It was my sixth straight night of virtually no sleep. My body, my mind, my sanity — all were unraveling at warp speed. Like a starving street dog, I slobbered up any scraps of slumber I could scavenge. An hour here. Forty-five minutes (way) over there. I slept maybe 1-2 hours a day that entire first week.

My head throbbed. My eyes burned. My body shivered; then I was sweating, shivering and sweating again. Like a mad, caged bird, my heart banged furiously against my chest — the sound of which sent me into a panic and stole any shot of shut-eye.

I felt broken. Bereft. Betrayed by my own body.

What’s WRONG with me? I thought. Why can’t I just sleep?

Aren’t all moms tired?

When it comes to the seismic shift to new motherhood, few women survive without at least a few sleep scars.

“Sleep concerns are basically universal in new motherhood,” said Dr. Michelle Wiersgalla, a psychiatrist at Park Nicollet who specializes in working with women who have mental health concerns related to pregnancy, postpartum, infertility and reproductive loss.

Indeed, sleep deprivation has become synonymous with mom life.

“Sleep now … while you can!” veteran moms like to premonish pregnant women.

Moms are bombarded with memes and marketing messages that perpetuate — even glorify — the “mombie” image of mothers as frazzled, sleepless martyrs who subsist on a steady stream of coffee and wine.

But the tired-mom trope can make it hard for women to know what’s normal — and more important: not normal — when it comes to sleep issues. And if a new mom’s symptoms spiral into full- blown insomnia, she may simply chalk it up to motherhood instead of seeking help.

Such was the case for Sarah Tucker, a writer, journalist and mom of two based in Los Angeles. “For me, it was really sort of wrapped up in this experience of becoming a new mom,” she said. “It was this horrible feeling of ‘No, actually, you will never sleep again. You’ve had a baby; you’ve become a mother.’”

For some women, insomnia can strike immediately after birth (this was me). For others, like Tucker, it may take weeks — even months — for the fangs to fully sprout. But once they do, the bite can be brutal.

When Tucker’s daughter was about 6 months old, she blessedly began sleeping longer stretches at night. And yet every night, like clockwork, Tucker’s body continued to wake every two hours. And once awake, she’d be up for hours and hours.

“You feel weirdly … broken,” Tucker said. “Your body is just doing something insane, because it’s refusing to do some- thing it desperately needs.”

A low point: Days after her second son, Grant, was born, Rachel Guyah suffered from severe — nearly nonstop — insomnia. When Grant was about 3 months old, her insomnia had come back after a brief respite. She snapped this photo anyway so she could remember the time, including the good (her son!) and the bad (her exhaustion).

A vicious cycle

I, too, had felt broken. It was as if my body had, quite literally, forgotten how to sleep. The concept of sleep became this unnatural, unobtainable prize hovering just above me while I flailed around in quicksand. And the more I chased it, the more it evaded me.

This is common with insomnia, I learned. Once you start losing sleep, your body and your brain get all revved up, which in turn makes it harder to sleep. And the vicious cycle continues.

“With true insomnia, parents may find that they feel excessively irritable or anxious about the sleep problems, and those emotional symptoms can often exacerbate the sleep troubles,” Wiersgalla said.

Your body also becomes hyper-aroused once insomnia takes hold, which can flood your system with cortisol, adrenaline and other stress hormones. The result? Faster heartbeat, shallower breathing and spiked blood pressure, among other manifestations. (Good luck sleeping with all that going on.)

Sleep deprivation also messes with your memory, mood and general brain functioning.

“Being so tired makes you question yourself in a really scary way,” said Tucker. “You’re not sure if you’re perceiving things correctly. You really can’t process your emotions in the same way.”

Tucker said she was afraid to even get in the car and drive (a fear I shared during my descent). In some ways, that fear is valid: Studies have shown that getting behind the wheel while sleep-deprived can be as dangerous as driving intoxicated (!).

Reprieve and relapse

The next day I called my OB, sobbing, and begged her for Xanax. (It had helped me through bouts of anxiety in my early 20s.) She prescribed precisely one pill — and instructed me to see her the next day.

That night, I swallowed the pale orange pill and waited for relief to set in. Within 20 minutes, I felt the panic and palpitations flee my body. A sense of calm cradled my skin. When I crawled into bed, something amazing happened: I actually slept. For four glorious hours. I wept like a baby, overcome with relief.