The myth of 8 hours!

I've always felt like I'm one of those people that need 8 hours sleep. I just don't function as well with anything less. So one of the things I'm not looking forward to is the lack of sleep heading my way. Although I'll say this past week has proven that getting a full night's rest is already a thing of the past. I'm way more uncomfortable in whatever position I find myself in. Baby's kicks are getting more intense. And those 3, 4 sometimes 5 times to get up to pee don't help much either.

I haven't studied yoga nidra, the yoga of sleep. But I know that in yoga the idea goes that it's not so much the amount of rest you get but the quality of rest you get. It teaches a kind of conscious rest, not sleep, but takes you in to a deep sense of relaxation. It reminds me a bit of Bikram yoga classes, where in the last sequence of poses, you lie in a mini savasana for 20 seconds in between the poses. I used to love the practice of allowing yourself to fully let go and rest. I know I'll be needing that skill to rest in between contractions too. 

Anyway, I stumbled upon a BBC article about the myth of the 8 hour sleep. It may be that we don't really need that big of a chunk of sleep after all. Hurray! Before the 1600s people had 2 sleeps, the first one soon after dusk. Then they'd get up and do some stuff before sleeping a second sleep. This was the absolute norm.

 "For most of evolution we slept a certain way," says sleep psychologist Gregg Jacobs. "Waking up during the night is part of normal human physiology."

I do realize I won't be getting up just once, but several times. I do feel that a lot of tiredness that comes into play from a lack of sleep is the stress involved from not sleeping. I know that if I can't fall asleep or I wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep I stress out. And the more stressed and frustrated you become the harder it is to sleep.

I know that I will need good stress management, flexibility and probably a whole lot of grace to get me through those first months of motherhood (and beyond).

I would love to hear from other mamas, what they recommend for getting rest and for making the most out of the rest that you do get. If you're out there, let me know!