Nigh Nigh Sleepy Head (Nigh Nigh)
March is global sleep month…what you should know!
The start of March celebrates Baby Sleep Day leading to Sleep Awareness Week, a global cause to highlight the importance of sleep and to get you thinking about making changes to improve your health and life. The science around sleep is very clear…you need it, to be of sound mind and body!
Sleep Facts – Lack of sleep affects hormones including those responsible for maintaining a healthy weight, growth, and cell repair, regulation of blood sugar, helping your immune system to fight illness, keep you co-ordinated and safe and these are just a few of many benefits.
Your brain needs a service!
When you sleep deeply, spinal fluid can pulse into your brain effectively removing the days ‘brain trash’. This means your rested brain can think clearer, learn better, and remember things because deep sleep activates memory storage.
As a sleep specialist, I know that many people disregard the value of sleep and make all sorts of excuses for being satisfied with the second-best…just enough sleep to get by. The thing is do you just want to get by’ when you could be so much better than that.
When you want sleep but you’re too afraid to ask
For many parents, sleep becomes a huge conundrum when the researchers argue that sleep training does not affect your baby’s brain and attachment theorists vehemently deny that claim.
A supporter of evidence-based research, I understand the popular and widely publicized claim that babies have ongoing high cortisol levels compared to their mothers when they are sleep trained using crying techniques. Those proficient in the world of best practice scientific research highlight that the study, based on only 25 mothers and babies was flawed and limited and the results were highly misinterpreted as a result.
Widely publicised, this study in many ways has done much damage to families that now fear any sleep intervention because all sleep intervention assumes sleep training and controlled comfort. The result of lack of sleep intervention based on fear may well have contributed to the global rise in sleep-related mental health issues.
I won’t do this!
As a mother, and sleep specialist even knowing the flaws of the Middlemiss study would not have me cheering for controlled comforting. Controlling my maternal instinct by timing when I could offer comfort, seemed absurd when my last born and problem sleeper needed sleep intervention. I knew we needed sleep, I didn’t think it was up to nature to sort itself out, but I was not going to let my baby cry and not be responsive to his needs for comfort and help to settle and find his sleep groove..
Lack Of Sleep Affects The Way You Parent!
We’ve all been there! Lack of sleep makes you less patient, short-tempered, and irritable. Your behaviour then becomes what your little one reacts to and that in itself raises anxiety, increases cortisol and adrenaline, and creates stress, which affects falling asleep and staying asleep.
Sleep is hugely important to the health of your family. It should never be dismissed and made trivial. ‘They all sleep when they’re ready’ is extremely unhelpful when you are desperate for sleep and your exhaustion impacts the way you want to parent and you need help now!
At the end of the day, how you approach the need for better sleep has to sit well with your parenting values. If you think you cope well with broken sleep then your need to sort that out, won’t be a priority to you. Of course the science around sleep, and it is a hugely researched space will tell you you’ve missed the point of getting better health.
But…just as you would seek help for other problems it’s wise to ask your sleep specialist a lot of questions that align with your parenting values. This means your chances for new sleep patterns to be a success and to be maintained especially when life’s little problems change sleep yet again, you know how to get quickly and easily back on target.
Knowing that you can give your baby or toddler all of the support they need to help them develop sleep skills is a lifetime asset. Irrespective of your age – we all need good sleep!
