So, you’re pregnant and can’t sleep the whole night? Welcome to insomnia during pregnancy.
Insomnia and other sleep disorders strike almost 80% pregnant woman. Isn’t that scary?
But as usual, we at PregnantEve have figured out how to banish insomnia during pregnancy.
What is insomnia during pregnancy?
Insomnia is the disorder when you have difficulty to fall or stay asleep. Insomnia during pregnancy is due to the changes occurring during pregnancy. In general, if you have more than three sleepless nights per week for more than 12 weeks, then you have insomnia during pregnancy.
Symptoms of insomnia during pregnancy
The most important symptom of insomnia during pregnancy is the inability to fall asleep during pregnancy nights. Other symptoms include
- Heartburns
- Nightmares
- Anxiety lapses
If occurring during sleep, they may wake you up.
Causes of insomnia during pregnancy
Pregnancy is all about a tornado of hormones that keeps revolving inside the body. It affects any and everything inside you. Hormone imbalance causes snoring, heartburn, hot flash, irritation, and depression. Hormonal imbalance is the prime cause of pregnancy insomnia.
Other reasons for insomnia during pregnancy:
- Babies movements which start in early midnight hours
- Bloating and other digestive troubles
- Stress and anxiety about changes happening to you
- A frequent desire for going to the loo
- Nausea and other discomforts
- Leg cramps and back pain
- An uncomfortable or unsatisfying change in sex life and much more
However, there are simple ways to overcome all this havoc happening in your life. Here we have compiled the top 25 ways to deal with insomnia during pregnancy.
25 Ways to Cure Insomnia during Pregnancy
- Stop stressing: Pregnancy has no significant influence on your sleep other than the hormonal fluctuations. Stress further worsens the situation by creating a more severe hormonal misbalance and leaving you to stay awake the whole night. So worry less about it, there is nothing wrong with you or your pregnancy.
- Discuss insomnia during pregnancy with your kin and partner: Talking your heart out relieves you of a lot of mental strain, and you might get some old wives advice. Talking will also help your partner come to know of your needs. Making love should happen as a mutual desire and not as a daily drill.
- Meditate and practice yoga before going to sleep: Yoga can treat almost everything and even insomnia during pregnancy. Yoga and meditation help your mind to calm down. The hormonal fluctuations subside and all your systems will start running in harmony. Also, your circadian (day and night) rhythm will get restored, and you’ll fall to sleep peacefully.
- Wear comfortable clothes: Most women become too conscious of their bodies and start wearing baggy clothes during their pregnancy. You should wear you like and if needed sleep barely clothed. There is a reason why one should take off intimate wear at night. Tight clothes may further make you uncomfortable.
- Go out in the sun: Going out in the sun for a continuous duration of more than 20 minutes is essential for preventing vitamin D deficiency. The body needs Vitamin D for calcium absorption which is a major mineral for your biological clock. Hence you must go out in the sun more often for preventing insomnia during pregnancy.
- Drink lot of water and other healthy fluids: During pregnancy, a lot of women suffer from constipation and other bowel movement troubles. Constipation is a cause of insomnia itself. Unless you have a healthy clean gut, nothing feels right. Tossing yourself in your bed the entire night is lamentable. Fluids like soups, coconut milk, juices and water help ease gut troubles.
- Eat foods rich in calcium and magnesium to ease insomnia during pregnancy: As already discussed your body needs calcium for the maintenance of the biological clock and rhythm of the body. Increase the intake of calcium-rich foods such as milk, yogurt, sardines, kale, and watercress. Magnesium is also needed for similar reasons. It is recommendable that you eat lots of beans, nuts, bananas, dark chocolate too.
- Eat fruits and vegetables: Those who eat junk have irregular bowel movements and flatulence troubles. These troubles give you sleepless nights during pregnancy. Eating healthy is always recommended during pregnancy. However, it is also a fact that eating light healthy food helps to treat insomnia during pregnancy. Read more about diet during pregnancy.
- Have a book or something as a plan B for the times when you can’t fall to sleep: If you habituate yourself to a midnight plan, then your body will knock off to sleep even if you wake up during midnight. Keep a nice book about positivity to drive off all midnight anxieties. You can even pop some pregnancy pops to help your body takes it as a sleeping pill. It’s all about tricking your mind.
- Maintain a regular bedtime to prevent: Just like hunger even sleep comes to you at intervals. If you skip it then you don’t feel sleepy and hence will have trouble falling asleep for the entire night.
- Take a warm water bath before hitting your bed to heal insomnia during pregnancy: A warm bath relaxes all the nerves and also eases you of any body-ache. When your body is at peace, you’ll have a sound sleep throughout the night.
- Place a soft pillow underneath your baby bump: Once you decide to fall asleep your little one decides to play inside. And then you have those creepy movements in you, and your sleep gets disturbed. Though either your or daddy’s hand placed on your baby bump does soothe your baby, but sometimes they get out of control. The only way to prevent this is placing a very soft pillow under your baby bump when you are going to sleep. It will also prevent any heaviness on your baby due to wrong sleeping positions.
- Go for a walk before sleeping if you are dealing with pregnancy insomnia: Walking after dinner helps your body to move the food and also tires you a bit. Then the body wants to take up digestion and so puts off other systems at a slower pace. This is how you feel drowsy and fall asleep.
- Avoid listening to loud music before sleeping during pregnancy to check insomnia
- Eat black molasses as a home remedy for insomnia during pregnancy.
- Stop drinking caffeine and other drugs. They are stimulatory and addictive.
- Never watch horror movies before going to bed even if you don’t experience insomnia. They affect your baby’s brain development and build disquiet in you.
- Don’t consume a lot of fluids just before sleeping if you have pregnancy insomnia because you’ve to visit the loo often at night.
- Don’t take many naps during the day to avoid insomnia. This is because that way you already fulfill your prerequisite sleep.
- Don’t take melatonin and valine as therapy for insomnia during pregnancy. They are hormonal supplements that interfere with your baby’s developments.
- Drink a small cup of warm cashew milk before sleeping to treat insomnia during pregnancy. Milk is a good calcium source and causes somnolence.
- Drink chamomile tea as a home remedy for insomnia during pregnancy. It has antioxidants that will help to break down harmful chemicals in your body that disturb sleep cycles.
- Get a massage before going to bed aids in a better sleep. Massage also helps ease cramps.
- Soak your legs in warm water with salt before going to sleep. This will help reduce the swelling in your legs and thus prevent restless nights due to pregnancy leg cramps.
- Consult a medical professional about your pregnancy insomnia.
And if all this doesn’t work do not fret and seek medical advice. This is the most trusted way of dealing with adverse aggravated pregnancy insomnia.
We admit that albeit we do extensive research to get the best for you but it is not a personally customized set of remedies.
Only a qualified doctor can give a modified therapy for insomnia during pregnancy. A doctor will prescribe pregnancy insomnia treatment considering all factors.
