Recent surveys show that sleep deprivation is the hardest part of new parenthood and that parents average just 4.4 hours night-time sleep during a baby’s first year.
What can we do to maximise sleep, ensure deep sleep, and prevent poor sleep from becoming a pattern that persists long after the baby has learnt how to sleep through the night?
Babies sleep. Parents don’t.
It’s not that babies don’t sleep. They do—lots, but in short chunks and often at the ‘wrong’ time of day. Parents want to sleep at night-time, preferably for eight unbroken hours.
It is hard work being a parent. We spend hours trying to feed and settle the baby, eventually get them to sleep, and then do the washing up rather than taking time to nap. Yet the biggest challenge for parents is not lack of time for sleep, or prioritising washing up over rest, but rather that when we try to sleep—whether at night or by way of a daytime nap—we can’t. Instead, we lie awake, mind racing, waiting for our baby to cry. When we do sleep, our sleep tends to be light and unrestful.
Parents are tired, and it would be great if they slept longer and more deeply, so that they could repair body and mind and wake up with energy to enjoy the new day. Our own informal research tells us that the biggest difference would be the ability to get back to good quality deep sleep after waking to feed the baby.
Drifting off
The neurons of our brain communicate with other cells through electrical pulses of differing speeds. When we relax and sleep, large areas of the brain shut down—in particular, those parts of the brain that are involved with thinking and processing visual information. Different areas of the brain that pulse at far slower alpha, theta and delta frequencies kick in.
When we find it hard to fall asleep, fast-pulsing ‘daytime’ activity continues to occur in the brain. Our brain needs to slow down for good sleep. We may be able to use use music, mindfulness, or yoga to help our brain slow down enough to get to sleep, but even if we can use these techniques in the middle of the night after feeding the baby, they take up precious sleeping time.
What can the new parent who wants to avoid the sedation (not deep sleep!) offered by medication do?
Aiding sleep
Diet can help—trials show that fibre (root vegetables) deepens sleep quality and that sugar fragments sleep.
What about technology?
Some devices use cranial electrostimulation, whereby electrodes on the skull pass a small current into the brain to increase alpha brain frequencies associated with relaxation and help people to fall asleep faster. Headbands and sensor devices also use sound to amplify the power of the sleeper’s deep sleep. However, the efficacy of these devices depends on the sleeper already experiencing deep sleep—and many parents don’t.
Another option is that used by us in the Zeez Sleep Pebble—no sensors, headband, or current passing through the skull into the brain, but rather extremely low power pulses produced under the pillow and designed to match the natural and changing activity of the neurons involved in relaxation and deep sleep.
Most of us pick up the signals just as we tend to fall in step when walking with a friend and our brain slows down enough to relax and sleep deeply. Relaxation frequencies can be reactivated at any time, e.g. after settling a baby or when the baby is taking a daytime nap, so that parents have chance of maximizing sleep opportunities.
The Zeez Sleep Pebble is a small under the pillow device designed to encourage a natural, good sleep pattern. We have been developing and testing it for several years, and are now selling a beta version: perfect electronics and programming encased in individually manufactured 3D printed cases. 80 percent users, including new parents, say that it helps them to fall asleep faster, and to sleep more deeply. The Zeez Sleep Pebble is an entirely British invention, and there is nothing else like it.
The Zeez only affects the person who has it under their pillow, but a calmer more rested parent often means a calmer more rested baby.
You can buy the Zeez through our website, www.zeez.org.uk (one month sale / return}. Use the code “Child” for a £75 discount.
Website www.zeez.org.uk
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Contact https://www.zeez.org.uk/contact-us/
T 0208 347 8734
