The Magic of Sleep

sleepy

I love being a Mum. We consider ourselves very lucky to have two such fabulous young boys; we adore them, we cherish them, we love them but the second tea is over and it is bedtime those little angels are off up the wooden hill!

Thankfully both boys like their sleep because by the time evening has come around I’m ready to shut down, to relax, to spend time with Roy and generally just flop. We were fortunate that both boys sleep really well usually because if something disturbs them (like light nights for example!) I’m a dribbling wreck in the morning.

Clearly, I need to sort some kind of blackout solutions for sunny evenings and bright mornings because I am most definitely a girl that needs her beauty sleep! We did try some clever stick on blackout blinds once upon a time and while they were “ok” it was an old house and the windows got wet inside sometimes, and they got wet, then fell down…

We’ve winged it since then but to be honest I really need to get my bottom in gear and look for a permanent solution. Blinds appeal to me but to be honest I’ve always thought they look a bit dull in a child’s room and I’ve been wary from a safety aspect. Having done a little research I needn’t have worried are there’s a whole host of safety features built into blinds these days. That ticks that box so imagine my delight to find that the company VELUX actually have Disney themed blinds for children amongst other designs.

I like a child’s room to be full of colour (as long as said room isn’t flooded with colourful daylight interrupting my lazy evening or early morning sleep) so these are great. Taylor currently has a bright rainbow-stripe coloured duvet set, fun stickers all over his wardrobe, fun colourful toy boxes and more. To put a plain cream blackout blind in would have been a bit of a buzz-kill in my opinion.

We were very pleased to see that a lot of the blinds are also remote controllable (no tugging, twisting and yanking from him or us and we decide when it’s time for sunlight to come in) which is another bonus feature.

Our one snag (or so I thought) was that our bedroom windows in this wonderful character-filled house are all sash windows with original bottle glass. We did have a company come and quote us to have blinds fitted a few years ago and they weren’t sure how to manage that the way the windows are. Thankfully  VELUX blackout blind installers aren’t fazed by this (and indeed have blinds perfectly designed for just this type of window) so it looks like we have some pattern choosing to do!

Have you had blackout blinds installed in your child’s room? How did you find the process and was it worth it? Sleep is so important (ours as well as theirs) so we are seriously considering doing both children’s rooms and possibly ours too!

In collaboration with the mentioned business

Snoring Beauty

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I have a funny story for you.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess with long dark curly hair (that’s me. I don’t have frizz in the fairy story version) who met and married a handsome Prince named Roy. Roy was the very best husband in every way. That is until that fateful night when he betrayed her horribly.

It goes a little like this:

The Princess fell fast asleep in bed, next to the Prince who was playing Division on his Xbox 1.
The Prince was talking to his Squires (also playing Division) via a magical headset.
The Princess, such a delicate creature, then proceeded to snore like a drunk buffalo with a head cold so that all the Squires and everyone in the entire kingdom could hear her.

The shame!

Needless to say, a good laugh was had by all, especially the Princess when she heard all about it via the amused Xbox chat the next day.

The Princess felt most strongly that the Prince should have switched the chat function off as soon as she started snuffling which he knows full well is followed by a hearty snore.

To be fair the Prince has a decent nose and throat roar himself (think more disgruntled dragon than an ordinary man-snore) so he should have been better at helping this poor Princess mask her affliction. She’ll get her own back though because the Grimm Brothers, who wrote dark fairy tales such as these, would be terribly disappointed otherwise.

Joking aside though, snoring can be a pain both for the person snoring who might find themselves woken up by their own noise, a sharp dig in the ribs or a kick and for the poor so and so who has to listen to it while trying to get off to sleep. Seeing as there is no law against the person who snores falling asleep before the snore-less one it could be time to look for an answer elsewhere.

Some people snore due to underlying conditions whereas some people just snore. No doubt if you are dealing with a snoring person or trying to stop yourself snoring you’ll have tried a number of strips, sleeping positions and more. Have you tried a stop snoring mouthpiece? We haven’t because thankfully I only snore when I have a cold / blocked up nose and Roy when he is very, VERY tired and if he has a cold. There are many that have it seems so it could be worth considering, especially if the usual remedies aren’t working.

Do you snore or have a partner who does? How do you deal with it? Any top tips or comments on your experience of using a mouth guard would no doubt be useful to those looking for a solution.