The No-cry Sleep Solution (75 page)

Baby’s Sleeping (Finally!) but Mommy’s Not

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Here are a few other ways to incorporate daily exercise into your life:

If you work at home:

• After you put your little one down for a nap, use a tread-mill, stationary bike, or other gym equipment.

• Jog up and down your stairs.

• Bring your baby outside and do some gardening.

If you work outside the home:

• At lunchtime or during a break, climb up and down the stairs, or take a walk around the block.

• Create a routine to take advantage of an employee gym or workout room.

• Take frequent brisk walks to the copy machine, mail room, or bathroom.

Ideas for everyone:

• Play an exercise video and exercise with your baby.

• Put on some great music and dance with your baby.

• Look for small ways to add exercise into your day such as parking farther away from the store, using the stairs instead of the elevator, walking instead of driving to a close desti-nation, walking your older kids to school, or playing outside with your children.

• Plan family activities that involve movement and action, such as hikes, bike rides, or romps at the beach or park.

Make Your Environment Favorable to Sleep

Take a good look at your bedroom and make sure that it is conducive to relaxation and healthy sleep. Every person is different, but here’s a checklist for you to review.

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•
Comfort.
Is your mattress comfortable to you? Does it provide the amount of support that you need? Do you like your blanket or comforter, or is it a source of aggravation in the night? Is your pillow the right softness and thickness? Do you find its material cozy and soothing? Do what you can to improve these details.

•
Temperature.
If you are too cold or too hot during sleep, you will wake frequently. Experiment until you find the best temperature. If your partner has different preferences, find a way to please both of you by changing the type of pajamas you wear, using a fan, or piling on extra blankets.

•
Noise.
Some people sleep better in perfect silence, while others prefer background music or white noise. Again, if one sleep partner likes noise, but the other wants silence, experiment: Try earplugs or a personal headset for music or sound.

•
Light.
If you sleep better in complete darkness, cover your windows. If you like light, open the blinds, or use a night-light. (Be cautious about using lights during the night if you wake up to use the bathroom or tend the baby. Bright light will fool your biological clock into thinking it’s morning.

Rely on low-wattage night-lights.) Here again, if your partner likes the blinds open and you like them shut, decide whose needs are greater or find a compromise. You might buy yourself a soft eye mask made just for that purpose, or leave the blinds open on one side of the room, closed on the other—facing the closed window will give you more of a sense of darkness.

Have Your Own Bedtime Routine

You may have implemented a bedtime routine to help your baby sleep better. This same idea can work for you, too. Often, we parents have a very pleasant routine for putting our children to bed.

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After that relaxing hour, when we have just about fallen to sleep reading the bedtime story, we jam into high gear and rush about the house tending to all those duties that await our attention until we look up and—oh no! It’s midnight!

Your own prebedtime routine can greatly improve your ability to fall asleep and stay asleep. It can include anything that relaxes you, such as reading; listening to music; or sitting with your spouse, sipping a cup of tea, and talking. Avoid stimulating your mind or body in the hour before bed. Tasks like answering your E-mail, doing heavy housecleaning, or watching television can keep you awake long after you’ve finished them.

If possible, try to keep the lights dim in the hour before bed, as bright light strongly signals your body to leap into daytime action. Lower lights and quieter sounds will help prepare you for a good night’s sleep.

Eat Right and Eat Light Before Sleep

You will sleep best with your stomach neither too full nor too empty. A large meal can make you feel tired but will keep your body working to digest it, thus disturbing sleep. An empty stomach can keep you up with hunger pains. A happy medium is usually best. Have a light snack about an hour or two before bedtime. Avoid gassy, fatty, sugary, or spicy foods. Some foods that have been found to help people sleep better are milk, eggs, cottage cheese, turkey, and cashews. Experiment to find which choices are best for you.

Encourage Relaxation and the Onset of Sleep

Often, when we lay in bed waiting for sleep, our mind and body are primed for action. The wheels are turning and our thoughts keep us awake. A helpful method for bringing on sleep is to focus

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your mind on peaceful, relaxing thoughts. Here are a few ways to accomplish this:

• Repeat a familiar meditation or prayer to release the mind from daily action and prime it for sleep. Yoga stretches can help relax your muscles.

• Focus on your breathing while repeating the word
relax
in a slow pattern tied to your exhales. Or imagine your breathing is moving in and out along with a wave at the beach.

• Use progressive relaxation to coax all the parts of your body to relax. Begin at your feet. Feel the weight of your feet, have them go limp and relaxed, and then imagine that they have a gentle warmth moving over them. Then, move up

to your right leg, repeat the process. Move on to your left leg, and continue on up to your head. (Most people are asleep or nearly asleep by the time they get that far!) You may want to adapt some of the relaxation exercises you learned in childbirth classes.

When Engorgement Is the Problem

There is often an adjustment period when a breastfed baby begins to sleep through the night. It’s hard to believe, but your breasts
will
develop their own clock system. Decreased production during the night is quite normal, and within a week of your baby’s new sleep habits, your milk production pattern will parallel your baby’s new feeding pattern. Your breasts will still produce milk constantly, so if your baby wakes once in a while to nurse, he’ll find enough there for comfort. Interestingly enough, if your baby suddenly begins to wake again because of teething, illness, or growth spurts, your milk production will shift right along with his needs (as long as you feed on demand). What a great miracle breastfeeding is!