Well, first of all, you gotta get the baby's sleeping through the night. Something I wasn't familiar with until, oh, about a week ago. I finally gave into the Ferber's method, better known as "crying it out", something I feared for along time, and never even tried with my first. I now have my 8 month old baby, sleeping through the night. That's what I call "heaven on earth". I never knew it could be this nice. If you have all your kids sleeping through the night, and you simply have a hard time falling asleep, I would highly recommend
You can get it right here on www.vitacost.com for around $5I absolutely love this stuff!!! It's not a drug, it's a vitamin, and it TOTALLY works!!! I take it about 30 minutes before I want to go to sleep, and I am out like a light.
Second of all, you have to get your health back. It's easy to fall into bad eating habits with little or no exercise. We're busy all day long, the last thing we want to do, is spend time making fresh salads, and cutting out what we crave most, SUGAR. I truly believe that the way to get a jump start on your health, is by CLEANSING the body. The second I'm done nursing, I'm on a cleanse. That's how much I believe in it. I feel so good, my energy increases dramatically, I lose weight like crazy, and I just FEEL healthier.
So, about caffeine. I have to admit, I do enjoy a diet coke once and a while. I don't make it a habit though. Never have it in the house, I like to drink it as a special treat when we go to lunch or something. I wouldn't suggest drinking any caffeine after 4:00, I know, common sense right. Anyway, if you must have caffeine, I have found a healthier source, and believe me, it works :)
It's called Organic Yerba Mate. I like the chai flavor. I usually mix it with organic rice milk.
Another suggestion is the Verilux Happy Light. Sean and I just barely purchased of couple of these from Costco for $50 each. The suggested use is 3 hours a day. I don't get a chance to use it that often, but I do believe that it works. Here is the description I got off the site.
The HappyLight® 6000 emulates natural sunshine to deliver up to 6,000 LUX of healthy light for improving overall mood, energy and concentration. The 6000's Natural Spectrum® light activates the body's natural mood enhancers, Circadian Rhythms, without exposing you to harmful UV rays. Use the HappyLight 6000 while you're on the computer or reading the newspaper to experience improved well-being and better overall health. Experience improved energy and mood naturally without the use of drugs or artificial stimulants
I hope this information helps, and would love to get your input on it.
6 comments:
I love your blog Crystal; I am a true follower. :D Thanks for sharing all these stuff. I might try out that vitamin because sometimes I have a hard time falling asleap, probably I am too stressed. :d
fyi, that melatonin can be bought for even less on www.vitacost.com we buy all our extra stuff there.
Melatonin was my lifeline for the last two weeks of my pregnancy. I would have only received 3 hours of sleep each night without it.
I was actually going to ask you about doing a cleanse. Brenda said you sold an amazing body cleansing product.....but then I got pregnant..again. So I guess that will have to wait for another year. Blast!
A note on melatonin. It's not exactly a vitamin--it's a chemical that your body produces naturally to bring you into sleep. Using the tablets can help 'turn on' your own melatonin to help you fall asleep. However, if you use it every day then over time your body can stop making it's own melatonin and become literally dependent on the pill. SO, it can be a great booster if you need it sometimes (I cut them in half and give them to my kids on rough nights), but I would not use it more than a few nights in a row, and certainly not every night in the long term.
I sleep even with babies because I bedshare--I more or less leave a breast out and just let them nurse as we both sleep. It's very nice. :) I'm pretty hardcore anti-cry-it-out (like, REALLY hardcore) and I guess I don't consider sleeping through the night to be a valuable achievement until the child is a year old anyway (breastmilk is digested quickly and so a breastfed baby--as mine are--actually needs at least one meal during the night until at *least* 6m old and often closer to a year). So I keep them in my bed with me for that first year. Or I keep them in a sidecar co-sleeper bed...either way, close with easy boob-access. :)
Thanks Mommy Bee for the info. Good to know that about Melatonin. I had no idea, and I definitely don't want to become dependent on them. So it's okay to give to kids? That would be awesome to use it on those rough teething nights.
I loved what you wrote about "boob access" lol. That's funny. I was totally that way with my first. I nursed her for 7 months then she continued to stay in our bed until almost 3. And my son, he refused to nurse after 3 months, I was so sad. I pumped as long as I could until my milk just dried up completely. He didn't sleep well at all, and finally I just decided to TRY the cry it out method, which I was SO afraid of, and that's why I never did it with my first. He cried for 10 minutes, and that was that. Then I wondered why I never tried that with Lily. I think every child is so different though, and don't think the crying it out works so easy with every child. I totally agree with you on nursing in bed at night, and just letting them sleep with you. I loved it. There does come a time though, and it just so happened to come sooner with my son :)
It's totally true that each child is different. I pretty much had to force one son (Bear) out of my bed at 2 (although he still sneaks in sometimes.) Little Eagle is only 2 months old right now, and although he still needs to nurse at night, he seems to do very well sleeping over his his sidecar bed--Bear always woke up if he wasn't snuggled right next to me. So I have a feeling that Eagle will be into his own bed at a much younger age.
My sister said her son was sleeping through the night (and in his own bed) at just a few months old, and they both slept better that way.
So there's a wide diversity of caring options depending on the kid. I have noticed that sometimes Eagle gets touched-out or overstimulated and just needs me to set him down. He'll cry for a minute or two and then fall asleep. I don't think that letting an overstimulated child cry for a few minutes as he clears out his system is at all the same as crying-it-out. Crying it out is when the kid gets left alone to bawl their face off, (scream themselves purple) for 20 or 30 or 60 minutes. I don't think that teaches them to self-soothe or go to sleep on their own, I think it teaches them to give up on being attended to. I think they finally collapse in despair. That's why I so vehemently oppose CIO. :)
And for what it's worth, when a child is older (a toddler) and starting to learn to stay in his own bed at bedtime, he's likely to cry in frustration or anger. That's not at all the same as the cry of despair that you'll get from an infant. Crying commonly goes along with learning new things (falling as they learn to walk for example)...crying isn't bad in an of itself, it's the leaving them alone when they are too small to understand what's going on.
Whew, that was a whole book. I should go write a blog post of my own I guess. LOL!!
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