.
When broken sleep starts affecting work and family life
Trying to be present at work after another broken night is hard. Concentration can feel more difficult, patience can be shorter and even fairly normal tasks can take more effort when you are exhausted. Then you finish work and still have the evening and another night ahead of you.
A lot of the parents I support reach out because they have got to the point where they want things to feel more manageable. They still want to respond to their baby, they do not want to use an approach that feels wrong for them, and they also cannot keep functioning on the amount of sleep they are currently getting.
Sleep support can be responsive and gradual. I look at what is happening with the individual child, what the family wants to change and what is realistic for their life. Sometimes a few changes are enough. Sometimes a family needs more support while they work through things.
If you’ve gone back to work and sleep has reached the point where it’s affecting how you feel during the day, you don’t have to keep trying to work it all out on your own. You can book a free clarity call with me to talk through what’s happening with your child’s sleep and see what support might help.
