Aid Baby Sleep

How long is it since you had a good night’s sleep? A week ago? A month ago? Last year? Or does it seem so long ago you can’t remember. You look back to your childhood days when you came in tired from playing and collapsed into deep contended slumber. How elusive that goal seems today. But why should this be? You spend endless nights tossing and turning, looking at desperately at the clock as it slowly, slowly creeps it way to dawn.

This can change - on this point let me firmly reassure you. By following a few simple tips, you can change your sleeping pattern and go back to those blissful, restful sleeps of childhood. You have developed bad sleeping habits. However, in just the same way that a fat person can lose weight and become well nourished by changing their bad eating habits, so you are going to change your bad sleeping habits and get some quality rest at night.

Where do you sleep? Not such a silly question as it first seems. The answer should be in your bedroom and in your bed. How many of us come home, stressed from a days work, have a large alcoholic drink, a large meal, switch on the TV and promptly fall asleep. We wake up guilty at missing the programme we wanted to watch, go to bed and start our nightly session of tossing and turning.

So let’s go about breaking the chain - recognising those bad habits and retraining ourselves in good sleep patterns. Let's look at your bedroom. You can make it nicer than the one you slept in as a child. Is your bedroom your sanctuary? Is it the place where you feel the safest and the happiest? Is the décor fresh and harmonious? Is the room clean and sweet smelling? Look at your bed - is it a bed from this century or an antique from the last. To put it simply, is it a nice place to sleep? Now here are some things you can change and enjoy changing! And here’s one very important point - throw out that bedroom portable. If you want to watch TV, that’s an activity for your living room.

So having spent a bit of time and money, let’s run through the coming home from work scenario; when you come home from work stressed and tired, become a water baby. Drink some good clear water, your exhaustion is partially caused by dehydration. Put some water back in and your whole system will run better, certainly better than on alcohol which is both a dehydrator and a depressant. Take a shower or a bath. It’s symbolic, you will wash away some of your cares along with the actual work dirt.

Now you are ready to eat and in a better frame of mind to enjoy your food. Choose good quality fuel for your body. Eat slowly and yes, enjoy that occasional glass of wine with it. Now select your evening viewing, you don't want to watch it all. Get your coat on ready for a walk outside when that programme you would have just dozed through is on. Take a stroll round the block, or a tour of your garden. If it’s raining take an umbrella, you won’t shrink. When you are out take some deep breaths, breathe out all the bad things that happened in the day and let the good things stream in from the fresh new air.

Right here we go, time for bed. Enter your sanctuary and take a pen and paper with you. Lie down and let the thoughts of the day swirl round. Are there some thoughts that keep surfacing? These are problems and worries and this is how to deal with them. Churning them through in your head in your lovely comfortable bed does not make them go away, it makes them appear worse and this is what stops you sleeping.

So, this is how to tackle your problems. Sit up in bed, put your light on and write them down, neatly please and in numbered order. Now write down some solutions to these problems. Tackling problems in this way makes some good tough answers come to mind e.g. say you cannot pay a debt, then yes, you must make that appointment with the bank manager, no matter how reluctant and embarrassed you are. Write down your plan of action e.g. ring the Bank at 9am tomorrow. There it’s done. Lights off, lie down.

Now your head becomes full of swirling thoughts that follow on from your plan of action e.g. what will I wear, what do I say, which route should I take, etc start to come into your mind. These are worries - let’s tackle these logically. It is wasting your time and energy to keep thinking through these imagined scenarios. So a new strategy - imagine a huge sheet of brown paper and lots of string and clear tape. Imagine yourself in your sitting room. Let worry one come into your mind, give it one good run through e.g. which route shall I take to the bank tomorrow. You know this will depend on the weather, the traffic report, the detour etc. that cannot be decided until tomorrow. So having thought this through, once only, mentally wrap it in the imaginary brown paper and clear tape it up securely. Systematically go through your worries mentally wrapping them and sealing them up one by one. Then, tie the whole bundle together with the imaginary string. Think yourself through making a loop on it and in your mind tow it to the bedroom door. Leave it there nice and safe until morning, when you can pick all your cares in the light of a new day. You can’t do any more than you have done tonight. You are in your sanctuary, safe, warm and comfortable.
Good night!

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