Sleep optimisation for parents

We live in a world where sleep is a hot topic, and if you’re not getting enough, you’re told you are at risk of high blood pressure, poor concentration, heart disease, and weakened immune system, to name a few examples. What do you do if you’re a parent to young children not getting enough sleep? How do you calm the anxiety provoked by posts about sleep on social media?

It seems these posts forget about the large proportion of individuals who do not have total control over their sleep due to a small human (aka sleep thief). Some of those small humans struggle to sleep in the early years and, therefore, learning to optimise the sleep you do get can be very important!

How to optimise sleep when you have a small sleep thief

1. Have a bedtime routine

As parents, we spend a good hour preparing our small beings for sleep but often do nothing to prepare ourselves for sleep. Take the time to prepare and signal to your body that you are winding down for sleep. I used to bathe my daughter, give her a massage, a bedtime story, and some milk before expecting her to sleep. Let’s show ourselves some of that same care.

2. Remove blue light

Ideally, turn off your phone a few hours before bed, but if you’re like me doing life admin in the evenings, use a blue light filter on both your phone and laptop. It's well known that blue light disrupts melatonin, the hormone needed to get to sleep and to stay asleep. If you wake in the early hours you may have run out of melatonin and that might be because your body didn’t produce enough due to artificial light signalling to the body that it was daytime. If you enjoy T.V in the evenings invest in some blue light-blocking glasses. Added to this is to have a red light to switch on when the baby wakes.

3. You are more important than how tidy or clean your house is

Prioritise napping when you don’t get a good night's sleep. Sleep is more important than the laundry or the dishes.

4. Sleep in a pitch-black room

Make the effort to switch off all the small lights (which will affect your melatonin levels) or put a red light sticker over them or tape.

5. Remove EMFs

Turn your electronic devices off. Those Electro Magnetic Fields (EMFs) do nothing for a good night's sleep.

6. Mouth tape

If you’re a mouth breather, investing in some mouth tape is really worthwhile. Breathing through your nose has many benefits that will enhance sleep including increasing your oxygen levels and aiding your immune system.

7. Drop into the parasympathetic nervous system

Our nervous systems need to relax before bed. Quite often we do the opposite by watching T.V, browsing Instagram, or exercising before bed. Prepare for sleep and switch your system into parasympathetic mode by having a hot bath, reading a relaxing book, drinking a bedtime tea, meditation or mindful breathing, anything that signals to your body that you are preparing for sleep. My go-to for this is yin yoga or TRE, which I will write about soon.

What not to-do

1. Do not have emotional conversations before bed

Sleep and our dreams are where we process our emotions throughout the day. It can heavily disrupt sleep. Schedule a time to have these conversations and if necessary ask others to look after the children so you can have these conversations.

2. Avoid stimulants caffeine, chocolate, and alcohol after 4pm

If you are sensitive, these will be showing up as sleep disrupters.

If you're still struggling to get a good night's shut-eye, you could benefit from working with a coach to set your routine and put new boundaries in place to promote a healthy night's sleep.