Episode #309: How to Get More Sleep as a Mom

Intro:

Welcome to The Healthy Catholic moms podcast where we make moving and nourishing our bodies the priority so that we not only fulfill our vocations, but excel in our callings. I’m Brittany Pearson, a Catholic wife, mom, personal trainer, and I’m here to help you build healthy habits that actually fit your life. I am here to teach you how to get the results that you want and maintain the results that you want without spending hours at the gym, or meal prepping all weekend long. I understand I am right here with you getting my workouts done in the nooks and crannies of time, looking up recipes, while nursing babies and trying to prioritize my own health amidst everything else going on. But I have really good news for you, you can get the results you want. In less time without doing hours of cardio and restrictive dieting. I’m going to teach you how to use strength training and eating in a macro balanced way to get you feeling so good and your skin full of energy, and strong to carry out your life. Okay, on this podcast, we’ll delve into how to lose fat in a simple, sustainable way. What your workouts and nutrition should look like during different seasons of life, like during pregnancy and postpartum times. We’ll also discuss healthy quick meals, and how to get them on the table make food that kids will actually want to eat. Mom hacks for making your day run more smoothly and so much more. All the while with continuous encouragement to stay the course and live with discipline. This is a place where we’re striving to steward our bodies well in order to joyfully serve. I am so happy you’re here. Let’s dive in.

Main Episode:

Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to today’s episode. Thank you so much for being here. Happy to be here with you. It is the end of May. We are wrapping up. It’s crazy. So I hope you I guess this is probably at the tail end of Memorial Day weekend. So I hope you had a nice Memorial Day weekend I am recording a little bit ahead of time trying to get some of these episodes banked up for when the weather’s nicer this is so I’m currently recording. Actually, I’m not that far ahead. But I’m recording just the first week of May right now. And but it’s like this terrible super rainy week where the forecast was like 40 to 50. And rainy is literally every day. So I am trying to do that. Because I know that as soon as it gets nicer out, I’m just going to want to be doing my own workouts outside and not sitting my bass and recording podcast love all of you, but you know, you would feel the same. So we’re getting a little ahead. But today, we’re gonna hop into how to get more sleep as a mom. Now I know that we’re all in all different seasons of life, and different have different scenarios. So I get that in general, there’s a lot of things that we cannot control. Like how many times our baby wakes up or our toddler wakes up or whatever.

I know some of you to work, different shifts as nurses or different professions where you’re working overnights and things like that and grabbing sleeper you can. So I know that there are that second one is a little more of a rare option that that’s just really difficult. And honestly, I’m gonna just say now, I’ve listened to a lot of experts talk about sleep, and sleep for longevity, and sleep as a defense against Alzheimer’s and all these different ailments and diseases and things. And pretty much everybody said it’s just very hard to be in that kind of pattern because it’s just against your circadian rhythm. So I am sorry, and I am thankful if you are somebody who works those kinds of shifts because we obviously need people to be doing overnights, but that that is just going to be a tougher time. So this advice today is really general advice for how I get the most sleep out of the things that I can control. Because yes, there’s the uncontrollable seasons, I always get pregnancy and insomnia when I am pregnant. And obviously newborns I was just sharing with friend the other day, I never have a child sleep more than hour and a half at a time until they are a year old. And I think it’s because I have three kids if you’re wondering like how many times did you do that? But I and this might be you know, you might be nodding your head along with me like yep, or you might be like shaking your head like this girl really needs a sleep course for her children because that’s not the best thing for them either. Probably, but I do breastfeed. I have breastfed in the past and I just essentially they wake up I go in I give them the boob and then we all go back to sleep in the next you know, 10 minutes and then an hour and a half later I do the same thing. It depends too. I’ve had babies like right there next to me where I just flop over and you know you if you know you know you’ve done it, but I get it again those newborn seasons, those pregnancy seasons, again, sometimes it’s just like kids, it’s a revolving door. Sometimes you just change somebody and then somebody had a nightmare and whatever. Or again you have old
They’re kids and you’re not even in this season or space, and you’re like, oh, man, my youngest is five or six now, or 10, or 15, or whatever. And I remember those days when I’m not there. So we are responsible for a lot
of the other percent of why we don’t get sleep, there’s a lot of you know, memes and reels and things that go round about how moms, you know, crave that alone time. And that a lot of times, that’s why we’re sacrificing sleep. To get that alone time. I get that we’ve talked about that, you know, a lot in the morning episode about the really great start to the day of waking up before your kids to have a peaceful calm house and getting prayer time having that, you know, nice warm cup of coffee before you’re asked a million questions or told a million knock knock jokes, or asked where like, Where’s my stuff for this or whatever. So I get that the same thing can happen at night. And I’ve been there, I’m not at all saying that I am exempt from any of these things. Where I’m like, I just you know, it’s worth it to me to stay up late because I just need to have no one talked to me and do these things that I either need to do or just want to do I want some time. I did that a couple of weeks ago, where I just stayed up till I don’t know later than I usually do. I usually am in bed around nine and I to get up around five. And instead I stayed up till 10 or 11 Hand Lettering because I hadn’t done hand lettering in a really long time. And I like it. And I like practicing it. But it’s just was not working its way into my days at all. And it was well that thing that, you know, was on the back burner. And I wanted to just kind of zone out and do that. So I did stay up late. And I did that and pay the price a little bit the next day. But you know, that was a choice. So we all have those times and those choices. And I shared that on my own scheduling episode too, when I talked about what my normal schedule looks like, because we do shoot my husband and I to get to bed around nine 930 during the week to get up at five 530. And that fluctuates because sometimes both of us have to get up at 430 for various things, or, you know, we have to I’m just up late sometimes I stay out and I work at a coffee shop until nine and then I come home and back into bed till like 10. So I’ll wake up at six it floats a little bit. And then on the weekends, we’ll play with it. But I shared on that episode that there are still times that we’ll just be like, Okay, nevermind, we want to stay up and do this. Or, you know, I think that it’s nice to have the order and the routine and our God is a God of order. There’s a lot to say and a lot of the saint writings and in Scripture about order and monks rules of life and everything. But we’re also not, you know necessarily called to live the exact same lifestyle as a monk who doesn’t, you know, who I don’t know, that’s my personal feelings on this evening a little bit. So I think it’s great to have order because the opposite is chaos. But you can also obviously decide when you’re just saying nevermind, we feel like staying up late tonight, or whatever.

