Sleep

Sleep is so important. You only realise this when your sleep has been compromised. Lack of sleep makes you irritable. Unable to think clearly. Ugly. Unhealthy. Fat. Unable to speak clearly and concisely. Unable to blog interestingly.

I read somewhere that humans are built for 16 hrs of wakefulness. So that means in a 24 hour day we must have at least 8 hours of sleep.

The combination of baby and jet lag has ruined my sleep.

When I think of heaven now, it has big fluffy warm soft cloud that my body can sink into like memory foam and I can sleep uninterrupted and when I do wake up I can stare into nothingness blinking slowly until my body drifts back off to sleep again. oh. god. heaven.

When I used to go to bed at night as a little kid I used to ask mum to give me 3 things to dream about. There only criteria was that they weren’t allowed to have anything to do with water, water dreams always turned into drowning shark infested nightmares for some reason, despite my love of being in the ocean my subconscious always turned on me during sleep. When I had my 3 things I would pick the most delicious one and turn it over and over in my head until a story began and I would literally walk myself into my dream story. It was wonderful.

Where is this blog going you might ask. Nowhere. I just wanted to talk about sleep because it’s all I can think about.

I will leave you with 3 really really interesting facts about sleep.

-1) It's impossible to tell if someone is really awake without close medical supervision. People can take cat naps with their eyes open without even being aware of it. (I swear Annie-Rose does this all the time, she does what I call ‘the thousand yard stare’ before going to sleep, just glazed, unflinching stare)

-2)  Anything less than five minutes to fall asleep at night means you're sleep deprived.

- 3) A new baby typically results in 400-750 hours lost sleep for parents in the first year. (that is a month, a whole MONTH of lost sleep!)

- 4) Some scientists believe we dream to fix experiences in long-term memory, that is, we dream about things worth remembering. Others reckon we dream about things worth forgetting - to eliminate overlapping memories that would otherwise clog up our brains.

Sleep well dear friends.