How to Have the Perfect Nap

My toddler and I have several things in common, but the biggest is that if we don’t get a daily nap, we’re both turn into pretty miserable people.

People always tell me how lucky I am to have a job where my workday is over around 12pm. While that’s very true, what people don’t take into consideration is that because I start work so early, I’ve already been at work several hours before the most people’s alarm clock even goes off. I definitely love having my afternoons open to run errands and spend time with my little guy, but around 2pm is when I start to crash, and when I crash, I crash hard.

Lucky for me, my little boy goes down for his nap at the same time. For the first several months of his life, when I’d put John down for a nap, I’d sleep just as long as he did, which would sometimes be upward of three hours. And then, I’d wake up in a fog and miserable for the rest of the day and into the night.

If you’re in the habit of grabbing a nap and you’re sleeping longer than 30 minutes, you’re doing it all wrong, at least that’s what researchers are saying.

Stephanie Centofanti, Research Associate from the University of South Australia’s Centre for Sleep Research explained to Mamamia that basically that those of us who take naps need to make sure that we’re not sleeping more than 30 minutes because at about 30 minutes is when we fall into the deepest part of sleep and waking up just after that amount of time causes something called "sleep inertia," which makes us feel sluggish. What nappers need to do instead in try to sneak in a 20-minute nap and not sleep longer than that.

Give it a try and let me know how that works out for you.

[via Mamamia]