“I reached out to family, and they came to look after my child once a week,” Butterworth says. “When my daughter was four months old, I put her in nursery for one day a week just so I could get some rest in the house. I think a lot of my inability to cope with her was to do with my lack of sleep and the traumatic birth.”

Like many mothers in my situation, I had to dig into my savings to see a private sleep specialist to get to the bottom of my postnatal insomnia. A course of CBT-i – cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia – helped me very gradually go from two hours of sleep a night to seven. By reframing my thoughts around sleep (my brain had essentially become afraid of sleep) and learning that there is just as much benefit in resting with my eyes closed, my brain gradually became desensitised, making it easier to fall asleep. Dr Garley says CBT-i is the gold standard treatment for insomnia and that it is important your sleep specialist designs a treatment plan tailored to you, taking into account your baby or small child and the amount of support you have available.

Howard also paid for her treatment privately. She undertook light therapy and Sleepio, a clinically proven sleep-improvement treatment offered by some NHS trusts. In the future, she hopes more NHS trusts will offer the treatment, which involves having a condensed sleep window in order to build up a sleep debt, and as your sleep efficiency improves, gradually adding 15 minutes to that sleep window.

In the past three years, I have had two more bouts of insomnia. Straight away, I found myself panicking, scared I would go back to how I was postpartum. At these times, I know I have to practise what I learned from CBT-i, as well as acceptance, a method I learned from renowned sleep doctor Dr Guy Meadows’ book The Sleep Book, rather than scrambling for medical or herbal sleep aids, which only work for me in the short term. It’s a new challenge I’ve had to juggle, but I’ve come a long way since those early days of sleeplessness.

Sign up to our Well by Stylist newsletter: the latest relatable health and fitness content written by experts and backed up by research.

Get unlimited digital access from £3.49/month