I've struggled mightily with sleep for many years. Perimenopause has made it worse (and Perimenopause begins earlier than many of us expect). I'd definitely recommend a sleep mask. I like Lunya. Middle of the night wakings are pretty routine for me, and I find the best hacks for falling back to sleep with ease are reading on a Kindle (with a backlight so you don't need to turn on a light) or listening to a long, soothing audiobook (set a sleep timer for longer than you need so you're not worried about having the audio stop before you fall asleep). If it persists, and it did for me, I'd recommend a book called The Women's Guide to Overcoming Insomnia by Shelby Harris as a do-it-yourself guide to CBT-I. Good luck!
This is not always the most practical thing to enact, but I have discovered that I sleep much better if I eat dinner really early--like finishing dinner a good four hours before I plan to be asleep. And when this fails and I find myself awake in the middle of the night, I listen to audio books of novels I know really well (a Dickens novel where I've seen the miniseries many times works well) at .75 speed.
My wife & I have been sleeping to audiobooks for years. I also use a sleep mask, since variations in lighting can keep me awake or wake me if I'm sleeping too lightly. My wife has tinnitis, so some form of white noise helps; and we both often need help focusing our minds to stop the chattering brain & fall asleep.
For us they do have to be familiar, and pleasant (so you don't wake up to something disturbing), and not feature musical bits or shouting/raised voices that might wake you up. They also need to be long enough to last until or shortly before we have to get up; if they stop, it wakes me up! And of course the reader has to be easy on the ears.
My wife says no non-fiction, because it's too interesting. And no Austen, because the language is too interesting! We sleep to a lot of Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, some Neil Gaiman (he has a marvelous reading voice!), Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, cozy mysteries, and high quality children's books like The True Meaning of Smek Day.
oh ladies, ladies, ladies! i am here to commiserate about struggling with sleep in your 40s. i have been thinking i wake up because of a need to pee, but perhaps i am just waking up, and then addressing my bladder. either way...ugh. it happens at the same time, regardless of fluid intake, so it's like my brain is waking me up about 3.5 hours before i actually need to be awake.
i appreciate the ideas in the comments. i have a silk sleep mask but only occasionally wear it...
may we all get some proper rest or at least set up a sleep support group! :)
Hi, Anna. I struggled with insomnia for years, both having trouble falling asleep, and also waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep. I went years functioning on sometimes as little as 3-4 hours of sleep a night for weeks or months on end - it was AWFUL. I tried so many different things, including medication, cognitive behavioral therapy, an overnight sleep study in a lab, and many other things. Eventually with the help of a sleep doctor and a therapist, I found a "sleep protocol" that works most of the time. This includes: 1) get off of devices at least an hour before bed; 2) no alcohol in the evening; 3) have a consistent bedtime, even on the weekends; 4) read for 10-20 min (a book, not on a device); 5) full-spectrum CBD (I recommend Onyx & Rose, which is lab tested and high quality. Make sure it's full spectrum and not broad spectrum - this makes a huge difference); 6) meditate for 10-15 min after reading (I recommend the Ten Percent Happier app, which has great sleep meditations); 7) a fan or sound machine to drown out any noises, and 8) a cold bedroom. I know this all sounds like a lot, but this is the system that I find consistently works. My doctor and therapist also tried to convince me to kick the cat out of the room, but that was a step I couldn't bring myself to take, so she sometimes would also be a factor in my bad sleep. Now I'm also in perimenopause, so I still sometime get disturbed by night sweats and annoying things like that, but in general I am finding that I'm now getting much more consistent and deeper sleep. I hope this help! Good luck!
I also listen to podcasts in the middle of the night when I can't sleep, I just listen to *different* podcasts. For me it needs to be something just interesting enough to distract my spinning brain but not so interesting that it keeps me awake. I often find television recap podcasts of old favorite shows to be the perfect combination - familiar, comforting, easy to drift off to. (but podcasting isn't my business, so maybe when it's your job, any podcast triggers work thoughts) I also sometimes just say to myself "This is also rest" because even if I'm not asleep, lying quietly in bed is also restful (or at least so I tell myself!) and sometimes that helps break the anxiety cycle of feeling like I have to hurry up and fall asleep!
Perfect timing on the Carvell Wallace interview. I listened to your interview with him yesterday, and then his interview in The Oldster came out today:
I am a super light sleeper and during perimenopause in a house with three kids, one dog, too many cats, and a husband who gets up to work out at 5am I was losing my mind. It may have been a 5 years ago (possibly longer) that I found the Hibermate, a sleep mask with ear muffs made by a person in Australia who works the night shift. It did change my life. Good luck! https://www.hibermate.com/products/new-hibermate-sleep-mask-with-earmuffs-velcro-version
I used to struggle to fall asleep and stay asleep. I committed to better sleep hygiene one day out of desperation. Biggest obstacle: my phone. I put a setting on it to dim the brightness everyday at 10pm (I go to sleep at around 11pm). Next, I made a rule that I am not allowed to touch my phone once inside my bedroom. I even set my alarm before I enter. It is very important to stuck to this rule. The next obstacle is the bedroom lighting. Layered black out curtains are so helpful to get the room dark. Try to only use warm light bulbs in the ceiling fixture and bedside lamps. The final issue for me was my dog licking himself or walking around on our hardwood floors. I got a noise maker that has brown (?) noise- fan noises and such. It isn't louder than my dog but it distracts me and helps me zone out. All these things together vastly improved my sleep. It took a few months but it was really worth it. I have no trouble falling asleep now. I don't even need the noise maker anymore. I hope some our collective comments help you somehow. Lack of sleep is hell on earth.
My best advice on waking in the night is not to stress out about it. I just accept I am awake. I do some breathing exercises first to see if just calming my breathing gets me back to sleep. It almost never does. My next reaction is to listen to a book--a book I already know, with a timer set for 20 or 30 minutes. This disrupts anything I'm perseverating about. If that doesn't work, I get up and do a few lying yoga poses on the floor. It seems to help my body want to go back to sleep. If none of that works, I accept that I am awake and write or read with a light on until I feel sleepy again.
I also just added compression socks, I seem to like the Wellow ones. Needing to get up to me more than once in a night dooms me, and the socks seem to prevent the edema that brings that on. I had no idea this was a thing!
From the Land of the Midnight Sun, my Swedish friends swear by room-darkening window coverings AND sleep masks! If you must have nightlights to navigate your space for overnight bathroom trips & kid awakenings, make sure those have red bulbs.
Check your caffeine intake during the day. It can wash back over you in the middle of the night. As for audio...try a podcast or book that you've heard before so it won't pique your interest and set the timer for 15 or 30 minutes. Also, exercise during the day can help.
i've had trouble falling asleep before, but i have yet to have trouble falling asleep once i've woken up during the night. my general tips for sleeping better are, sleep cooler, eat multiple hours before you fall asleep (like 4 hours or more, and no snacking ), do "relaxing tasks" early, no screens an hour before bed (good luck with this one), i like to write in a journal to get my thoughts out for the day, and if i'm not falling asleep quickly i as a last resort have one of the many meditation apps, and put on a sleep meditation and follow the steps. usually by the time that finishes i'm out like a light.
i know that's a lot of steps...and whenever i would see posts about this before and see all of these things people do i'd be freaked out by them. i started with sleep meditations, and have been working my way through other steps as they have just helped me round out my "sleep routine". i'd either reccomend a sleep mask with bluetooth headphones inside, or a speaker.
I started struggling with my sleep last year after a bout of Covid and the biggest thing that helped me was dramatically reducing my caffeine intake. I went from 300-350mg/day to maxing out at 200, and usually more like 150mg/day (2 espresso shots). I was waking up in the middle of the night or very early and having a hard time going back to sleep, almost every night. I had always stopped drinking it before noon, but something about the serving size and the half-life wasn’t working for my middle aged body anymore. I also find that a good magnesium supplement makes a big difference!
My Kindle is my anti-anxiety medicine. I always have a book I'm enjoying reading to put me to sleep. And if I wake up and can't get back to sleep, a slightly interesting nonfiction book to send me back. The latest one was a book about otters.
I also recommend sleep masks. They really help resist the temptation to do the "5 more minutes" dance with your phone. The only down side is the weird sleep lines the mask leaves on my face in the morning.
I've struggled mightily with sleep for many years. Perimenopause has made it worse (and Perimenopause begins earlier than many of us expect). I'd definitely recommend a sleep mask. I like Lunya. Middle of the night wakings are pretty routine for me, and I find the best hacks for falling back to sleep with ease are reading on a Kindle (with a backlight so you don't need to turn on a light) or listening to a long, soothing audiobook (set a sleep timer for longer than you need so you're not worried about having the audio stop before you fall asleep). If it persists, and it did for me, I'd recommend a book called The Women's Guide to Overcoming Insomnia by Shelby Harris as a do-it-yourself guide to CBT-I. Good luck!
This is not always the most practical thing to enact, but I have discovered that I sleep much better if I eat dinner really early--like finishing dinner a good four hours before I plan to be asleep. And when this fails and I find myself awake in the middle of the night, I listen to audio books of novels I know really well (a Dickens novel where I've seen the miniseries many times works well) at .75 speed.
Best of luck to you, getting the sleep you need!
My wife & I have been sleeping to audiobooks for years. I also use a sleep mask, since variations in lighting can keep me awake or wake me if I'm sleeping too lightly. My wife has tinnitis, so some form of white noise helps; and we both often need help focusing our minds to stop the chattering brain & fall asleep.
For us they do have to be familiar, and pleasant (so you don't wake up to something disturbing), and not feature musical bits or shouting/raised voices that might wake you up. They also need to be long enough to last until or shortly before we have to get up; if they stop, it wakes me up! And of course the reader has to be easy on the ears.
My wife says no non-fiction, because it's too interesting. And no Austen, because the language is too interesting! We sleep to a lot of Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, some Neil Gaiman (he has a marvelous reading voice!), Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, cozy mysteries, and high quality children's books like The True Meaning of Smek Day.
oh ladies, ladies, ladies! i am here to commiserate about struggling with sleep in your 40s. i have been thinking i wake up because of a need to pee, but perhaps i am just waking up, and then addressing my bladder. either way...ugh. it happens at the same time, regardless of fluid intake, so it's like my brain is waking me up about 3.5 hours before i actually need to be awake.
i appreciate the ideas in the comments. i have a silk sleep mask but only occasionally wear it...
may we all get some proper rest or at least set up a sleep support group! :)
Hi, Anna. I struggled with insomnia for years, both having trouble falling asleep, and also waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep. I went years functioning on sometimes as little as 3-4 hours of sleep a night for weeks or months on end - it was AWFUL. I tried so many different things, including medication, cognitive behavioral therapy, an overnight sleep study in a lab, and many other things. Eventually with the help of a sleep doctor and a therapist, I found a "sleep protocol" that works most of the time. This includes: 1) get off of devices at least an hour before bed; 2) no alcohol in the evening; 3) have a consistent bedtime, even on the weekends; 4) read for 10-20 min (a book, not on a device); 5) full-spectrum CBD (I recommend Onyx & Rose, which is lab tested and high quality. Make sure it's full spectrum and not broad spectrum - this makes a huge difference); 6) meditate for 10-15 min after reading (I recommend the Ten Percent Happier app, which has great sleep meditations); 7) a fan or sound machine to drown out any noises, and 8) a cold bedroom. I know this all sounds like a lot, but this is the system that I find consistently works. My doctor and therapist also tried to convince me to kick the cat out of the room, but that was a step I couldn't bring myself to take, so she sometimes would also be a factor in my bad sleep. Now I'm also in perimenopause, so I still sometime get disturbed by night sweats and annoying things like that, but in general I am finding that I'm now getting much more consistent and deeper sleep. I hope this help! Good luck!
I also listen to podcasts in the middle of the night when I can't sleep, I just listen to *different* podcasts. For me it needs to be something just interesting enough to distract my spinning brain but not so interesting that it keeps me awake. I often find television recap podcasts of old favorite shows to be the perfect combination - familiar, comforting, easy to drift off to. (but podcasting isn't my business, so maybe when it's your job, any podcast triggers work thoughts) I also sometimes just say to myself "This is also rest" because even if I'm not asleep, lying quietly in bed is also restful (or at least so I tell myself!) and sometimes that helps break the anxiety cycle of feeling like I have to hurry up and fall asleep!
