Forget about stretch marks and melasma, one of the worst ways pregnancy can affect you is by ruining your precious sleep. Unless you’ve known the discomfort of trying to get comfortable with a heavy bump in your stomach, constant back pains and an urge to pee every ten minutes, you can’t really empathize with the nightly woes of a pregnant woman. If you’re struggling to sleep while playing host to another human, here are 7 pointers that can help you.
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1. Cut Off Your Water Supply
As your baby grows bigger, it’s going to be pushing down on your bladder a lot more. Drinking water right before you go to sleep will make you wake up more in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. Unless you want to use adult diapers, don’t let yourself drink too much water before bed.
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2. Sleep On Your Side
Your left side to be precise. Because your vena cava is to the right of your spine, sleeping on your left side, will allow blood to flow more freely to the umbilical cord and from there, to your baby. Don’t stress yourself too much though if you find yourself back on your right side in the morning. The difference in blood flow won’t impact your baby all that much.
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3. Try Not To Sleep Belly Up
Sleeping on your back in your third trimester can cause the weight of the uterus to cut off blood flow from the vena cava to your baby. If you do wake up in the night and realize you’re sleeping on your back, don’t panic and think you’ve killed your baby before it was even born. If your baby was cut off from oxygen, you’d feel dizzy and nauseous long before your baby knew what was going on.
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4. Put Comfort First
Your body is already working against you to ensure you face maximum discomfort at all times. Don’t try to add to it by wearing cute tight tank tops that you thought were very flattering. If going to bed dressed in your most oversized, old T-shirt is what is most comfortable to you, don’t hesitate to wear it. You’re performing the miracle of life, you deserve that much.
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5. Store Healthy Snacks Near You
With your baby motoring through all the food you put into yourself, you’re bound to experience frequent hunger pangs. Going back to sleep after a midnight snack would be a lot more easy if you didn’t have to make your way back from the kitchen all the way to your room again. Do yourself a favour and store healthy snacks like crackers in your nightstand, so when your stomach rumbles again, you can just reach out to satisfy it.
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6. Up Your Iron Intake
A good percentage of pregnant women suffer from Restless Leg Syndrome. Almost as bad as waking you up, is the feeling of insects crawling up your leg, which is how most women describe RLS. As a deficiency in iron and folate lead to RLS, increasing your intake of these foods while cutting back on caffeine, can control it to a great extent.
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7. Don’t Stress Too Much
Especially if this is your first pregnancy, all the scary information out there can cause you to become paranoid and stress over every little detail. Worrying too much can be the ultimate obstacle to a good night’s sleep. Instead, trust in your doctors and the knowledge that millions of women have done this successfully with very little help. Now, tuck yourself in and get ready to have a great sleep because once your baby is born, you’ll probably be sleeping a lot less.
