Sleep changes every trimester
Sleeping is not a waste of time. It is an essential activity to protect yourself from mood and alertness disorders, maintain good respiratory and muscular efficiency, and relieve fatigue, tension and small worries. Sleep therefore allows you to recover well and optimize all bodily functions. During pregnancy, it is more important than ever to pay attention to its quality trimester by trimester, as it is constantly changing.
In the 1st trimester: The sudden influx of progesterone, a naturally sedative hormone, leads to irrepressible urges to sleep throughout the day. Nothing could be more normal. Ideally, you should not fight it... When working, the solution is to schedule a flash nap of 10 to 20 minutes depending on your schedule: the energy boost is equal to 10 or even 15 times the duration of the nap.
In the 2nd trimester: Once the anxieties and nausea of the 1st trimester have passed, and the new hormonal situation has stabilized, sleep normalizes. This is the time to enjoy your days, but without cutting into restorative sleep. Each person has their own quota, but generally, it is one hour less than natural sleep time during holidays.
In the 3rd trimester: The closer you get to term, the more disturbed your sleep becomes. In addition to your increasingly rounded belly and its increasingly active little inhabitant, other factors promote night awakenings: itchy skin, night cramps, lower back pain... This is where you will need to be most vigilant and use many tricks to be in great shape on the day of delivery.
10 tips to (re)find good sleep
Sleeping on your stomach is neither forbidden nor dangerous. But the further along pregnancy is, the more uncomfortable the position becomes. For this reason, but also to facilitate your breathing and optimize baby's oxygenation, it is recommended in the last months to sleep on your left side. And to adopt good habits to ensure dreamy nights:
1/ Respect your biological rhythm: Make sure to expose yourself to light during the day and sleep in the dark, as these light contrasts are the origin of wake and sleep cycles. Otherwise, the secretion of melatonin, which signals the body to sleep, is disturbed. So, remove any blinking screens in standby mode from your bedroom!
2/ Stay active during the day: To achieve deep, most restorative sleep, you need to be active during the day. Exercise your mind (reading, creative hobby) and your body (30 minutes of walking, swimming or yoga per day) while knowing how to slow down and stop at the right time: at least 3 hours before going to bed.
3/ Eat a light dinner...but not too light: Overly heavy meals disturb sleep by increasing body temperature. But a meal that is too light risks waking you up due to hunger. The ideal plate: vegetables, protein (egg, ham, fish...), complex carbohydrates (rice, bread, cereals), dairy products and fruit, two to three hours before bedtime.
4/ Ban alcohol and nicotine: Two bad habits equally harmful to sleep. Alcohol disturbs its quality and nicotine, like coffee, is a stimulant that causes numerous awakenings.
5/ Avoid sources of stress: Before going to bed, no anxious films or novels, online discussions... which increase alertness and body temperature. Exactly the opposite of what the body needs to fall asleep.
6/ Opt for good bedding: If it's too firm, the body's weight rests too much on the shoulders and hips; if it's too soft, the neck, lower back, and spine are not well supported. Consider raising the feet of the bed base to facilitate venous return. And use a nursing pillow, which, placed between the thighs and extending along the belly, helps relieve tension and allows you to comfortably settle on your side.
7/ Relax your skin: A lukewarm shower (no more than 37°C) is unparalleled in the evening for relaxing the mind and preparing the body for sleep. And, after the shower, anti-heavy leg and anti-stretch mark treatments will be all the more effective. The same goes for moisturizing and soothing treatments, which guarantee ultra-sensitive skin a night without tightness and itching.
8/ Establish a ritual: As soon as the first signs appear (yawning, tingling eyes), start a beneficial ritual that always facilitates falling asleep. Drink a herbal tea or a glass of milk, air out your room, and lower the heating (18°C) to lower your body temperature.
9 / Breathe deeply: Practicing abdominal breathing and visualization helps to better approach sleep. Lie down, close your eyes, breathe deeply and slowly through your abdomen about ten times, trying to relax all the muscles in your body. Then visualize all the details of a soothing place.
10/ Stabilize your wake-up time: Waking up regularly at the same time, including on weekends and holidays, facilitates sleep-wake synchronization. But if you are very tired, don't hesitate to treat yourself to a lie-in. Or a compensatory nap.
The boost from gentle therapies
If you experience repeated sleepless nights or nights disturbed by multiple awakenings, do not hesitate to talk to your doctor who, depending on your medical history, will be able to guide you towards the most suitable solution. Self-medication with potential side effects is obviously out of the question! Especially since the range of gentle therapies is vast.
Behavioral therapy: It consists of stopping the perpetuation of insomnia by learning, among other things, how and when to reinvest in one's bed.
Phytotherapy: Certain plants promote sleep. Herbal teas are therefore often welcome, especially chamomile and verbena.
Homeopathy: During pregnancy, many allopathic medications are prohibited. This is not the case for homeopathy, which, depending on your personality and the type of insomnia, can be of great help.
Acupuncture: For Chinese medicine, sleep disorders stem from poor energy circulation (ki) that can be rebalanced by acting on different points of the body.
Relaxation: Yoga, meditation, sophrology can help regain the calm necessary for falling asleep.
