Sleep deprivation is something almost all mothers with newborns experience.
When you and your new born are brought home from the hospital you knew that your days of lying in bed lazily on a Saturday morning are over.
But you can never anticipate how much you’d be deprived of sleep during that first year, and so it might meet you unprepared. It’s when you are about to catch some sleep that baby wakes up and begin to cry.
Yet lack of sleep for weeks, or months after the birth of a baby can leave new mums feeling bad tempered, tearful, angry, forgetful and depressed.
A lack of sleep can lead to reduced energy levels, poor concentration and memory, mood changes as well as health problems. Lack of sleep can affect every function in your body from eyesight and brain processing, to mood and appetite so sleep is as important for a healthy lifestyle as diet and exercise so if you are tired give yourself a break, and understand that you can’t make things perfect you can only try.
1. Say no to added responsibility
Besides having a newborn baby, you have older children, and so you may feel you have to do so much for them as well, you might have to ask your husband for help in running the house, do not take on any extra responsibilities when you have a new born baby at home, this is not the time to try and make up for the lost time with the older kids, then you leave your newborn at home and take them out on a treat.
2. Adjust the environment you’re in
Your bedroom setting might be the cause if you are having difficulty sleeping, so one of the first things to do is to look your bedroom critically. To get a good night’s sleep you need the right environment, and that means you have to decorate your room to your taste, in my case it means a cool, quiet and dark environment, although you may like to have the light on in which case you might have to get a dimmer light to avoid bright light waking you up.
Make sure your bed is comfortable, you might like your bed to be hard or soft, if you like a hard bed, you might have a hard time sleeping on a soft bed.
3. Adjust your sleep routine
You might have to forget about the late night shows, late night calls and chats for a while. If you are a night owl that enjoy watching movies and TV shows late into the night, it’s time you change your routine. So you can get was enough sleep, you have to adjust your sleep routine. To function properly you need your sleep, so train yourself to go to sleep at a particular time no matter the kind of interesting show going on on TV.
4. Sleep when your baby sleeps
When your baby is awake you might find it hard to do some pressing chores, so immediately he sleeps you rush to do all those chores, washing dishes, house cleaning, laundry, you try to pack everything into your baby’s short nap. But what do you know? You are depriving yourself of sleep and you may not know this until you nod your head off while driving. When your baby is sleeping, put everything aside and sleep too, because when baby is up you are up too. That’s your best bet to catch some minutes of sleep.
5. Develop a bedtime routine
You might have to work a bedtime routine for baby. Performing the same series of activities night after night will signal baby that it’s time for sleep, and should help her go down more easily and sleep more soundly. A warm bath is a start.
6. Get help
Babies don’t sleep through the night and they will be up every couple of hours. Every time they wake up they’d want to be fed but your rest is just as important. If you have a husband, relative or someone who is ready to help, consider pumping. Work a shift with the person,which will help you get a few minutes of much needed, uninterrupted sleep, and it will also help your baby to be close to other relatives, making them less clingy.
7. Don’t ignore signs of underlying sleep disorders
Lack of sleep can lead to mood changes, and new moms that are deprived of sleep are at risk of baby blues or the more severe postnatal depression. If you notice any of these symptoms, visit your doctor to address them. Mood swings can be worse than sleep deprivation.
Lack of sleep is not a problem unless it comes with mood swings which may be a sign of baby blues or postnatal depression, in which case you will have to see your doctor.
Helpful? Mamalettes how else do you cope with sleep deprivation? Let’s reason together! Visit our forum or post your comments below.
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