After declaring war on my sleeplessness, I have formulated a new series of Tiny Missions to attempt to get some sleep. To get 8-9 unbroken hours per night with as few restless/awake periods as possible.
This would be the first time in well over a decade.
After chamomile tea became a pleasant but unsustainable ritual (tea right before bed is a bathroom in the night nightmare) and didn’t give me the rest I needed, I researched another natural option
Sleep Drops for Adults. Described as below on the pharmacy website:
“SleepDrops for Adults is a unique combination of herbs, homeopathic remedies and First Light Flower Essences of New Zealand. These sleep drops contain a unique blend of vibrational remedies which have been designed to work on many different levels including – mental, emotional, spiritual, physical and physiological.”
I have seen many positive reviews and, according to a pharmacist, a person was able to stop taking sleeping pills with them. My GP is keen to hear how they work as he has seen them advertised.
My first night I took five drops half an hour before bed and five drops in bed. I followed the general usage rather than the intense programme listed because of my amitriptyline- I thought it may be too much. I slept generally well and felt rather relaxed. However there were still plenty of restless lines in my sleep graph. It didn’t help that my husband woke me at 5 and the baby got up at 6. So I spent my first day after super exhausted. My fatigue levels were between 6-7 out of 10, which is pretty high for me in the past year.
On night two, upon agreement with my GP, I took the full recommended dose for the “best results”. This resulted in my body being very relaxed, to the point where I was stuck awake from about 5am with a very sore neck, but my body was so heavy that the Fitbit thought I was asleep. Though, there were still plenty of restless and awake bars in the graph. The next morning I had a severe headache and very sore neck (flare related, not medicine related). I needed pain killers in order to get up. I spent the whole morning with a hangover feel and was dehydrated all day (medicine related).
I only went ahead with night three because I wanted a decent test. However, I only took it at 4am when I woke to go to the bathroom and was struggling to get back to sleep. Unfortunately it made my body extremely relaxed, so much so that my Fitbit thought I was asleep, but I only dozed from 4am onwards. The relaxed effect lasted through the morning and wasn’t bad! I’m unsure if it’s useful for my body to be so relaxed without sleeping, but my sleep graph was a little better, a couple of good chunks of sleep were had, even before I took the Sleep Drops.
After a couple of further nights with no additional sleep support, it was like my body was reset to my medicine. The restless periods were reduced, but it still takes over an hour longer in bed than I sleep.
The last test of the Sleep Drops, in order to see if it’s any help, is to use it to nap on a day I really need one.
On the day I finally had an opportunity, I took the drops and listened to a 20 minute Yoga Nidra for sleep video on YouTube. I was comfortable, the house was quiet. My body was completely relaxed. But I just couldn’t get off to sleep. After an hour I admitted defeat. My body relaxed, so that is worth something, but if I had just done a Yoga Nidra meditation, I would be more alert, less heavy in the head and stiff. Best of all, I would have received the benefits in 20 minutes instead of loosing an hour trying.
A few hours afterwards, I still felt off and determined that I will not use the Sleep Drops again.
They make my body relax, but not my mind. They also leave me with a hangover type feeling with dehydration and a heavy head.