I am in productive mode, but I can’t stop yawning. Last night I got just over seven hours sleep. The day before seven hours, and so it has been… on average I still get seven hours, but I need more, my body definitely needs more – so why isn’t it happening?
Good question, but I don’t really have an easy answer. Last year I was pretty bad about getting enough rest, and my body let me know it, so one of my resolutions this year was to get at least seven hours every night. I wanted to go for eight, but I was so behind I wanted to challenge myself without setting myself up for failure. Seven hours seemed like a decent compromise. But then this year happened and my body demanded much more (blood treatments at the cancer center for example – they always leave me wiped). And I was doing it, averaging just under to just over eight hours a night. But for the last three weeks, I have slipped back into ‘under seven’ territory, and I don’t know why or how to go back to my eight-hour standard.
As much as my body needs eight hours, it is actually the problem. It’s not me. I mean I commit, I’m committed, I’m a committee. But my body just isn’t getting the memo. I usually have no problem falling asleep, but then I wake up after about seven hours of sleep. I stay in bed, try to go back to sleep, but it’s no use. Just like it is pointless to nap or try to sleep during the day – my body just won’t let me. If I go to bed earlier, I wake up earlier, and if I go to bed really late I won’t sleep in. If my body needs the sleep, why isn’t it helping itself out here?
I keep trying to figure out why my body has suddenly reverted to my old ways, when for months I slowly conditioned myself to expect eight hours. I would go to bed early, try to nap during the day, and if I woke up I would stay in bed and try to go back to sleep. This may sound simple, but to a person who is used to six hours or less and always has to be productive, in motion, it is hardly easy for me. I’m the person who only spent two days in the hospital after open-heart surgery and upon coming home, reorganized my closet. I don’t do tired, or I didn’t, but my conditioning the past few months succeeded in one thing – now it needs that extra sleep time in order to feel and be 100% – oh the irony.
I’m not depressed. I’m not stressed. I don’t have insomnia. I’m not having hardly any caffeine (anymore than what is in the chocolate I eat). And my body does feel tired, so what the hell? The only thing that coincides with my new sleeping pattern is my husband’s new job. He gets up about ninety minutes before I am used to getting up. But about that… he doesn’t wake me up. He gets dressed in the guest bedroom, and he uses the guest bathroom so aside from physically getting out of bed, he isn’t in the room. And I am not waking up when he gets up, sometimes I wake up right before he is going to get up, sometimes while he is still in the shower and sometimes just after he has left. And while his schedule is different, in the past him leaving for work hasn’t affected my sleeping one way or the other, but then again, most of the time I was already awake…
I’m trying to figure out if this is the thing that is effing up my sleep, and if it is, why. I mean what about my husband getting up and going for work, has me stirring. Because I don’t hear him, he doesn’t turn on the light and like I already said, sometimes I wake up before him. It is like my biological alarm clock has reset itself, making sure I wake up as soon as I am home alone, or just before he leaves. If I understood why this was affecting me I could correct it, but after three weeks I still have no idea.
I have thought of other possible culprits too – like peeing. Many of the times I was waking up, I was getting up to pee. But getting up to use the bathroom has never interfered with my going back to bed after. But, I was feeling desperate so I decided no liquids after an hour before bed. I seriously felt like Sophia on “The Golden Girls” and I’m only thirty. At times my desire to have some water makes it hard, but most of the time I follow this new rule and it still doesn’t change anything. I’m still getting up, sometimes even to pee, and sometimes just because my body is being “special.”
I wish it was my husband waking me up, because that would be an easy fix. Or I wish it was something else I could work on. I don’t know what to do, so right now I just keep laying in bed, refusing to open my eyes and focus on clearing my head, hoping sleep will come again, because I woke up too early… and then forty minutes later I give up, and get up. 😕
Twenty-five nights – that is how long this has gone on, twenty-five long nights. I’ll keep racking my brain, trying to find a solution to my slumber woes. Until then, this is “Sleep… Interrupted,” signing off.
-DMW
