5 Ways to Get Better Sleep (without sleep training your child)
Not enough sleep is undoubtedly one of the biggest challenges facing mothers in the early years. The reason is obvious - our babies literally wake us up every 2 hours (if we're lucky!) to be fed, comforted and reassured. The problem is we assume that this will only continue for a few weeks, months at the most.
The truth is it can be years before children learn to sleep for longer periods at a time or to not need comfort from their parents when they do wake up.
So is sleep training the answer to you getting better sleep? After all a better-rested mum is a better mum overall right?
I don't believe sleep training is the answer. For one thing, frequent wake ups are a biological necessity for young babies - they need regular feeding, they need to be reassured that they've not been abandoned.
And for older babies and children, regular wake ups could be due to anything - nightmares, thirst, temperature regulation, need to pee, because they need comfort or reassurance that their parents are still there. In fact, they wake up in the night for the same sort of reasons many adults also wake up in the night!
So no, sleep training your children is not necessarily the answer.
Improve the quality of your sleep
I believe it is possible to respond to your children's needs and still get good quality rest. Although you might not get greater quantity of sleep for a while, I think the quality of many mums's sleep can be improved.
And with better quality sleep, you'll feel better rested and have more energy to actually enjoy your life as a mother.
Sleep is always high up on my priority list of clinical interventions for my clients, because the long term effects of chronic sleep deprivation can be devastating. Some of the effects of getting insufficient and poor quality sleep include
Lowered immune system response
Increased risk of cancer and Alzheimer's disease
Disrupted blood sugars - so on paper you look diabetic
Increased chance of heart attack and stroke
Weight gain (even if you're dieting)
Reduced motor control - the number of road accidents caused by poor sleep exceeds those caused by alcohol and drugs combined!
We sabotage our own sleep
The problem is, we are guilty of sabotaging our own sleep. It's easy to blame it on our children - because their waking in the night is so obvious and impossible to ignore. And often we look at our clocks every time we're woken up and count up in our heads exactly how many hours we've lost this time.
But more often than not our everyday habits and lifestyle cause us to reduce the quality of our sleep, so that what hours of sleep we do get tend to be unrestful. And so we wake up unrefreshed, reach for the coffee and sugar...and the cycle continues again.
Here are a few of the ways we sabotage our own sleep:
Stress - chronic stress means the hormone cortisol is permanently high, meaning it's not lowered when we need it to be - i.e. at night - or raised when it's needed - i.e. in the morning to help us get up and go. The result? Unable to fall asleep when we go to be, unable to fall asleep after being woken up, and then feeling unrefreshed first thing in the morning
Light - early morning light exposure tells our body it's time to be alert and awake - and sets it up for producing the hormones that tell the body it's time for bed later
Dark - conversely, when it starts getting dark outside, our body should receive the message it's time to wind down and get ready for sleep. Except artificial, bright lighting indoors block this message, confusing our body into thinking it's still night time.
Phone and screen use - this is linked to the stress hormone and light/dark message but it's so pervasive it needs it's own space! The light from our phone further confuses the day/night message, and the micro-doses of stress and dopamine that we receive when we spend time on our phone disrupts the hormones that tell us it's night time and raises cortisol, just when we need it to be at its lowest.
Stimulants - caffeine has a half life of six hours, which means that six hours after drinking it, there's still half the amount of caffeine in your body. In addition, it blocks a chemical in our body that builds over the course, causing what's known as sleep pressure, or the irresistible need to sleep that should naturally happen at bedtime. So drinking coffee to wake you up is a short term solution, and drinking it too late in the day can have a major effect on your ability to sleep later on.
5 ways to get better sleep today
With that in mind, it should start becoming clearer that preparing for good quality sleep is in fact an all-day event, starting with how you wake up and ending with how you prepare for bed. Making small tweaks to how you spend your day, with the focus of getting better sleep in mind, can make a huge difference to the quality of your sleep, despite the frequent wake ups.
Here are my top tips to get started:
See the light first thing. As soon as you wake up, open the curtains and windows (even in winter!). If you can, drink your morning cup of coffee or tea outside - wrap up warm if it's cold. Or if you don't have any outdoor space, sit next to your brightest window. Even better, put it in a flask and go for a quick walk around the block. Even on the greyest, darkest, cloudiest winter day you are exposing yourself to brighter light than you can ever achieve indoors at home. This early morning light exposure tells your brain it's daytime - and this sets us up for producing night-time chemicals later on.
Give yourself enough time. So often we rush into our day as soon as we wake up. But just as we (and our children) thrive on a bedtime routine - so do we thrive on a morning routine. Starting with your morning coffee outside, give yourself 90 minutes to start your day. Take your time over breakfast - treat it as you would any other meal, where you sit down at a proper table without distractions.
Keep caffeine to the mornings. Stick to just one to two cups of coffee or tea in the day, and avoid drinking it after midday. Remember caffeine has a half-life of 6 hours, so you want to give it enough time to breakdown before you go to bed at night.
Dim the lights at night. If you can, swap to dimmer switches, or even better use smart lightbulbs that change from the blue light spectrum to the red light spectrum at night. Or use side lamps with low-light bulbs in the evenings. Make sure Night-time Mode on your phone and tablet is set to automatically come on in the evenings, and avoid watching TV for an hour before you plan to go to bed. Even better, stop using any screens 60-90 minutes before bed - turn them off or switch them to Aeroplane mode. The artificial lighting and excessive information is disruptive to your natural wind down.
Create a bedtime routine. Many of us know that our children thrive with an evening routine, and this doesn't change as we grow up! Think about creating a bedtime routine 90 minutes before your intended bedtime. Allow yourself 30 minutes between getting into bed and actually falling asleep, then count back 90 minutes. For example, if you intend to be asleep by 10.30pm, you need to be in bed by 10pm, so your bedtime routine needs to start at 8.30pm. Plan to complete any chores by this time, dim the lights, put away any electronic items, create a calming atmosphere with candles, essential oils and calming music. Have a warm shower or bath - which has the dual effect of calming us down and helping us sleep.
These changes sound simple, but it can be difficult to break lifelong habits. And if you are currently drinking a lot of coffee, the withdrawal if you cut down drastically might make you feel worse. But making a couple of small changes each week will have an accumulative effect, and eventually you should find your sleep improving.
And best of all, you're setting a great example to your child to make sleep a priority - starting with how you spend your mornings!