Are you Getting 6 Hours of Uninterrupted Sleep?
If you are, you don’t need to read on and you are lucky to be in a minority group of women.
Getting enough sleep after having a baby can be a challenge with many contributing factors.
Firstly there is the neuro biological shift in sleep depth that allows us to attend to our newborn baby and beyond. It often commences in pregnancy and goes on to keeping an ear open out for teenagers returning from parties.
I’ve seen a number of women recently that are having difficulty falling asleep when their baby is asleep.
If you haven’t had a health check recently, it is worth ruling out a biological cause. Changes in hormone levels and nutrition status can wreak havoc with sleep cycles.
Let’s consider what we can do to optimise sleep:
Have a regular bedtime to allow your circadian rhythm to adapt to a predictable sleep time
Avoid activities that impact on sleep such as excess caffeine and blue light from phones
Adopt a wind down routine like you have already set up for your child. Consider avoiding light, optimal temperature, quiet and comfortable bedding.
If your mind is busy with thoughts of what you need to do, take a moment to write them down or mentally put them aside.
The next step is to tell yourself that going to bed and resting is restorative for the body whether you get to sleep straight away or not. This will reduce pressure and the associated stress hormones triggered by anxiety of not falling straight to sleep.
Finally close your eyes, focus on feeling yourself resting on the mattress, anchor your focus to your breathing in and out cycle of breath. As you do this, be on the lookout for distractions and be ready to label them. It could be thoughts telling you “it is not working” or “you need to get to sleep before baby wakes again”. Notice the thought and label it as “thinking”. If you need a mental focus count down from 10 on each out breath or systematically label each body part.
This technique is not full proof but rather an action plan for managing what has often become a dreaded task. If all else fails, get up and do something until you feel tired and start the practise all over again.
