Inviting sleep with Tea & Tonic

If there was one thing I could change that I feel would significantly change the quality of my life it would be the consistency of my sleep.

When I was a teenager, pre-children, (I was 16 when I was first pregnant so my teenage years and parenting overlapped), my sleep was impeccable. I used to be in bed by around 9pm every night and I slept so soundly that sometimes my mum and my sister would worry that I was actually dead. They could shout at me and shake me and nothing, I was out cold.

And then I had a baby and honestly I’m not sure I’ve slept properly since. With my first daughter it wasn’t so bad – I still did the half ear open thing that all mothers do, but she slept well and I didn’t have a prolonged period of sleepless nights. Belle though found sleep more difficult. For the first couple of years she slept in bed with me and would wake sometimes hourly, and it wasn’t until she started school that she started sleeping through the night.

Fast forward another 10 years or so and the perimenopause and all her delights were upon me, most noticeable of which was an apparent inability to sleep for more than an hour or two at a time without having to balance it out with an equal amount of time spent thrashing about uncomfortably, counting down the hours until I knew I would have to be awake again.

Starting HRT last year helped massively, and I do wake up less and for shorter periods now, but my sleep is still far from perfect and it varies during my cycle too, some nights letting me go for hours at a time, others keeping me on high alert with anxious dreams and periods of overheating.

Fun. Times. All. Round.

Needless to say I will try anything to help me get a good’s night sleep, and this week that anything has been the Inviting Sleep Bath Oil from Tea & Tonic, a concentrated blend of pure essential oils infused into nutrient-rich, plant oils, designed to soothe you into a relaxed, dreamy state ready for bed.

Tea & Tonic create, develop and freshly blend their skincare and wellness range from a converted barn in the Surrey Hills, incorporating adaptogen superherbs to boost resilience and combat stress. They are committed to sustainability and quality and infuse all their own herbal oils.

As well as skincare they make a range of teas – the one I had in the bath is the Golden Milk Wellness Tea, a blend of Rooibos, turmeric, linden and lavender with superherbs to help you relax ahead of sleep. I also love their ginger and turmeric tea, especially as I’ve been randomly feeling queasy lately for no apparent reason.

The bath oil was beautiful and the tea very tasty and I didn’t wake up too much that night, so you could definitely call it a win overall. For me though sleep is as much about the ritual as the individual elements.

The very fact of taking that time to run a bath, light some candles and switch off from screens, knowing bedtime is coming, is hugely beneficial. If it takes a bath oil to remind me that I’m worth investing this time in, then that to me is money well spent in itself.