But how I do get more sleep in most days and in the day in day out Monday through Friday when I’m trying to kind of stick to things.

So number one aim to get your household duties done before your kids bedtimes. This is huge for me at naptime at bedtime at whatever. I don’t want to be using my precious time to be catching up on household things. Yes, sometimes it happens, especially when you have a little baby. So you’re trying to like coordinate the baby with you know, a lot of times it’s like you just get the other kids down. And then it’s like baby time. So you didn’t have a chance to do this or you know, babies just don’t adhere to your schedule as much. So if you’re trying to get the dishes done, before the kids go to bed, but baby needs to be fed right then or go to bed earlier, it can always happen. But in general, again, we’re all different phases of life to have your laundry folded, have the lunches packed for the next day, the things that you need to do to run the household I try to do when my kids are awake, I will purposely like if it’s, say naptime for them, I try to get all this stuff done like lunch dishes done. I have them clean up with me before a nap, all that stuff. But then if there’s lingering things like oh, I still need to fold the laundry or I still need to whatever, I stopped, they go for nap. And there are very rare exceptions to this. They’re down. I am done with how stuff. And for me that segues now to work like I will do some schoolwork or have some one on one time with my oldest who’s up from who doesn’t go for an app. And then after that he knows like mom’s going to answer some emails mom’s gonna check on this mom’s gonna It’s usual mom work time. And he does really well with that. That’s another reason to I’m trying to get I mentioned last podcast, I had a little bit in recording videos, recording podcasts so that when it’s summer, we can just be outside more than that quiet time. He’s not forced to come inside because mom has to work on the computer. So I get all the shift. But this is huge at night because I like again, there’s the old but then we played we got carried away. But in general, I also want the kids to see like the house
takes effort to maintain and that’s mom’s job. I have no problem saying. So like, oh, come play this with me. Sure, but Mom’s doing the dinner dishes first. That’s fun.
mom’s job, you know, hopefully they have some chores to that they’ve already had to clear the table or do whatever various things they have to do. Obviously, if your kids are older, maybe they’re doing the dishes for you and all this stuff, but try to get house stuff done. I even tried to push this to like when the kids are up is when I’m paying our electric bill are doing random things, because I hate using their sleeping time. Seriously. Like, I would rather use that for silent prayer time. Like there’s so many other things, I could use that for that, you know, beyond work, if you don’t need to work, you know, at the home, either, like prayer time, your creative time, stuff you want to do, like if you would really enjoy baking and you want to do that when they’re sleeping, you’re not, you know, bogged down by dishes and things like that. So huge, huge, huge is to try to get all that kind of stuff done before the kids even go to bed.

