Here we are in week 2 of me attempting to sleep like a regular human woman. This week I am giving 'Simba Sleep Spray' a go. Fear not, it isn't made of a baby lion that has to rise up and overthrow an evil dictator that murdered his dad, that would not be ethically sound and I like ethical soundness.

It actually contains 'essential oils' (I'm not sure what they are actually essential for, I don't think anyone knows) such as lavender, mandarin etc. You're are supposed to spray 2-3 sprays on your pillow and it is supposed to improve the quality of your sleep.

At £18.00 for 100ml it's on the pricey side, but I guess it depends on how long it will last as to whether that's value for money. Also I'm not sure if I am alone here but lavender smells vile to me, we shall see.

Speak to you all in what hopefully will be a well rested week xxxxxx

Hey everyone,
                  
Just updating you on my first complete week of my mission to sleep like a normal human being.  As mentioned in my prior blogs, I have started out this mission using an app called 'Calm'. I did their '7 days of sleep' program which teaches you to be a better sleeper.

So true to the law of sod, the week I decide to make an active effort to improve my sleep happens to fall within the week of my kid being sick, the parents among you are probably aware that this usually means feck all sleep. I considered delaying my little sleep experiment. But life happens to all of us, so I soldiered on to see what would happen.

Now considering that I had a clingy, regularly waking, hot as a radiator child to contend with, the results were way better than I expected. I did get a few daytime snoozes in with the kid however, but usually it'd take me the length of his nap to actually fall asleep.

My weekly average total sleep was 6hr 44 min, as I've mentioned I usually struggle to get an average of 5 hrs.

The '7 days of sleep' was full of useful hints and tips of a good night sleep and I was able to use it alongside the short sleep meditations. I tried a few sleep stories too. My son especially loved the kid's sleep stories as well, though  wasn't overly enthralled with the kids meditations.

So yeah, I really liked this app, I will definitely give it another go during an average week to see what the outcomes are too. Thumbs up xxxx

     Hey everyone,
     I moaned away to you all yesterday about my crappy sleep and explained that I was going to try something new each week to tackle it.
Quite a few people seemed to swear by meditation apps. So this week I am going to try the app ‘Calm’.

    I noticed that calm have lots of 7 day guides. So as well as ‘7 days of sleep’ they have ‘7 days of managing stress’, ‘7 days of managing calm’ and others, they also have stand alone meditations and sleep stories. This week I am going to see if their ‘7 days of sleep’ helps me out

         While my sleep still didn’t make it to 7 hours, this was the first night I tried it and there was definitely a noticeable improvement, 6hrs 26 mins it pretty awesome for me.

          Also, I assumed that you had to listen to the 7 days of sleep just before bed, but I got the impression I was supposed to listen to 7 days of sleep at a different time during the day and then use one of the stand alone deep sleep meditations before bed.  So I am going to try it that way today/tonight.

        But yeah, it’s a nice start and I’ll keep you updated xxx

If you know of any more negative effects please let me know. As I plan to monitor any improvements. Lots of lovely people have given me helpful suggestions. I plan to try one each week to see if they work for me. Suggestions Received are below – I’ll let you know which one I try first xxxx

• Meditation apps before bed
• Limiting caffeine to the morning
• Hot bath/shower before bed
• Chamomile/valerian root tea
• Try a sleep spray
• Try the sleep score app
• Try Timeshifter
• Intermittent Fasting (Restricting eating to 8 or 12 hour windows)
• Magnesium
  
• Valerian and Hops (Hops is beer right??)
  
• 5-HTP
  

I have seen loads of amazing recipes for veganuary. However Veganuary doesn't have to mean complicated (unless you enjoy that sort of thing of course) So here is a quick comforting and high protein recipe you can throw together in a short space of time.

Ingredients:
2 Linda McCartney Sausages
1 Wholemeal English Muffin
A few leaves of spinach
1 TBSP of preferred sauce (mustard, ketchup etc)

1) Cook Sausages as per packet instructions
2) Slice and toast muffin
3) Slice sausage and serve in muffin topped with spinach and sauce.

Wham Bama and thank you Mama for 347 Kcals and 24g of protein, Nom