I admire people who can sleep through the night. I used to be one of those people. But it’s now a rare occurrence to turn out the light and not wake up until my alarm goes off. In fact, sometimes I wonder why I even set my alarm; I don’t need it most days.
Let’s explore the world of sleep. It all starts with how much sleep we should get. According to the CDC, newborns should get 14-17 hours of sleep. That’s about the same as my cat gets! This number starts to drop, and by the time the baby is a year old, they only need 11-14 hours of sleep.
School-age kids should be asleep for 9-12 hours per night, but once they become teenagers, that number slips to 8-10 hours. Once you become an adult, seven hours of sleep is all that is needed.
So I did math. (Yes, English teachers can still do at least some math!) I usually go to bed around 10:00 each night. My alarm is set for 6:00. That’s eight hours of sleep, right? In an ideal world, yes. In my world, and probably many of yours, that time frame does not actually mean eight hours of sleep.
I think it starts once you have kids. Prior to children, I don’t remember waking up a lot during the night. I’d go to bed and be out like a light with no problem. But when kids arrive, they tend to wake up because they are hungry or soiled or just because they know their parents have finally entered REM sleep time. Now, full disclosure, it was almost always Michelle who got up with them, but it’s not like I always slept through the crying.
So that becomes a pattern. Even when the children sleep through the night, your body is now so attuned to waking up at various times that you just keep doing it.
Then those children become teenagers and come home after you’ve climbed into bed. Oops, time to wake up when you hear the door open and close. Thank goodness they’re home, but now I’m awake again!
And even now, without any kids in our house, I’m almost guaranteed to wake up at least once a night. Let’s face it, with age come certain bodily changes that cause older people to need to visit the bathroom in the middle of the night. Sigh.
It’s not waking up that’s the problem here. Rather, it’s the ability to fall back asleep that keeps me up at night. (Sorry, that was a pretty bad turn of words. Blame it on my drowsiness.)
I’m sure some of you can relate to what happens when you wake up. My brain starts to work, thinking maybe that it’s time to start the day. Any problems I had to deal with the day before or worries about what’s coming up begin to creep in, and my brain can’t shut them off too well.
Some years back, I asked my doctor for advice on this problem. He suggested I start taking melatonin, a natural sleep aid. I started at 1mg and am now up to 5mg. It helps me fall asleep, but doesn’t work as well on keeping me in a dreamstate.
I read a story once where a character kept counting from 1-10 as a way to fall asleep. That works at times, in a way similar to counting sheep. Whenever I’ve tried counting those ewes, I see them jumping over a fence, and at least one of them trips as they hit the top of the fence.
Michelle suggested many years ago that I try the alphabet game, where you have to name one thing in a category that starts with each letter. I usually use my comic book collection and try to name as many titles that start with each letter as I can. I don’t always start at A either, trying to vary the game. Some nights this works really well, and I’m back out before I’ve advanced four letters. Other nights, I make it all the way through and wonder what to do next.
I have a retired neighbor who told me once that he usually wakes up pretty early, goes downstairs to read a bit, and then falls back asleep. I’m still over a decade away from the life of leisure that would allow me to do that, though I have tried it at 3 a.m. when nothing else works.
On the rare occasion where I sleep all the way through the night, I actually feel refreshed and ready to go. But most days are a little rough to get going. Most days, I’m awake when Michelle gets up to get ready for work. But even when we don’t need an alarm on weekends, I still get up between 6:00-7:00.
I’d welcome any other ideas that work for any of my readers! Well, any ideas except reading my column. But if that works for you…
Word of the Week: This week’s word is nocent, which means harmful, as in, “The teenager needed to be made aware of the nocent lack of sleep he got by playing video games until 2:00 in the morning and then getting up for school at 7:00.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!