It is important to make sure you get enough rest and sleep and to accept help from anyone who offers. Avoid too many visitors – ask your partner or other close friend to monitor them if need be. Everyone needs time alone with their new baby in the first few days, and, if your seizures are made worse by lack of sleep, you may need to explore ways of dealing with broken nights. If your seizures are controlled, one possibility may be to let your baby sleep with you in your bed – with practice, it is much easier to feed your baby while half-asleep and then drift off to sleep again without all the bother of getting up and waking up properly. Research has shown that sleeping with your baby only poses a danger to the baby if parents are heavily drugged or have taken a lot of alcohol; if you are concerned about how your anti-epileptic drugs affect you, or whether this would be safe for you, consult your doctor.

Otherwise you could ask your partner to give expressed or formula feeds by bottle at night; or arrange for a friend or family member to come in during the day so you can catch up on your sleep.

Apart from triggering seizures, being overtired can sometimes slip into postnatal depression (PND), although studies show that women with epilepsy do not seem more at risk from PND than others. Symptoms of PND include feeling you can’t cope, irritability -sometimes extreme – tearfulness, sleep disturbances and appetite changes. See your doctor – PND is easily treated with modem antidepressants such as SSRIs, and the earlier you get help, the better. Support is also available from groups.

Seizures after birth can sometimes change in nature or frequency, sometimes happening more often as your body readjusts after pregnancy and delivery, so you may need to discuss having your medication readjusted.

Occasionally there can be problems with the baby, such as drowsiness, if you are breastfeeding because the baby’s liver is immature and can’t get rid of drugs fast. This can occur with high-dose lamotrigine, phenobarbitone and barbiturates.

One point about the first few weeks – as they are exposed to your drugs in the womb, very rarely babies show signs of drug withdrawal after birth, such as irritability, overactivity, restlessness, insomnia and diarrhoea, usually if you are on phenobarbitone. This may take a few weeks to settle.

Meanwhile, breastfeeding, apart from anything else, is a good way to wean your baby off the drug as he or she will receive minute amounts of the drug in your milk. The advantages of breastfeeding are that it is generally best for baby and very convenient. It can take a few weeks to establish – research shows that most women who abandon breastfeeding do so within the first month.

Sore nipples are a common early reason for giving up and can be treated with a camomile-based cream such as Kamillosan – some have found Savoy cabbage leaves helpful, as they give off an enzyme supposed to be soothing to nipples.

Sometimes high doses of certain drugs – phenobarbitone, primidone or the benzodiazepines – can make babies drowsy and slow to suck in the first days. If this happens you should see your doctor, though alternating bottle and breast feeds usually solves the problem.