The Messy Midlife Sleep Problem

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What's keeping you up at night? Hello everyone, and welcome to the bedtime edit podcast. My name is Alana McGinn, and I am so excited to be here. But before we dive into what this podcast is going to be about, I want to tell you a little bit about myself and why I'm actually starting it so. I am a certified sleep consultant and a stress management educator, and I have been working with families from 2007 from babies to adults to major corporations with a focus on sleep health. How I started my journey my company's good night sleep site, how I started my journey of good night sleep site was I had my daughter, my first daughter, who is now 17 and getting ready to enter university, which is crazy to me, and started working on sleep training her. And at the time in that industry, that industry wasn't really around or created, so it was very much me having to figure things out myself, and do all the readings and talk to all the parents and the friends and all the people that you talk to, and put a great plan together for her. And I will say my daughter was my first client, and then started helping friends and friends of friends, and it kind of snowballed from there, and before I knew it, I was pregnant with twins and figuring out how to get two babies at the same time to sleep better and good night sleep site was born, and now we have consultants throughout Canada and the US and I have since furthered my education and my certifications in adult sleep health, because so many parents were coming to me saying, my kids sleep great, but I'm not sleeping well. So it was really important for me to really focus on this age group. And as I got older and started to enter midlife, there was a need for it. I saw a need for it amongst my friends, amongst my clients, even sometimes amongst myself, where I needed to better my sleep and to focus on proper sleep management. So since then, I was able to conquer a lot of great opportunities, one being media. I was city line sleep expert on frequent Toronto morning shows, and it was really fun to do. So a podcast for me seemed like the next best step, and my focus now is women and midlife sleep. I am surrounded by midlife women, and I love the fact that there is so many amazing conversations being had about this age group and about what midlife women are going through, and perimenopause and menopause, but I'm still not seeing a lot of conversation about sleep, and we know at this stage that our sleep is taking a hit. So many midlife women are struggling with sleep. And what's important to understand is, while we're struggling with sleep because of things like hormonal shifts and perimenopause and menopause, this is also a time in our life where we're going through so many different things. We're going through so many different transitional stages in our life. The reason why I pivoted to focus on midlife, sleep and stress management support, is at 45 I made the very hard decision of ending my marriage. This was a 15 plus year marriage. For anyone who's gone through divorce and separation, it's not a decision that you just wake up and decide to do. It's something that you likely have been struggling with for years. Never mind just confirming it, but saying it out loud. It could take years to get to that point, and I went from technically a three year pandemic straight into a divorce, and then went through a two year divorce process while still living with my ex. So to say that my stress levels were at an all time high would be an understatement, but more on that in later segments. So that's why I really wanted to put a focus on sleeping better for this age group, and learning how to manage our stress because they go hand in hand. When we are not sleeping well. Our stress levels are higher. When our stress levels are higher, we are not sleeping well. And as I mentioned, women in this age group go through so many different shifts, like divorce, like relationship changes, like hormonal changes, we might be experiencing emptiness for the first time. We are going through teenagers and puberty at the same time we are going through perimenopause, whose idea was that we could be going through the sandwich generation and caregivers and taking care of our aging parents while we're still taking care of our kids. So career changes. There's so much transition at this stage, and it's affecting our sleep and stress management. This is where the bedtime edit comes in, and this is why it was so important for me to create these conversations, because I feel that they need to be had. So this podcast is not just going to be sleep tips and about sleep, because, yes, sleep will be the focus. Sleep will be the undercurrent of every episode, but this podcast is going to be on topics that are keeping us up at night. What are things? That we're going through in life that is affecting our sleep. How can we better those situations so that we're able to sleep better? I am an expert in sleep and stress management, and I will share my insights on that. But here's the thing, I am learning so much in this stage of life myself. I am not an expert in all things. So I need other experts, and I need you guys to also help me through it. I'm going to be going along this ride with you and learning beside you. So what are we going to have on the podcast? We are going to have experts and professionals, but I also want to hear your stories, and with your permission, I want to be sharing your stories, whether I have you on the podcast or whether I'm just sharing them because you've sent me a DM. These are conversations that I think are really important because they are relatable. If you're going through them, someone else is going through them with you, and I think it's so important in this midlife community for women that we understand that we are supported and that we are going through this together, myself included, so we're gonna be having these conversations with teachable moments. And that is really my goal for this podcast. I want this podcast to be your midlife safe space, and that is my goal in creating each episode, and each episode is going to have a different midlife edit that will better your bedtime, that will better your sleep, that will better your stress management. And I'm super excited to do it. So here is where I am right now. I am 47 years old, just coming out of my first year of living on my own in my new house with my kids. I am currently on a 5050 schedule with my ex and my kids, which is working out well. My kids are older. My eldest is 17. My youngest are twins. They're 13. They've handled the divorce really well. We've gone through the transition really well, but for the most part, the transition has been pretty good, and so I'm very thankful for that. I have, like I said, my eldest is going off to university next year, so I'm not going through empty nest yet, but it's gonna be an adjustment. She's my first one going off. The twins will still be here, and I can't even talk about it without crying.

