What not to bring to bed to improve your sleep

How would you describe your bed? If the words “haven” or “perfection” aren’t part of the description, then you should definitely listen up. If you really think about it, most people spend about a 1/3 of their lives in bed, which is more time than they spend doing just about anything else. Knowing that, doesn’t it make sense to make your bed as amazing as possible?

But, the truth is that most people are not getting nearly enough sleep. Whether they’re suffering from insomnia, stressed about work/money/life, they are chronically busy, or they are parents to kids of any age {because no, it does not get better after the newborn stage}, sleep deprivation comes in many forms.

Since we're talking beds, I thought I would share my all-time favorite picture I've ever taken of a bed. Even in my post-wedding haze when I was deliriously exhausted, I was admiring how huge our honeymoon suite was and I came up with the idea that hubby and I should jump on the bed in our wedding day finest and capture it all with the self-timer. The result was this picture, which we then sent out as thank you notes after the wedding.

Although I don't jump on beds {much} these days, I have been living in a haze of sleep deprivation for years now and it's not looking like it's going to lift anytime soon. For me, it is things I bring to bed with me that cause my sleep problems, the first of which is my newborn.Everyone knows that parents of newborns are sleep deprived, even if their baby is as good of a sleeper as ours is. Waking up a bunch to peek in on her, late-night feeding and early mornings, or sleeping through pain have all been my problems postpartum, but when I wake up and see her smiling and cooing at me there’s no better reason to miss out on sleep.

The second thing I bring to bed with me is my cellphone, which I know is a bad idea. But, because my cellphone is also the way to contact me in an emergency, I can’t really leave my phone too far away, so off to bed with me it comes. I am sure it’s disrupting my sleep in ways I can’t even quantify when it dings in the middle of the night with unimportant emails and messages, but I’m not quite sure how to balance the need for sleep with the necessity of being able to be reached when it is most important.

And, the third thing I bring to bed with me is stress. Deadlines at work, events I’m juggling while caring for children, late nights spent writing and editing, time spent worrying about loved ones, and all the to-do lists running through my head at any given time keep me up frequently.