Between the night time wakings and feeding and the stress of having a child, falling or staying asleep can be difficult for a new parent. On average, adults should get between seven and nine hours of sleep.

Unfortunately, most new parents lose sleep after the new baby is born for a number of reasons. You may lay awake anticipating your baby’s cry, or you may struggle to fall back to sleep after a nighttime feeding. Not only does lack of sleep impact your overall wellbeing and health, it can also damage your skin health and even cause premature aging. So, in theory, getting more or less sleep does impact your physical appearance.

Sleeping is the best way to help skin repair any damage done during the day. Your blood flow increases, collagen production restarts, and your facial muscles can finally relax. However, there are also numerous negative effects that lack of sleep can have on your skin.

Without enough sleep time for sloughing off dead cells and replacing them with new ones, skin can start to look dull, gray or sallow.

Lack of sleep can cause darker under eye circles, paler skin, hanging eyelids, more wrinkles and fine lines. It will also cause skin to age faster, and lower how well skin can recover from environmental aggressors such as strong wind or sun exposure.

While the best solution for sleep deprivation is, of course, increasing the amount of sleep you’re getting every night, sometimes that’s not easily achievable. These are some quick tips on how to improve the way your skin looks and feels even when you don’t get in those much needed hours during the night.

Wash your face before sleeping.

Don’t skip your nighttime skincare routine! Considering you’ll be going to sleep, it gives your skin more time to recover from daily aggressors such as pollution, sun exposure, wind, and so on. What helps it recover is creating a good nightly ritual that feeds your skin with actives that need to refresh and restore. Avoid falling asleep with makeup on. After a long, exhausting day it can be tempting to just fall asleep but ultimately it will cause more damage than good.

Applying your favorite eye product!

Maybe it can be difficult to correct dark under eyes caused by lack of sleep, but what can help is splashing some cool water, followed by a good moisturizing or tightening  eye cream. This will help with puffiness, reduce the swelling under your eyes and give you that much-needed refresh for the sensitive under-eye skin area.

Level up and improve your skincare routine.

A good skincare routine that gives you exactly what you need to get that fresh, nourished look even after your sleepless nights. With lack of sleep your skin is extra sensitive which is why a moisturizer is an ideal solution for that. Select a product enriched with antioxidants, that relieves inflammation and soothes skin while also protecting it from external aggressors such as winds, cold weather, heating and more.