I usually need about 7 to 8 of sleep a night. I don’t always get it cause I work a swing shift so sometimes I get off from work at 11p.m. and have to be back to work at 9a.m. I’m usually wound up after work and it takes me a while to calm down and get to sleep.
After working several days in a row with crazy hours I tend to need extra sleep on my first day off. I have a hard time sleeping also when I know I have to get up early. I think I worry about the alarm not going off or oversleeping and being late so I sleep really light and wake up all hours of the night.
When I was little I couldn’t go to sleep without the radio on. I got out of this habit for a while when my children were babies but now that I are older I’ve taken to leaving the TV on. I usually can’t go to sleep without it on but I have to have the volume turned down low where it fades in to a sort of background type of noise. If it is too loud when I’m trying to sleep then it will disturb me.
Sometimes however there will be something that I really want to watch and I will sit down to watch it and fall asleep especially if it is late in the evening and I’m really tired. It seems to more I want to watch something to more likely I am to fall asleep. Isn’t that weird?
I also find if I absolutely can’t sleep sometimes eating something sweet and drinking a cup of milk will somehow help me to sleep. I think it is brought on by hypoglycemic symptoms actually and after I eat the sweets it makes me sleepy instead of giving me a sugar rush.
I have trouble sleeping some times when I get a lot of things on my mind. Like the bills and issues with my kids and my ex husband and things like that. Well another reason the TV helps it kind of drowns out all chatter in my brain that is keeping me awake.
My husband and I refer to that chatter as hampsters because of a song we heard called death to hampsters which was about that very subject.
I usually sleep around six hours. This is more sleep than I got when I was a young woman. In those days I only slept about four hours a night. I think it was because I was always so wired on coffee and cigarettes and now that I am an old woman and don’t smoke and only drink coffee in the morning so I am more relaxed when it comes time to sleep.
I have a medication that I take once a week and I find that the day after I take it, I want to sleep longer and I will sometimes add a full extra hour to my sleep pattern. I have always said that the reason I do not sleep a lot is because I am so afraid I am going to miss out on things!
I am a night owl and stay up until two or three in the morning and get up later in the day. This works because for many years I worked from my home and could set my own hours. I don’t usually have any trouble falling asleep but if I do I will sometimes take one or two Tylenol and that will put me to sleep in about a half an hour.
I will also “entertain” myself by thinking of songs that have certain words in them. I’ll pick a word (like shoe) and then try to think of lyrics containing the word. This passes the time and while I am still thinking away, I have a fallen asleep.
I am a very light sleeper and I do like it quiet before I fall asleep. I don’t like the radio on or the television and if my husband is snoring in my ear, I nudge him until he turns over! Once asleep, repeated noises will wake me up and I am always the one to hear the telephone.
I think the amount of sleep I get is probably just enough. Sometimes I might wish it was more but then I decide that six hours is a respectable night’s rest and maybe when I am a little older I will be able to sleep longer.
Sometimes I think that we overload our brains with too many things going on at once and that is why some of us have a hard time falling asleep. We were not made to have so many electronic gadgets on at all times making sleep a try luxury instead of the healing process it is.
We all need a little time away from all the noise and confusion of today’s world and we should make our sleeping time the part of our lives where we ‘regroup’ and energize our minds and bodies through relaxation.
I actually love sleeping and have very vivid dreams, which I seem to remember in great detail. I have read that sleeping and dreaming is the mind’s way to help solve the problems in your daily life but if this is really true, I must have some very strange problems!
I live in California and work New York hours so I get up rather early, 4 am. After work I always take at least a 2 hour nap. I go to bed rather late 11 or so so. I would say I need at least 6 hours of sleep within a 24 hour period to function.
At times my nap turns into a 6 hour nap so I will just stay up all night and go to work. Working East Coast hours. For 12 years my sleep schedule is all messed up. I can’t sleep with the TV on at night but I can during my nap.
