Tag Archives: sleep

Visitors = No Naps?

Does your baby’s nap schedule change when you have visitors? I’m not talking about the inevitable excitement that your baby experiences when new faces are in the house. A baby is bound to be a little more wound up and restless than normal when new people are around. I’m talking about purposely changing a baby’s nap routine so that the baby is awake as much as possible when the guests are over. When our baby was little, she slept just as well, if not better, in someone’s arms as she did in her crib. Having visitors over made almost no … Continue reading →

Crying to Sleep: It Worked

For a couple of weeks, naptime and bedtime were a bit of a challenge with my baby. She wasn’t falling asleep easily on her own like she used to, but she also wasn’t falling asleep while being rocked or held very easily either. One day I was at my wit’s end and decide it would be alright if she cried for a little while before falling asleep, as long as the crying didn’t get out of hand. She cried softly on and off for about 15 minutes before drifting off to sleep. I tried the same thing the next naptime, … Continue reading →

Crying It Out vs Crying To Sleep

Crying it out and crying to sleep: is there a difference? To me, there is. My interpretation of these phrases probably won’t match every other parent’s interpretation, but I’m going to tell you about it all the same. To begin with, I am not a supporter of the “cry it out” method. I never have been, and I don’t think I ever will be. Sure, there are times when I am really tired, feel like I have no patience left, and put my daughter in her crib, thinking, “I don’t care how long she cries – she’s staying in there … Continue reading →

The Sleep Game

There’s a new game being played in my house lately. It’s cute, it’s endearing, it makes us laugh, and we like it. It also is probably going to get really old really quickly. It’s the sleep game. I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about. It’s the game children play when they’re obviously tired, often over-tired, and want to fool their parents into thinking they’ve finally given in to slumber. Sleep has never really been an issue with my daughter. For the first 5 ½ months of her life, I always held her while she slept during the day. … Continue reading →

Bedtime With Baby

I go back and forth a lot on how to handle bedtime with our daughter. Up until this point, I’ve been very relaxed with our routine. If she seemed tired, I’d let her sleep. If she woke up and wasn’t happy being in bed, I’d take her out and hold her, feed her, or do whatever else it took to make her happy. In the last month, she settled into a routine by herself. She took naps about the same time each day and went to bed about the same time each night. However, things haven’t been so consistent lately. … Continue reading →

Pain and Sleep

In a way, pain is a good thing: it is the body’s way of saying that something is wrong, and giving you a general idea of where the problem is. But pain can mess with your appetite, concentration, sleeping habits, and more. Sometimes, pain makes you want (or need) more sleep. If you are sick or injured, you need time to rest and heal! There are some types of pain that make me want to snooze — mostly headaches. Often, I’ll try taking a nap to see if I can sleep the headache off before resorting to pain relievers. Though … Continue reading →

Losing Sleep to Popcorn Brain

Do you ever find your mind too active to sleep? Maybe you’re turning one problem over and over in your head… or maybe your thoughts are pinging from one topic to another, racing along merrily while the rest of you desperately wants to rest. I like to call that hopping from one thought to another “popcorn brain”. Pop! A thought goes off over here. Pop! A totally different thought goes off over there! And if you imagine your head like a popcorn popper, it can quickly fill up with thoughts, leaving you very little space in which to calm down … Continue reading →

Sleep, Flu and Chinese Food

I just read Pam’s blog post that mentions the importance of sleep with losing weight. I completely support this notion, or should I say that all of the studies I have been reading lately support this. Lack of sleep wrecks havoc with your body, especially when you get older, and the newest research even links lack of it to belly fat. I was just mentioning this fact my husband. Blessed with the kind of thin build that usually supports food indulgence without weight gain, he is starting to put away a bit of belly fat. It is certainly nothing to … Continue reading →

Do Athletes Sleep Better than Non-Athletes?

Having trouble sleeping? If you tend to be an object at rest more often than an object in motion, that might be part of the problem. A study from the University of Basel in Switzerland looked specifically at teen athletes in their study on exercise and sleep. More than four hundred teens (the average age of study participants was seventeen) kept logs of activity and sleep patterns for a week. More than half of the participants were members of the “Swiss Olympic Classes“; the rest were more sedentary. The 258 student athletes exercised an average of seventeen and a half … Continue reading →

Where Do Eye Boogers Come From?

Sleepies. Crusties. Eye boogers. They’re a common (if minor) part of just about everybody’s day. So where do they come from? My parents always told me that the Sandman came around and helped people fall asleep… and the stuff attached to your eyelashes the next morning was extra sand. Thank goodness I never tried to save Sandman sand up for sleepless nights! One official name for eye boogers is rheum. Rheum is the natural discharge of the eye, formed from a combination of mucus, tears, dust, and even skin cells from the eyelids. The eye produces rheum all day… so … Continue reading →