While I have written about sleep before.....

Written by: Dianne Edmonds Posted on 18 Apr 2013 0

While I have written about sleep before, when I said in my last blog that I was going back to my postnatal 0-3 weeks set of exercises, I didn’t mean that I also wanted to feel sleep deprived. But, with nearly a week of interrupted sleep at the time of writing this, I am.

How did this happen? For a number of reasons, which are very different to postnatal sleep interruptions, but it raises the topic again for today. Firstly on the weekend my daughter turned 12 and had a sleepover, so, say no more. Late night, early morning that time. Then the next night was actually an early morning with my husband waking at 4am to get up to head off for a 146km cycling event that he had to travel to first. Why was this a problem? Much of this website, and the DVD program that I created years ago was worked on at 4am. I used to relish in the early morning quiet times. This time though? I had learned something different and all I wanted to do was to go back to sleep as quickly as possible. Why?

I have learned through Dr Sara Gottfried’s work in the Hormone Cure, that around 4am is the time that our adrenals are repairing, and it is an important time for our restorative sleep. One of the reasons for becoming a Hormone Cure Evangalista is for this very reason. This discovery is now one of my best cures, and the reason for deliberately staying in bed longer and training myself out of my 4am starts. There was a time where it felt like this didn’t matter and I could ignore and burn up my energy and start again the next day. Now that I am empowered with this knowledge, no more can I ignore the symptoms and the messages that my body was giving me, and I have learned to respect ‘me’ more and not ignore the warning signals.

What about the other 4 nights ? The next night my husband went out to debrief and relish in their success of completing their event, so even though it wasn’t a very late night, I still ‘stayed up later’ and left the computer on longer, than I should have. I have also been learning to turn off the computer a few hours before going to bed and aiming for 10 – 10.30 in order to get adequate sleep. This night was later. Now up until a few months ago, I used to work late on the computer, finding as much time as I could to ‘get things done’. Now I am training myself to stop having the light of the computer on after dinner if possible, and finding other things that I can do in the evenings instead. I have survived on pushing the limits and little sleep for years but the evidence is piling up against doing this any longer.

The next three nights, I was woken up by my wonderful husband coming to bed at around 1.30 am after he has fallen asleep on the lounge. Post event recovery you might say?!!! I have just printed this article off for him to tell him I am much more serious about this ‘sleep thing’ after reading this link posted by another Hormone Evangalista this week.


Is your body without sleep infographic

There are lessons to be learned in everything, and for me it is to restore my sacred sleep balance which I totally pushed out of balance for so many years. But, I can enjoy the journey of learning to get enough sleep, at the right times, and improving my sleep routine (which involves turning off my computer in the evenings), and if I am tempted to slip back to my old habits, I can just turn on my computer and remind myself how it feels to have a week of interrupted and less than good quality sleep. I’ll read my own Blog post to remind me.

If you have a sleep story or a comment please share in the box below. Your comment will be approved before posting on our website. Thank you.

Comments
Blog post currently doesn't have any comments.
Leave comment