Sleep Pressure
Happy Friday Ya’ll!
Something has been coming up a few times lately and I thought this
would be a good time to dig into it a little bit.
✨Sleep Pressure
also called
✨The Homeostatic Sleep Drive
Homeostatic (or homeostasis) means a self-regulating process
that an organism does to maintain stability and adjust to ideal survival conditions.
It amazes me every time, but our body is self-regulating
itself and has many little processes within it that self-regulate to
keep us running. INCREDIBLE!
Therefore “homeostatic sleep drive” means our body has it’s own
mechanism to regulate and drive us to sleep! Everything in life is
balance and our bodies are no different. This mechanism makes sure
we balance our awake time with our sleep time.
The longer we are awake, the longer the pressure for our bodies to
sleep builds and then at some point, we sleep, and that pressure
goes away. Thus - sleep pressure.
Another incredible body-brain fact? Our body increases our drive
for sleep when we really need it! EG:
When immune system is working harder
When we are more cognitively stimulated
When something is more physically demanding
Okay, so what does this mean for you and your child?
— Has your child fallen asleep in the car when it wasn’t nap time?
— Does your child fall asleep during a feed?
— After these two things… do they have difficulty going down for
their nap/bedtime as easily?
🚨 BOOM 🚨
Sleep pressure issue!
If your child passes out in the car for even 5 minutes, all the sleep
pressure that was building through their wake window goes *poof*
→ If you try to put them down at their usual nap time, they might take
extra long or fuss because they weren’t quite ready yet!
→ They will still need a nap, don’t get me wrong! But they’ll need
a bit longer before they actually go down vs their usual time
→ If they do go down for their nap at their usual time, they will
probably wake earlier than usual.
This is one of those things where we can’t help if they fall asleep in
the car for example… BUT if you know what to expect as a result of it…
you’ll be better off and things will go more smoothly 🧸
If you have any questions please reach out, I’d love to talk more sleep with you!
Book your complimentary call here
Have a great weekend 🙂
Your Paediatric Sleep Consultant
💚Marina Godard-Simon
