Moms, Sleep Train Thyself

Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise (18^th Century Proverb)

When my first child was born, adjusting to life at home with a baby was chaotic. After reading many books on sleep theories for infants, I settled into a method which helped my infant son sleep through the night at three months old. But there was one problem.

Mom wasn’t sleep trained.

I used those quiet night time hours to blaze through tasks I had neglected during the day…or just dawdle on Facebook. By midnight or so, I’d crash only to wake up groggy and to the sound of my baby waking up. He was on a schedule. I wasn’t.

To effectively manage a home, we need to have proper rest. This can be tricky for mothers, especially those who stay home with their children. There isn’t a pressing need to show up at the office at 8am. No one dictates our schedules. C’est la vie.

But to properly govern a home, we must first govern ourselves. I learned this the hard way, after months of fly by night sleep times and trial by fire morning routines.

Here are six ways I learned to sleep train myself so that I can wake up earlier (before the baby wakes up) and be refreshed and prepared for another day:

1. Set your alarm for your desired wake up time. Proverbs 31:15a says: “She riseth while it is still night.” I advise making your wake up time earlier than the time when your children are up, preferably a half hour or more. This will give you plenty of time to mentally and spiritually prepare for the day ahead. If you have important tasks which require focused concentration apart from the children, this extra time can give you the opportunity to accomplish them.
2. The first night of sleep training, go to bed at your normal time. It doesn’t matter what time you actually fall asleep, just ensure you don’t toss and turn in bed trying to fall asleep. This is a waste and you’ll wind up mentally berating yourself for being unable to sleep, only to wake up late the next morning again. When I tried this, I went to sleep at 10pm, then 11pm, and even at 3am. Wait until your body is ready to nod off, then hit the sack.
3. When the alarm goes off in the morning, get up. This can be tough and requires self-mastery on your part. If you go to bed at midnight and your alarm goes off at 5am, there will be a million voices screaming in your head telling you to sleep in. That’s just the lazy monsters. Ignore them. They are detrimental to your well-being. In fact, before you go to bed say this to yourself as you fall asleep: “When the alarm goes off, I will get up, make my bed and start the day.” Say it a couple times before you go to sleep to combat the lazy monsters.
4.  Resist the urge to nap the next day. You’ll slog through the next day, but that’s okay. Roughing it the next day is part of the sleep training process. You will have tired out your body in preparation for a good night’s rest. If you had went to bed at a set time instead of falling asleep when you were naturally tired, you would have slept in again, defeating the purpose of sleep training. So just slog through it and don’t push yourself to work, work, work the next day. Keep the final objective in mind – don’t take a nap.
5. When you get tired the following evening, go to bed. This is crucial. Now you are tired, you want to sleep. But those lazy monsters have been used to you staying up till the wee hours of the morning. Temptations to surf the internet or do the dishes or fold laundry abound. Ignore them. Go to bed. You’ll get tired earlier in the evening. Go to bed. (Did I mention, go to bed?)
6. Wake up again when your alarm goes off and continue this process for seven days straight.Don’t stop the sleep training on the weekends. You need to reinforce this method continuously in order for it to be effective. By the end of seven days, you will have settled into a natural sleep and wake up time, an early morning time.

So start training.