Hi Lauren,
Welcome to the site. Sorry to hear you have CH. I don't normally do the welcoming stuff here, the moderators like SaintPeter, Helen and Roger do a much better job of it than I. If you have been looking at recent posts and feel that things are quite academic, I apologise for my small part in that. I tend to write more complex essays on CH that may confuse people that are new to the site. When Helen (Dusker) gets back you will no doubt enjoy her compassionate approach over my technical one. Sorry about that everyone
CH is a complex, problematic and technical condition to manage long-term. Just the names of the drugs themselves used to treat CH can be quite difficult to get one's head around. Whilst I cannot give out medical advice outright I will repeat the same message I have posted on here many times before.
Find a CH aware GP (easier said than done, I know...) and seek referral into specialist care in a hospital. Any GP worth their salt will send you for precautionary scans in the meantime, perhaps a CT of the head, just to rule out any other possible causes of head pain. Seeking a correct CH diagnosis is important.
Upon arrival in a clinic that will offer specialist care (A Neurology clinic or Pain Unit) you will probably start the drug merry-go-round. It is good if you can get your GP to get the ball rolling with some CH drugs first, wait lists for specialist care can be rather long.
Your GP may even find a drug that works for you long before you present in front of a specialist. Here's hoping they do! Recent accounts of GP care on here have been very encouraging, CH awareness is rising, slowly but surely! We are working hard on this behind the scenes...
There are 2 basic approaches to managing CH that your GP can address:
Preventive medication and abortive medication.
There are many to choose from, too many to list here and these particular drugs would be best selected under close GP supervision, given your own personal circumstances with the littlies and all. You can be prescribed something to prevent CH from occuring and also have something up your sleeve to use on a "per-attack" basis for some pain relief (abortive medication).
I know a solid sleep routine is out of the question for you, I can see that from your posts.
Without getting overly technical on you here, a good sleep would do wonders for most of us. It is very hard for me to offer any advice other than what I have written above.
I am sure SaintPeter, Helen (Dusker) and a few other people will chime in.
Venting on here seems to help a lot of CH patients. I hope you gain some solace from the site. Good luck with it all.
Cheers, Ben.