Pregnancy Signs & Symptoms, Week by Week Pregnancy Guide

Sleeping may seem like a luxury to you now that you are pregnant.

Tossing and turning probably are considered your nightly exercises  since you have found out the good news. [Pregnancy Exercises]

Your abdomen is stretching now to accommodate your baby and this can make you feel really uncomfortable.

This alone can make it hard for you to sleep. Your baby is also pushing on your bladder, and frequent urination is something you have had to get used to during the night.

This frequent urination is not helping any, when it comes to getting enough sleep. There are things that you can try to help you sleep a lot better.

Do Not Drink Too Much Liquid

When you are pregnant, whatever you drink seems to not stay in your kidneys for very long. You should reduce your liquids; depending upon what time you go to bed.

Although this will not alleviate your total need to go to the bathroom at night, it will help you to shorten the time in between trips. This will give you a chance to get a little bit of extra sleep.

Stop Drinking Caffeine

Before you got pregnant your drinking habits probably included a lot of drinks that had caffeine in them, such as cola, tea, coffee, and hot chocolate. If this is still what you are drinking while you are pregnant, the caffeine is probably helping to keep you up at night.

Switching to decaffeinated coffee, tea, and cola will help you to get more sleep. Your unborn baby is also affected by how much caffeine you drink, so reducing your caffeine will help your baby not to keep you up by kicking you during the night.

Pillows to Help You Sleep

You will find that during your last trimester, you will become very uncomfortable when you are trying to sleep. You may feel like your baby is up under your rib cage, and your back is probably sore from all the weight that you have been carrying.

In other words, you are miserable, and you are having a major problem trying to sleep. The only way that you are able to sleep is on your side, and even this is uncomfortable.

What you can do, to alleviate some of these problems, is to use a maternity pillow. These pillows are specially made to contour to your pregnant body, and they will help you to have a better night of sleeping.

Set the Stage for Sleep

There is nothing like a long, warm bath before you go to bed, when you are pregnant. You can set up a relaxing atmosphere in your bathroom. It can be an atmosphere that will soothe you, and help you to relax.

Try lighting some candles to give your bathroom a soft glow. Put aromatherapy bath beads into your bath tub that have a calming smell.

Use a soft, comfortable bath pillow, so that you can lay your head on the tub and relax. Taking this kind of bath before bed time will help you to sleep better.

These techniques should help you to rest, so that you will sleep better.