Number two, have a get in bed time in your mind for yourself. This is really helpful when you
not that any of you do this, but my husband and I just did this like two weeks ago. We are watching a show we rarely watch shows we’re trying out a new show. And I don’t think it’s gonna stick. It’s like he likes it. i It’s too much for me already. I’ll just say what it is. It’s 1883. And we didn’t watch Yellowstone. We tried this one first. And like first episode, there’s just you know, tons of depth and whatever. And I was like, Yeah, I don’t think this is going to be it for me. But anyways, I don’t need to watch that for but but we did the like watched one. And then it was like, I don’t know, 845. And we’re like, Should we do another one? And then you know, we’re doing this Should we do another and it helps to have in your mind what time you usually get in bed by and for us. That’s 930. And, you know, those episodes are like an hour or so it guided us to be like, oh, yeah, okay, we got to turn it off and helps you to make their responsible decision when you have a get in bed time in your head. Same thing for me, if I get distracted doing work or whatever you’re doing at night, you know, where I’m like, I really could finish. The other day I was working on the
freebie for you guys the how to set your own macro targets and I got to 80% of the way it was like I could just power through this and finish the rest of it, get it on the website and like to what end because I’m going to be up for another hour and then the throw myself off for tomorrow, like just go to bed. So have that little get in bedtime in your mind. And usually that starts with you know, backing it up to when you’re gonna wake up the next day, and then trying to shoot for seven to nine hours. And then that’s the time you need to be in bed. Now experts actually say that like say if you’re shooting for eight hours of sleep, you should actually be in your bed for like nine hours of it like go to bed that hour earlier, because you’re probably not going to just immediately fall asleep, you’re going to have some sleep disruptions in there. So if you want the overall eight, you should be in bed for nine. This is something that is just not a reality for me yet. I’m usually getting in with, okay, I’m shooting for eight and I’m getting it at eight. So maybe I’m getting seven but trying to get in that seven to nine window.

Okay, number three is start setting the tone in your home. This just helps sets the tone for everybody that it is nighttime, it is bedtime, we are sleeping. And there’s a lot of research that shows your body needs this because, again, goes back to our circadian rhythms we didn’t use to have artificial lighting, we didn’t use to have all these things when the sun went down. We just started getting tired, our bodies get tired. There’s a reason why in the winter, we get tired so much earlier because it’s dark outside. So I like to go around and like start dimming lights or turning off lights, putting away phones and screens. Again, sometimes I just mentioned I say I’m working on my computer or something. But I still am cognizant of that that was part of it the other day, when I wanted to power through and finish something I was like I need to close this laptop, I need to get the screen away from me. So I can wind down for bed because it’s not going to be a matter of like close my laptop fall asleep. So it’s helpful to start powering things like that down before you want to go to bed. So leading up to bedtime. Honestly, if you shoot to do it around kids bedtimes, then you know, you’re going to be nice and calm as you go to bed. But obviously, I know screens might be a little part of your nighttime once they’re in bed too. So I’d say half hour before I don’t know what research says on this, but trying to give some space between all of that stimulation and when you’re trying to actually go to sleep. Number four, here’s my disclaimer, I am not a doctor and I’m not prescribing anything.

Okay, I’ve talked about this I know on the podcast before, probably when referencing supplements and things, but maybe consider taking magnesium at nighttime it can help you to fall asleep. And I do not there’s a lot more mixed research. I feel like this is my opinion on melatonin because melatonin is something your body naturally makes. And a lot of researchers say like if you take melatonin to fall asleep, then your body stops producing, you know more of it or enough of it. So then you’re kind of stuck on this and then eventually it’s going to stop having its effect. Magnesium doesn’t work like that. It’s just something your body needs and if you tend to take it before bed it tends to relax to help you to fall asleep.
I have found this to be true, I enjoy doing it. I actually we’ve been out for a while, so I haven’t been taking it recently. Another thing you could do is take this a little bit more luxurious and you might not have the time for it, especially like every night here. But taking an Epsom salt bath has a similar effect, because again, the magnesium and just a nice combat can help you to wind down.

Now, last one, and I think most importantly, is to talk with your spouse about sleep times habits, your goals, what you would like to see, because I mentioned multiple times probably in this episode, like oh, we oh, we we we watch a show where you go to bed, whatever. And it really has to be a conversation because this has not always been the case for us where it’s been so seamless. When we first were married, Ben was working a part time job that was like some random nights till midnight. It was very funny like housing development job, whatever for like college students who had to go to events where they were in like handing out flyers and things. You got to do what you got to do. You know, he was in school, I was in school, it was it was good time. So he was doing that. But I was teaching middle school full time and waking up to teach spin classes and train people and stuff before that job. So also, I got pregnant a month into our marriage. I also was pregnant that time. But anyways, all that’s to say I was a tired gal. But I was, you know having to wake up at like 430, my spin class was literally 515, like three mornings a week. And the other mornings again, I was training people. So he would be like coming home at midnight, I’d be waking up at 430. But we’d want to see each other and we tried to be eating together and it was a whole mess. And then, you know, he it it had evolved and developed over the years and throughout the years. And now his start time for work fluctuates a bit, but he in general, expects that he’s going to need to be out the door between like, five 530. So and sometimes earlier sometimes later, but that’s the norm. So now we just kind of have structured it like, Okay, we just in general shoot for that like nine to five, but we had to find what works for us. And we also have to we just have to talk about it pretty much every season. It’s not this big, dramatic thing. But last summer, I mentioned and I shared with all of you that I trained for an ultra marathon which was 50 miles and I hadn’t done any kind of race or running in years. Like I had not even I did a couple of five K’s after some of my kids, various kids, I did a Spartan Race or two after kids too. But in general, I need to wrap this up, you can probably hear my children. They’re yelling, Mom, my light is green, come get me and I left them on their own. So I apologize. But I want to get this last thought out because I
was like serious about this wanted to train hard. And usually we stay up later on Fridays, and Saturday nights. But my long runs had to be Saturday had to be Saturdays. And sometimes my long runs even had to be Sundays. So Saturday is our usual date night of staying up later. But Hi Guys, I’ll be right there. Mom’s just finishing podcast. I’ll be right there. And I’ll get you to Okay. So Friday nights were the like he worked late through the summer. So he would well he worked till nine on Friday nights. And then I’d be doing my long runs, like 5am or 6am Saturday. So if I was waiting to eat with him see him when he got home, and then trying to wake up, do my run and be ready for that. And it was a mess. The first couple times I tried to do my long run, so we had to talk about it. Whereas like I know I love to see you, you love me to see you when you get home. I’m trying to do this, I need to give that run attention. I cannot wait to have a beer or a margarita or something with you when you get home. Because this is just not part of what like I set this goal. I want to do this, I want to do it well. So we cannot do Friday nights like we will have date night Saturday then and if I’m tired or whatever, that’s on me because I have chosen to do this. But I’ll give you Saturday nights, but Friday nights I need to sleep and he was like so obviously open to that and was like, Oh, I totally get it oh, this is your goals, oh, whatever, you know, very supportive. But we needed to talk about it. Because just be grudgingly the first couple of weeks, I just went along with it, feeling crappy and my runs and thinking like this was not what I wanted. So we just had to talk about it, we have to do it all the time. It’s just like, obviously a big part of the whole thing around sleep and bedrooms and whatnot, you might want to put in headphones or turn this off if you’ve got kids around, but it’s just the intimacy portion. So there’s a lot to say this is not what I’m going into today. But there are many marriage books that talk about like how essential it is to go to bed at the same time as each other and we try to do that. That’s something that I know not every couple does, and somebody is naturally a night owl or a morning person or whatever. They work it out but we try to prioritize going to sleep at the same time. So that is why it’s part of the discussion. That’s also why it’s nice to have a cut off time because I’m not saying everybody’s intimate times at night, but to have a cutoff time in mind of when you want to be in bed by so that it doesn’t run into seriously these are logistical problems that you’re like in my head I’m going to shoot to be in bed from 10 to six
Well, if you get to your bedroom at 10, but people have other ideas or what have you as another idea or both you have other ideas, you’re not getting eight hours of sleep. So set yourselves up for success talk about it. That’s why like if you need to, sometimes we have literally this is not just okay, then we run to the bedroom after the kids. I’m not saying that. But like, we’ll put the kids down and just make that decision to like, hang out in the bedroom like, Okay, do you want to just Let’s not turn on the TV last night, whatever, let’s just like, go on wind, read a book, whatever, but just be in the bedroom earlier so that, you know you’re not always sacrificing this or this or this, like still trying to get sleep. Okay.
Done it on an awkward note for you as my children are screaming and I’m trying to discuss intimacy and sleep. I hope this was helpful. And I hope this gives you a place to go with sleep and to realize I know, it’s really
tempting to get all that kid free time and sacrifice sleep. But it is really important for our health and longevity to get appropriate sleep. And I didn’t talk about this much in this episode, but experts say that just regularly getting six hours of sleep is considered being sleep deprived. So we want to shoot for seven tonight. All right, ladies, thank you so much for listening. I want to go here my children.
I hope you have a great rest your day.

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