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This article is part of SELF’s third annual Rest Week, an editorial package dedicated to doing less. Taking care of yourself, physically and emotionally, is impossible without genuine downtime. With that in mind, we’ll be publishing articles up until the new year to help you make a habit of taking breaks, chilling out, and slowing down. (And we’re taking our own advice: The SELF staff will be OOO during this time!) We hope to inspire you to take it easy and get some rest, whatever that looks like for you.
This is also part of SELF's Sleeping With… series, where we ask people from different career paths, backgrounds, and stages of life how they make sleep magic happen.
The year 2024 has been anything but restful for Ilana Glazer. This year, the 37-year-old Broad City creator cowrote and starred in Babes, a motherhood-centric buddy comedy, and her new standup special, Human Magic, premieres December 20 on Hulu. With her career milestones stacking up, Glazer is actually focused on slowing things down—at least behind the scenes. “I spent so many years doing comedy at night and going out into the city and having a more active nightlife,” Glazer tells SELF. “Right now,” she says, “I’m trying to pivot into cozy.”
That might sound surprising coming from someone like Glazer, a force of pure energy known for dancing her way on stage and turning NYC streets into a live set. Wondering how a touring comic and toddler parent can keep up that level of hype? We certainly are. According to Glazer, it’s all about her bedtime routine.
From the habits that help her family close out their day to the details of her evening skin care ritual, dive into Glazer’s complete bedtime routine—in her own ultra-quotable voice—below.
Bedtime is definitely sacred for my child, and I try to keep that same level of respect for myself.
I have really struggled with insomnia—or just waking up with racing thoughts and a racing heart–and I aim to build a little nest in my mind that I can crawl into to relax into sleep. And there’s no better living, breathing example of how you should love and care for yourself than loving and caring for a child, which is pretty much why I had her. I needed that lesson.
We never intended on co-sleeping, but my daughter and I sleep together sometimes, and it’s awesome.
My kiddo slept consistently—and a lot—for the first year and a half, and she had incredible, long stretches of sleep. Things started to change after she turned two, when I was also on the road touring Ilana Glazer Live, which became Human Magic. When we started co-sleeping, I was really, really struggling with it; I felt like I was failing at something. And now I’m like, What a treat. It’s been a long and arduous process–most of all for my husband, who’s been reminding me not to freak out about it and to accept our child for who she is and where she’s at with her sleeping in the moment. We’re just like lions in a den. This is delicious. We stopped bringing any little bed for her while traveling, and since I’ve learned to relax into co-sleeping, we sleep better, deeper, longer. It really is about a frame of mind: I’ve finally found my peace with not only where we’re at right now, but wherever we go with it. It’s hard and exhausting enough to wake up in the middle of the night, and I don’t need to panic on top of that.
When we’re home, whenever we can, my husband and I do her bedtime together. Her sound machine and humidifier helps her wind down, but I think it’s this energy and intention of going through the routine without rushing that gives her the best night’s rest. And it’s really best if I can have that continuum from putting her down to putting myself down.
I love doing my skin care. It’s so annoying how ‘self-care’ can just feel like one slice of capitalism in a bigger pizza, but it really does feel good to do all the skin things.
I’m opening my cabinet now—I try different products often, but my general routine is always cleanser, toner, serum, moisturizer and an undereye cream.
Right now, I’m using a Mario Badescu cleanser, and following it with Orveda’s Vital Sap; it’s kind of like a serum, but it’s not oily in any way, it’s really fresh, and it has a great name—I want to eat it. I want to drink it! My go-to moisturizer is Belif cream, which is gorgeous and naturally cooling; it feels hydrating, but it’s thin on the skin. Belif also sent me this awesome Aqua Bomb eye gel that has an applicator so that I don’t even have to touch my undereyes, which is really nice.
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Then I use Osea Undaria Algae Body Lotion and Body Oil on my legs and body. The last thing I do is use my NuFace microcurrent at-home facial tool, then my Solawave red light stick.
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During my whole routine, I’m talking to myself. I call this practice “stacking it up.”
I’m talking myself down—talking about what I’ve experienced and felt today, where I’m at right now, and what I’m about to do, which is let go. Because none of these thoughts are necessary for sleep. I’m focusing on turning the light off inside my mind.
This habit started on the road when I was touring the material for this special. I was anxious and excited and feeling so many things before performing for these beautiful faces around the country and the world. I would walk around the city or neighborhood that I was in and talk to myself for two hours, just naming the objective reality around me before running through my material. Like, “Okay, so I’m nervous, and that makes sense. And I’m in South Carolina…. I’m not normally in South Carolina, so that’s weird. That feels different. And I miss my baby, and I miss my man. And that’s all part of these feelings.” And so now, as part of my bedtime routine, I do this mini, gentle “stacking it up” for the day.
If my mind is still cluttered after all that, I’ll journal. Just the other night, I was really struggling to let go of a lot of thoughts, and I was journaling for 45 minutes straight, just laying it all out and emptying my mind. And it really worked for me.
At night, I sometimes ask for silence with my partner because I don’t want to get activated–but I also really love the focus on sex and sexual health as part of sleep.
Especially if I’ve done some work at night, I have to put in work to turn my brain off. My husband and I can really get into it and jam and chop it up and talk and think together, but I need to focus on winding down.
If we’re going to bed together, we’ll just move quietly and slowly, maybe talk a little bit, but try not to get too excited, which helps us cuddle more. I sometimes feel like sex is more of a daytime thing and an activator, but having pleasure certainly helps with sleep. And if we start, we gotta do this thing–we have to finish. And it is always worth it. It’s a really helpful thing to have sex before sleep, actually.
These days, I’m sleeping well.
I’m at a place in my life right now where I’m enjoying a happier winter than I ever have: There’s so much new that’s happening, and I’m so locked into being present because of this position of parenthood. I am slowing things down earlier and trying to get my work done during the day. I think that early darkness is a sign to us that it’s just time to go to bed. This process of slowing it down and “stacking it up” has been a powerful way for me to gently parent my inner child, and whether it’s with my daughter in bed with us or not, I’m sleeping really well.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
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