Mommy hacks: Sleep Apps

When Crosby was a baby, I asked his pediatrician if he had any hot tips for how I could go back to sleep after waking up in the middle of the night. He told me that there are a lot of studies showing white noise is helpful for adult sleep. I have since developed some hacks that might be helpful for my friends on the internet who, like me, are trying to optimize both their sleep and phone use. "Optimize" for my phone means dealing with it as little as possible.

As Germany is very behind in digitalization, they are also behind on what I would call "tech manners". For example, teachers or summer camps often send emails on a Sunday evening or even late evening expecting that parents will check email before kids go to school or camp early the next morning. I believe this level of connectivity is not currently expected in the US, if it ever was. (Readers - feel free to correct me if I am wrong.) I would also say that Germany is about ten years behind in setting tech boundaries for teenagers with the intention of helping them develop social skills. For example, Crosby's art camp let students use headphones during the day much to the detriment of actually having kids connect with one another.

With that context in mind, I find it especially important that Paul and I model good screen etiquette at home. Siri and Alexa have been helpful as we can have them play music or answer questions without pulling out our phones. When it comes to bedtime, we have a few apps that truly make our lives better in a couple ways. 

The first app is Sun to Moon Sleep Clock. The concept is easy. The moon shows when the kids should stay in bed. When the sun comes up at 6 am, then kids can get out of bed. I played around with letting the kids dress up the moon and sun but Carmen has mostly ignored this app for the better part of six months. But, last week I found this blonde wig and voila "mommy sun".

Our "stay-in-bed past 6 am" rate has improved dramatically.

Because I don't like looking at my phone first thing in the morning, I started sleeping with a quiet white noise that turns off at 6 am. When she walks in my room in the morning I listen for the white noise. I don't hear the sound, I know that she's slept long enough.

Somehow brown noise seems less abrasive than white noise.

The white noise timer is also super helpful for the boys when they need to nap. I set the sleep time for 20-30 minutes and tell them they need to lay down as long as they hear the noise. I also recommend it in the middle of the night if you are doing "Le Pause" aka giving the baby time to settle herself. I would set the timer for five minutes during a fuss fest.  If it went silent while the baby was still fussing then I'd pick her up. 

Our bedtimes with the kids have just been dragging out, so last night we tried our routine with the help of a "sleep playlist". I put together this playlist using apple music. (We recently switched from Spotify over the Joe Rogan nonsense.) This is the basic nighttime plan:

5:30 Dinner

7:00ish - or earlier, the kids can get in bed as early as they want to read more before the playlist

7:30 Playlist

7:50 Adults leave the room

Paul looked into some elaborate timer app, but putting doubles of songs that add up to 5, 5, and 10 minutes seems to do the trick.

The playlist goes like this:

5 minutes - Hugo picks massage/book/story/or he can just talk while the rain sounds play

5 minutes - Crosby picks massage/book/story/or he can just talk while the ocean sounds play

10 minutes - Snuggling while "noise" plays

I just snuggle Carmen while all of this is happening. This new plan is also nice because the kids can be as wiggly as they want during the whole process. We don't have to constantly remind them to stop moving because when the white noise stops playing, the adults are out of there. We also don't care how long they are up wiggling and chatting after we leave because PB^2's work is done. 

Also, Crosby got some Carmen snuggles, which is always a win for him. With any luck, we'll be seeing more of this: