Last Updated on September 13, 2015 by melissanreynolds
This would be the first time in well over a decade.
It would appear that I have stepped into an experiment on how I cope with less sleep! For the last week I have really struggled to get eight hours of sleep, broken or blocked.
It’s been a mixture of internal and external factors. The baby has decided he gets up at 6am, despite being exhausted and fussy all morning. It’s been taking me a while to get to sleep and I’ve begun to struggle to get back to sleep if I am woken after 4am (bathroom, husband, neck etc.)
After I tried the chamomile and then the Sleep Drops (I’m waiting for the opportunity to use this for a nap to decide how useful it may be to me going forward), I started taking my amytriptoline half an hour later, at 8pm. I also started taking my magnesium supplement in the evening.
The combination of these things seemed to reset my body a little bit. I started to experience blocks of sleep. For about a week I had up to five hour blocks of sleep – no restless or awake lines on the Fitbit sleep chart! Previously my chart looked like I never had blocks of sleep, there were so many restless and awake lines it looked like they crowded out the sleep almost completely.
Unfortunately, it didn’t last. My neck is in a flare up due to my new job, dealing with a busy toddler and my husband on long, alternating shifts.
For the last three days I’ve had less than eight hours of sleep. A lot more restless and awake times because of my neck and then woken at 6 by the baby. Usually when I’ve had a bad night from 6-7am has been where I catch up.
So I have a few learnings to report so far:
- Magnesium taken in the evening seems to help with relaxation.
- Taking the amytriptoline slightly later may help.
- The 6-7am slot is usually where I catch up on much needed sleep.
- I need to get my neck under control.
Have you tried relaxing yoga, theraputic massage for your neck or binaural beats? My fibro interferes with my sleep a lot too. I have a specific neck injury from a car accident (I cracked my C7 and subsequently have arthritis in my neck) I do neck stretching yoga and binaural beats for sleep and it helps most of the time. I got a gift certificate for a theraputic massage for my birthday and she worked on my neck. I was afraid it would hurt, people touching me sometimes hurts, but it felt awesome! I slept so well for about 2 weeks after that massage. A little too expensive for me to do very often but I would love to do it twice a month.
Hi Michelle, thanks for your ideas. I do yoga and some restorative poses in the evening when my back is bad. I tend to have to do self trigger-point therapy in order to get neck to let me stay lying down and I have to swap pillows once or twice. I see a Physio every three weeks (expensive) but the only thing that keeps me going is the neck tractions plus acupuncture needles in two neck points, one spinal point and two upper shoulder points. I love massage but find it can’t make those trigger points let go and the effects don’t hold. I haven’t heard of binaural beats, love to know more?