Sharing your bed with your kids, your pet, or even your partner can frustrate your efforts to get a sound sleep most of the time.
The meowing, crying, kicking, and touching will have you opening your eyes, trying to readjust, or completely unable to sleep even though you love these beautiful beings.
Many ladies who double as mums and pet owners have almost forgotten what it feels like to get a sound sleep.
8 hours of sleep sounds like a strange thing to these innocent caregivers, but all of that is about to change as we share with you tips on how to get a good night’s rest as a pet owner, a partner, and a mother.
Let’s deal with the kids first.
1. Rethink lights out for the little humans
Studies have shown a relationship between late lights out with children who wake up too many times at night.
For children under six of age 11hrs of bedtime is very important if they must be healthy and active. For seven and above children, at least 9hrs of sleep is enough, but not all of them get that much bedtime.
Find the right time between 7 pm and 8 pm to send the tiny little ones to bed, and for children 6 and above, between 8 p.m. to 9 pm is just perfect for them to get a shut-eye.
Once you have figured out the right time for them to sleep, make sure it doesn’t change between 30 minutes every night; if the right time is 7 o’clock, make sure if they stay up later than that, it shouldn’t exceed 8 pm.
That way, their bodies get used to the sleep time, and you can help them achieve a healthy sleep-wake pattern.
2. Curb the regular bedtime circus
The brains of both adults and kids are primed to follow a particular bedtime routine for them to feel sleepy. Pick a few activities that your child enjoys, and make sure they do them before bedtime every day.
For little kids, it could be a few minutes of mum snuggle after a warm bath, or maybe a bedtime story, and then it lights out.
Older children could cultivate the habit of quiet reading before bedtime; this way, they wouldn’t know when they doze off. The key here is the constant repetition of the same bedtime activity.
3. Show them how it is done
Help your kids sleep in their beds throughout the night using sleep behavior modifications approved by the sleep doc.
Don’t encourage repeated nightly visits from your Lil person. Make sure always to return children to their room when you notice they are in the habit of sneaking into your room every night with unwarranted complaints.
Respond immediately to urgent calls from your little ones but once you attend to them ( do it as quickly as possible), tuck them back in and repeat good nights without turning their room lights back on.
I promised to check on them in the next five mins and keep that promise. After that, you should return to your room and get some much-needed shut-eye.
Try to reward every uninterrupted slumber with a little token in the morning, and at the end, have your kids trade their small tokens for a bigger and better reward. Repeat this for a month and see how the excellent sleep habits stick.
4. Take turns with your partner
If your child is still very young and you know waking up at night to attend to him, or she is inevitable, you can take turns with your partner.
Move the child monitor to his part of the bed and put on earplugs so that when your child wakes up at night, he gets up before you do.
Now let’s deal with your pet
Almost every pet mum and dad has difficulty sleeping at night because of how many times their pets get to wake up and interrupting their sleep with meows and barks.
These sleep interruptions can be stopped by simple behavioral and lifestyle changes; let’s check them out.
1. Walk your dog late
Take your dog for a walk right before it’s bedtime. It doesn’t matter how late, and it could be 8 pm or 9 pm; the point is to get your canine tired enough to snooze right immediately he gets in.
And if you have cats that are allowed to play outside, give them enough time to run around before bedtime so that they are tired out and ready to sleep.
Feed your pets about 1 hour before its time to rest, so they don’t wake you up too early requesting breakfast.
2. Don’t sleep on the same bed with your pet
If you are one of those who enjoy bedtime with your pets, I’m sorry to tell you that you have to stop it if you must reduce the number of wake-ups you have every night.
A recent study has shown that sleeping on the same bed with your pet increases your chances of having interrupted snooze time.
If you know removing your bet from your bed is going to break your heart, get a special blanket for your pet and restrict it to the end of the bed if you get bumped into several times at night or you keep waking up to its meows and barks, punish it by moving the blankets to a corner of the room and have him spend the night there.
3. Learn to ignore
Learn to ignore your pets when they wake up at very early hours requesting breakfast or seeking attention. You can do this by shutting the door and waking up only when the alarm goes off to attend to them.
Something else you can do is to stop feeding your pets are very early hours when they’re still babies so that they grow up with the habit of eating only at an acceptable time.
4. Feed your pet from a distance
You can feed your pets from a distance if you do not want them to wake you up asking for breakfast.
There is now a pet feeder that works perfectly for both wet and dry food, and once your pets see you get the food from there once or twice, they can associate feeding time with the machine and leave you to get some rest.
Finally, your partner
Partners may not really give you many reasons to wake up at night except when they want to get naughty.
So if you feel your partner loves to have sex at odd hours, discussed it with them and see how you could do your under-the-sheets-magic earlier in the day before it’s time to get some sleep.
However, it wouldn’t hurt to have sex at odd hours to spice things up once in a while.
