Eveclair I had insomnia for the longest time, being unable to sleep; staring at the ceiling until my day began was how I spent most of my evenings. Being a caregiver at night while working full-time during the day sort of messed up my internal clock when my caregiving duties ended with a loved one passing. I struggled to get in the biological clock in order.
My friend was very kind. She bought me a lavender pillow for my birthday. It did help a little comfort-wise, but I was still unable to sleep; what really made a difference was completely drawing the curtains and being in total darkness helped the pineal gland to start producing melatonin while light causes that production to stop. I never knew that and mostly had the practice of keeping the curtains open through the night while I slept. Amazingly, the simplest things such as reducing the amount of light in a room could help get you better sleep; knowing this earlier could have prevented me from taking a supplement that was only a temporary fix to my sleep problem, withstanding the side effect the next day was no walk in the park either.
Practising good sleep hygiene contributes to a better night’s sleep and a good night’s sleep gives you the energy for a productive day. I am guilty of having poor sleep hygiene; I had to pay for that during the day when I was usually exhausted, unfocused, and just eager to get back to bed for a good nap.
Inspired, I drew some sheep and started creating a sleep tracker to keep my sleep patterns in check.
How to Track Your Sleep with a Sleep Log/ Tracker – A printable sleep tracker to track my sleep patterns and to collect details such as the number of hours, how energized I feel the next day, as well as other notes such as dreams that disrupted your sleep or too much caffeine, can be written under notes. Knowing your patterns will enable you to change the habits that are causing you precious winks of sleep.
How a sleep tracker works – The Happy Sheep Sleep Tracker I created is to record your sleep pattern for the month up to 31 Days. Start by Shading the month and indicating the time you went to bed on the alarm clock. I enjoyed shading the sheep and find it appropriate for any age group, the sheep with numbers indicated on them to show the number of hours slept. In the printable, there are up to 18 sheep representing 18 hours, not that an adult would need that much sleep but to create the flexibility of use of the tracker, it can be used for new-borns, which requires from 14-17 hours of sleep recommended by the National Sleep Foundation, pre-schooler 10 to 13 hours including naps. 6 to 12-year olds require 9 to 12 hours. 13 to 18 years 8 to 10 hours and finally adults, which need 7 to 8 hours, sleep.
Keeping track of your sleeping habits is a great way to highlight lousy sleep hygiene and keep you on track for a good rest and a productive day ahead. Keeping track of my sleep has helped me get a good’s night rest, and I eliminated having caffeine after 5pm, which I realized was keeping me up at night. Also, limiting the number of hours I watch videos before bedtime also helped.
The printables are available in sizes A4, A5, Letter, and Half-Letter. Do remember to adjust your printer properties before printing. The best part about printables is you can print as many as you like. It is yours forever. If you are interested in purchasing this tracking, it is available on Etsy and my Payhip page. I will also give out bonus items, 2 colouring pages of a girl sleeping with a blindfold and one without a blindfold.
Thanks for taking the time to read my post. Stay tuned for more printables.
A sleep tracker is such a great idea! The lavender pillow also sounds so soothing. Thanks for sharing!
That's great to hear that keeping the curtains closed helped you sleep better!
The sleep tracker sounds great and there are nights when I have good sleep and others where I struggle to fall asleep and I feel exhuasted the next day so it would be beneficial for me to do.