What’s the time in NZ? You may have woken up in a bit of a daze this morning – not only is it Easter Sunday, but today, Daylight Saving has come to an end. That means our clocks went backwards an hour overnight. Hmm… but that also means that if you have kids who are excited about the Easter Bunny arriving this morning and therefore woke up at the crack of dawn… yip, it’s an even earlier start today. Here are some tips for navigating the change!
One of my youngest son’s favourite books is a Bluey book, about Bluey and Bingo’s fears that the Easter Bunny has forgotten about them, but – spoiler alert – no, he’s actually just made an elaborate Easter Egg hunt for them (partly to make up for the fact that last year, yes, he did unfortunately forget about them). The last few years, Easter hasn’t mean too much to my son – he’s been excited about some chocolate, but that’s about it. This year though, we are dealing with something entirely different.
His Easter expectations are sky high (thanks again for this Chilli and Bandit!!). I’ve done some prep, but I’m never going to live up to what Bluey delivered. Come Saturday night I will no doubt be in for a late night trying to get some sort of hunt in order. Then, if Christmas Day last year is anything to go by, the anticipation will likely wake my son up before the sun rises.
The only problem is, Sunday is also the end of Daylight Saving. Yes, hurrah! The clocks go back an hour! We get an extra hour of sleep…. oh, no wait, yes my son will be waking up something around 6am for his Easter Hunt… which, will now be 5am. Where’s that extra sleep!?
Maybe it’s a different story in your house and you’ve just managed to get yourself an extra hour of shut eye (Congratulations!!!), but if the end of daylight saving is putting you out of whack a bit, here’s some advice for getting through.
Make the Switch
The end of daylight saving is obviously going to be a little less stressful and annoying than the other way around when we lose out on an hour’s sleep. But, it does still mess with our circadian rhythms and it can – according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine – take a week or longer to adjust to the normal routine.
They advise the best way to deal with it is to slowly adjust your schedule by pushing your bed time and awake time out by 15-20 minutes in the days leading up to the change. Obviously, you don’t have the ability to time travel and go back and try that, but, we do have the gift of it being Easter and a public holiday tomorrow, so you could split the difference and go to bed somewhere in the middle of when you normally would have and what the actual time is. (So, say you normally go to bed at 10pm, tonight go for 9.30pm – before the adjustment of daylight saving, that would have been 10.30pm). Then, stretch out your awake time tomorrow.
Or, you may like to use the fact that you’re waking earlier, to your advantage. Always wanted to be able to get out of bed earlier and have more time in the mornings? Now is your chance to be an early riser! This will mean sticking to an earlier bedtime, but you can do it! You should be more tired in the evenings with the switch anyway!
Getting Enough Zzzzzz’s
Sleep health expert Dr Carmel Harrington says sleep is critical to our physical and mental health – and yes, daylight saving ending can be a real challenge for many.
Carmel suggests ideally getting plenty of rest leading up to pushing the clocks forward – but, if you haven’t been able to do that, there’s a few things you can do today to best adjust to the change.
- Make the bedroom as bright as possible when you first wake up in the morning
- Eat a good breakfast
- Go outside in the sunlight in the early mornings
- Try to get between seven to nine hours sleep each night
- Exercise daily, but not within three hours of sleep time
- Don’t drink coffee, tea or other caffeine drinks after midday, avoid smoking just before bed or during the night
- Don’t go to bed hungry, but don’t eat a large meal within three hours of bedtime
- Wind down.Your body needs time to shift into sleep mode, so in the hour before bed, switch off technology, dim the lights, have a warm to hot shower and do a calming activity such as reading
If you’re having trouble tonight drifting off to sleep – we recently ran a story that revealed that doing a minimum of just two minutes meditation can greatly improve your quality of sleep and the time it takes to nod off.
And if you’re looking for even more sleep advice, Terri Candy, Sleep Therapist at Eden Sleep says it’s important tonight to disconnect in order to wake up refreshed tomorrow:
“Try and disconnect from the stress, for example getting changed out of work clothes when you get home,” she says. “Mindfulness or relaxation apps are useful also. Even a shower before bed can help, I don’t know anyone who gets out of the shower grumpy. We are all individual so it may take a little trial and error to see what works for you.”
If you do find yourself struggling tonight, she has three things to avoid doing:
- Don’t reach for alcohol as a way to wind down, aside from disrupting your sleep your bladder is likely to wake you up.
- If you can’t sleep, try not to toss and turn. Get up and do something quietly like reading a book.
- Avoid the work computer, social media, and go back to bed when you are feeling drowsy and eyelids droopy.
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