Your brain and body absolutely need restful sleep or at least sleep. I imagine your baby is very young and still waking during the night — if not maybe you’re waking in the night because you’re engorged!

With that aside, I can make many MANY suggestions for things you can do to help you sleep.

Here are some basics ideas for sleeplessness, and neo-natal sleeplessness:

1/2 hour before you’d like to go to bed, start your bedtime routine even if you’re feeling too awake. Dim lights, brush your teeth, put on soft music, read a calm book. Stop overstimulating yourself — no video games, movies, TV, Internet chats, phone calls, etc.

Try putting the baby near your bed if not IN your bed (search on “cosleeping” or “co-sleeping”) so you don’t have to get up and “wake up” to nurse in the night. Especially important — don’t use more than a night-light for middle of the night feedings — or pumping — too much light breaks your melatonin cycles and you may not be able to fall back asleep.

Nap when the baby naps.

If you’re in a city, make sure there’s no extra light entering your room. Darkness brings us melatonin, which is the other half of the brain chemicals we need for good sleep (with seratonin).

Try progressive relaxation techniques when you do get into bed. Rather than paying attention to racing thoughts, pay attention to relaxing your body starting at your toes — tense & then relax the muscles in your toes, your ankles, your shins, your knees, your thighs, etc. — slowly, up your body. Focusing on relaxing your body will help quiet your mind.

If you’re religious, note the long standing tradition in MANY religions to pray before sleep. Recounting your day’s blessings, and an overwhelming sense of gratitude combined with the trance-like stillness of the mind in focus probably help people sleep.

Never eat too close to bedtime.

I’m sure I can come up with more…but that’s certainly a good bit to try out.

Note that while I’m an herbalist, a Reiki healer, and I once wanted to become a midwife, I am not a doctor and this is NOT to be taken as professional medical advice. Always seek a physician for legally binding medical advice!

Best of luck!!!!

I don’t know if there’s any benefits, in particular, with this recipe. Warm milk makes people sleepy and is often recommended as a non-medication sleep-aid. There is much benefit to honey, which you can read about in connection to the longevity of beekeepers.

The reason I experimented with this is another thing. There are fables and tales that mention milk & honey, there’s the saying about “the land of milk and honey” and I’ve heard of show-worthy animals being bathed in a mixture of milk and honey before being taken in front of the judges. I was curious about how it would taste, why it seemed to be so popular in ancient times as to talk about faraway beautiful lands as the “land of milk & honey” etc.

So I did a web search and couldn’t come up with a real recipe to try for milk & honey. So I figured I’d have to try it myself. I do recommend that you use organic milk whenever possible, and I’ve done this with skim milk. I haven’t tried it with vanilla as recommended by Ariff. Now that colder weather is settling in I may try the recipe again. I think it would be unbelievable with scones!

I haven’t tried it with the idea for vanilla yet, but since I make my own vanilla from brandy and vanilla beans, it might be worth a try, as long as I can hunker down under the covers after and make it all go away.

Good luck, Kenny!!

If you think this is great, try honey butter!! Leave the honey and 1-2 sticks of butter to get to room temperature — a few hours. Beat together equal amounts of honey and butter in a bowl with a fork until thoroughly blended. Serve with a GOOD loaf of bakery bread — or better yet make your own fresh bread or biscuits to go with it. It’s amazing! MUCH different from buttered toast with honey.

I use salted butter, some people swear by sweet butter — so whichever you prefer.