Perfect timing on the Carvell Wallace interview. I listened to your interview with him yesterday, and then his interview in The Oldster came out today:
https://oldster.substack.com/p/this-is-pushing-50-author-carvell
I am a super light sleeper and during perimenopause in a house with three kids, one dog, too many cats, and a husband who gets up to work out at 5am I was losing my mind. It may have been a 5 years ago (possibly longer) that I found the Hibermate, a sleep mask with ear muffs made by a person in Australia who works the night shift. It did change my life. Good luck! https://www.hibermate.com/products/new-hibermate-sleep-mask-with-earmuffs-velcro-version
I used to struggle to fall asleep and stay asleep. I committed to better sleep hygiene one day out of desperation. Biggest obstacle: my phone. I put a setting on it to dim the brightness everyday at 10pm (I go to sleep at around 11pm). Next, I made a rule that I am not allowed to touch my phone once inside my bedroom. I even set my alarm before I enter. It is very important to stuck to this rule. The next obstacle is the bedroom lighting. Layered black out curtains are so helpful to get the room dark. Try to only use warm light bulbs in the ceiling fixture and bedside lamps. The final issue for me was my dog licking himself or walking around on our hardwood floors. I got a noise maker that has brown (?) noise- fan noises and such. It isn't louder than my dog but it distracts me and helps me zone out. All these things together vastly improved my sleep. It took a few months but it was really worth it. I have no trouble falling asleep now. I don't even need the noise maker anymore. I hope some our collective comments help you somehow. Lack of sleep is hell on earth.
My best advice on waking in the night is not to stress out about it. I just accept I am awake. I do some breathing exercises first to see if just calming my breathing gets me back to sleep. It almost never does. My next reaction is to listen to a book--a book I already know, with a timer set for 20 or 30 minutes. This disrupts anything I'm perseverating about. If that doesn't work, I get up and do a few lying yoga poses on the floor. It seems to help my body want to go back to sleep. If none of that works, I accept that I am awake and write or read with a light on until I feel sleepy again.
I also just added compression socks, I seem to like the Wellow ones. Needing to get up to me more than once in a night dooms me, and the socks seem to prevent the edema that brings that on. I had no idea this was a thing!
From the Land of the Midnight Sun, my Swedish friends swear by room-darkening window coverings AND sleep masks! If you must have nightlights to navigate your space for overnight bathroom trips & kid awakenings, make sure those have red bulbs.
Check your caffeine intake during the day. It can wash back over you in the middle of the night. As for audio...try a podcast or book that you've heard before so it won't pique your interest and set the timer for 15 or 30 minutes. Also, exercise during the day can help.
i've had trouble falling asleep before, but i have yet to have trouble falling asleep once i've woken up during the night. my general tips for sleeping better are, sleep cooler, eat multiple hours before you fall asleep (like 4 hours or more, and no snacking ), do "relaxing tasks" early, no screens an hour before bed (good luck with this one), i like to write in a journal to get my thoughts out for the day, and if i'm not falling asleep quickly i as a last resort have one of the many meditation apps, and put on a sleep meditation and follow the steps. usually by the time that finishes i'm out like a light.
i know that's a lot of steps...and whenever i would see posts about this before and see all of these things people do i'd be freaked out by them. i started with sleep meditations, and have been working my way through other steps as they have just helped me round out my "sleep routine". i'd either reccomend a sleep mask with bluetooth headphones inside, or a speaker.
I started struggling with my sleep last year after a bout of Covid and the biggest thing that helped me was dramatically reducing my caffeine intake. I went from 300-350mg/day to maxing out at 200, and usually more like 150mg/day (2 espresso shots). I was waking up in the middle of the night or very early and having a hard time going back to sleep, almost every night. I had always stopped drinking it before noon, but something about the serving size and the half-life wasn’t working for my middle aged body anymore. I also find that a good magnesium supplement makes a big difference!
My Kindle is my anti-anxiety medicine. I always have a book I'm enjoying reading to put me to sleep. And if I wake up and can't get back to sleep, a slightly interesting nonfiction book to send me back. The latest one was a book about otters.
I also recommend sleep masks. They really help resist the temptation to do the "5 more minutes" dance with your phone. The only down side is the weird sleep lines the mask leaves on my face in the morning.