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That will definitely be a future episode. For sure, how to handle that. I'm in an amazing, amazing new relationship with an awesome guy who my kids love. Maybe one day you'll meet him. So that's where I'm at right now. Life is good in terms of sleep. What are our main struggles? Honestly, my main struggle, and I know all teen parents are going to be able to understand this, my main struggle is that shift as your kids get older, where they start going to bed after you that bedtime shift is a hard one. It's hard going to bed knowing that the house is still alive and awake. Like I said, I'm very fortunate where I do a lot of media tomorrow I am actually on a morning show, which means I have to wake up very early. So when I have the kids in those kind of situations, I need to go to bed a lot earlier. But if my eldest is out, I want I need to know when she comes in. So our rule is that when she comes home, she knocks on my bedroom door and just says I'm home because I can't wait up. I'm just not that parent. I need to go to sleep. I love my sleep, but if she doesn't wake me up, my mama brain just turns on and I'm checking my phone and seeing where she is. But thankfully, we've never run into that. But the problem is, is that then she wakes me up and she's off to bed, and then I struggle to fall back asleep. So again, guys, I'm in that midlife struggle right there with you. The bedtime edit podcast is on the women in media network, and many of the hosts on this network are in front of the camera or they are on tour. Hello, Jan Arden, I had the pleasure of being on her podcast, and I hope to be back on there soon. She's amazing. But they need to show up. You know, they're on social media, and they need to be on when they need to be on, and that's really hard when you haven't had a good night of sleep. I can't even begin to understand what a touring schedule does to your sleep. So I'm I hope to be able to talk to Jan about that. So it's a lot, it's a lot. And being that I have been in the creative space for so many years, I know so many amazing social media creators, and I've seen some of them go through some really hard times in their life and continue to create content and continue to be on and that's not easy to do. So that is going to be another topic that we are going to talk about as well, and I hope to actually have some of these creators on to share their stories. I also want to tell you a little bit about me. I've gone into the professional stuff and I've gone into the divorce stuff. But first thing about me is I am a homebody. Nothing pleases me more than being able to be in my home with my loved ones. Nothing pleases me more when plans are. Canceled. Never fear about canceling plans with me, because I've probably been thinking of ways to cancel them all day, and my parking anxiety is probably at an all time high. My comfort is TV that is just, you know, if I need to just feel good about my day and feel better about my day, I turn my TV on. I love all things housewives. My boyfriend always laughs at me because while he's working, he can hear the show on the TV, and it's just like talk about middle aged women, middle aged women screaming and yelling. And I love it. It brings me such joy. But it's probably not the most relaxing thing to watch before bedtime. But for some reason, it calms me. And the reason why I'm bringing this up is because I do think this should be a topic that we talk about on this podcast, because I have read that if shows like that or true crime documentaries calm you down, there's probably like an underlying issue that you need to address in your life. So if dysfunction is a calming factor for you, what's really going on? So that again, guys, I'm along on this ride with you. My comfort TV shows range from like Little House on the Prairie to True Crime documentaries or music documentaries. That is my thing. Music is my therapy. I just put on my playlist when I need to feel better. And that's a little bit about me and who you're going to get in this podcast. Okay, every podcast, there is going to be multiple takeaways. But even in this about me podcast, I really wanted to make sure that you guys left with a great sleep tip that you can apply. So something that I'm going to talk a lot about is your personal pause and how to conduct it. And really, what your personal pause is throughout the day is to allow yourself time to stress out throughout the day, because that, in turn, will help you sleep better. And here's what I mean by that. We are so distracted all day long, with work, with our kids, with family, with friends, with being online and consuming all the content that we have stressors and we have worries and we have anxieties, and I'm not going to tell you not to have those things. We're human. It's normal, but it's so easy to distract ourselves of those things throughout the day because of everything around us, and then we go to bed at night, the distractions are gone, and all of those worries, all of those stresses, flood our brain. So we need to give ourselves time throughout the day to work through those problems. So this is what we call a personal pause. It is a productive thought, or what's called constructive worry, where you're going to take plain sheet of white paper. You're going to draw a line in the middle. On one side, you're going to put down the problem. What is that problem that you know is going to keep you up at bedtime? Or what is that problem that you know is going to keep you up if you do wake up at 3am right? We're going to talk a lot about the 3am waking two guys, but not today. So write down that problem. On the other side, you want to write down the solutions to that problem. You don't need to solve it in that moment. It could just be booking an appointment, finding out information, talking to someone, sourcing out products, whatever is going to take you that next step to solving that problem, a minute or two during the day. That's all you need. We can always carve out at least a minute or two for ourselves, and we need to prioritize that, put that piece of paper away, so that when you do go to bed and guess what that problem is going to pop in your head, because we're human, it's going to happen. You can say to yourself, I worked on it today. I'm going to work on it tomorrow. Now is not the time to work on it. So we need to allow ourselves time throughout the day to stress the F out, but you can do it productively, and you can do it constructively. On that note, I want to hear from you guys. I want your questions. I want to hear your story so ways that you can share that with me is heading over to my website, the bedtime edit.com, and you can leave voice notes there. Everything is anonymous. I don't need to share anything. You can even leave stories of your friends. Nothing will be shared that you either don't want or I don't need to share a name, so you don't have to worry about anything like that. You can also just send me a DM on my Instagram. I want to know not just your questions, but maybe there's certain topics that you want me to cover. I did a call out on my social media last week about sharing your stories. And there was a few of you that gave me some really great topics that I hadn't even thought of. I am so excited about my first guest. It is Dr Carlin Costa. She is a psychotherapist and host of the spicy fat podcast, also on the women in media network, and we are going to be talking all about the intersection between sleep and mental health. I think that is a great first topic going into the new year, because we all know that when our mental health isn't at its best, our sleep is definitely effective. So if you have a question about mental health, you can send me a. Pm over at Atlanta dot McGinn, or at the bedtime edit.com, and I look forward to taking this journey with you guys, talk to y'all soon, find new episodes of the bedtime edit every other Monday. Follow and subscribe on Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts you.