When I was pregnant with Maxine, I struggled with insomnia regularly.

I use to get up in the middle of the night and watch two or three episodes of CSI on DVD before schlepping myself back upstairs to dream about working in the crime lab with Gil Grissom. I’d also have that common pregnancy dream where you can see through your belly like a fish bowl. Except I’d be dusting the fish bowl for finger prints.

I did this routine for a while, until someone suggested a warm milk concoction that reduced my CSI consumption from three episodes down to feeling sleepy during the first episode before the plot could twist or I might be suspecting that the sweet baby in the fish bowl was actually the perp.

I’ve dealt with insomnia here and there in the past, and now it seems to have returned with unpredictable frequency.

These days I almost look forward to those nights that I’m tossing and turning, all because I recently remembered this awesomely delicious fix for not being able to fall back to sleep!

Warm milk is supposed to contain tryptophan that will help lull you to Dreamland, but I just discovered that’s actually a myth!

Well thank you Placebo Effect for all that you do for us.

Warm milk + vanilla + your sweetener of choice tastes incredibly similar to a warm vanilla milkshake. This is the combo I use to use, but lately I’ve been swapping out vanilla extract for a bag of my favorite sugar cookie holiday tea.

Tis the season for Sugar Cookie Sleigh Ride and your favorite snowman mug that gets dragged out with the holiday decorations every year. You know, that same mug the spiders sleep in all summer long.

Warm your milk, maybe 1 or 1 1/2 cups.

Since we now know that warm milk/tryptophan thing is just a myth, I see no reason cow’s milk couldn’t be swapped with almond milk, hemp milk, coconut milk or even water with some white food coloring.

I whisk whisk whisk mine with a fork, standing there to prove that other urban legend about a watched pot never boiling is also FALSE. A watched pot definitely does boil. I’m totally getting the Nobel Prize in Chemistry this year for figuring that one out.

Whisking also helps keep away that weird skin milk gets when you heat it up.

Mmmmm. Milk skin.

Pour near boiling milk into your cup with your sugar cookie tea bag.

This is not rocket science, yet I felt compelled to take a picture to demonstrate.

Add some sweetener if you like. I’ll even skip the pic on that step.

Serve your creamy dreamy drink with your middle of the night showing of an episode of Modern Family, Season 2.

You’ll be sleeping again in no time, snoozing like you’re totally innocent and have no evidence to destroy or a body to hide.