I don’t wake up at all during my naps or night sleep. NEVER! I hear how some people do. I have been known to sleep talk or walk when I am super stressed. It is always talking about work too. Like Market tickets and such. Obviously it is always stress that makes me do this.
Sometimes I will wake up from my nap and look at the clock and when it reads 6 or 7 I freak out thinking I have slept in and now I am late for work only to find that its 6 pm or 7 pm not AM. That happens at least once a week.
Once I even started to go and wake my son up to get ready for school only to realize he was downstairs watching TV because it was evening not morning. I always think about putting a note on the clock that it is PM but I am usually too tired to do that.
I truly love my sleep and need but just haven’t found a good schedule yet and by the time I get off work my brain is fried so I NEED that nap.
A.I. from Boston
I like to sleep as much as possible. I go to bed late and I sleep late. When I don’t get to sleep late, I am very tired, and am susceptible to falling asleep randomly whenever I am bored. This can happen when I am in class, on the train, talking on the phone, or reading.
When I fall asleep, it is detrimental to my studies because I not only miss out on the lessons I need to be paying attention to, but the professors and my classmates think I am lazy and don’t care. The situation is quite the opposite.
I generally stay up late because I am preparing my work for school and I take the time I need for the end result to be as close to perfect as possible. I need to sleep for at least 7 hours to feel well rested. If I get less or more sleep than 7 hours, I feel very sleepy.
It isn’t ever hard for me to go to sleep because I am always tired. I do have a hard time staying awake when I am tired. Tricks like coffee, chewing gum, doodling, and daydreaming work to help me try to stay awake, but they generally loose their effectiveness over time.
Sometimes I like to play the radio or TV in the background when I am feeling restless. It is also very hard for me to wake up in the morning. One time, my dad put a live lobster in my bed to try to wake me up. He had received a gift of 4 live lobsters that were shipped to my house in a pot ready to be cooked. He put the lobster in my bed and started shouting until I gained some consciousness. Soon after I realized the lobster in my bed wasn’t a toy, I hopped out of bed. That was the quickest I have ever waked up.
A.R. from Houston
I usually get about seven to nine hours of sleep a night. I am typically a night person so I do not usually go to sleep until around two or three in the morning. I will get up anywhere from 9am to 11am. I stay up reading or working on the computer. Sometimes if I’m reading a really good book I won’t go to sleep until five a. m. In that case I’ll sleep until 11am or noon.
There are several things that cause me to need more sleep. If we have been watching our grand children for several days in a row (even if they don’t spend the night), when I get a few days without them I will sleep more. Chasing them around is exhausting. When they do spend the night, I really will need more sleep when they go home because my grandson does not sleep through the night yet. I have to get up with him several times a night.
The other thing that requires me to get more sleep at times is a reoccurring virus that I get. It flares up once every few months. When that happens I usually will sleep for 12 to 14 hours for three or four days in a row. After the virus goes away, I usually only sleep for about 5 or 6 hours a night for several days.
I don’t usually have difficulty falling asleep but I do have a hard time staying asleep. I get night sweats. I have to have the room at least 70 degrees and have a fan blowing on me or else I will have a very restless sleep. I sleep better during the winter when I can have my window open and I’m covered with a nice thick blanket. My bed is right under the window. That is when I sleep the deepest and feel the most rested.
Sleep is the one thing I crave the most and get the least of on a daily basis. I work a normal 9-5 day, but my social life is very active and on most nights I get home between the hours of ten and eleven. It’s at this time that I get some chores done around the house, work on my own projects, or just relax with my husband.
On a normal night I get 6-7 hours of sleep, if I am lucky. On most weekends I sleep in, but I never seem to reach that “caught up feeling.” I actually feel more tired after I sleep more which limits my activity on those days. I opt to wake up at my normal time so I actually feel more energized instead of being completely lazy.
On holidays where I have an extra day to recuperate, I generally sleep in more and don’t feel the need to be productive. I know I have an extra day to recover. Most nights I need the television to fall asleep. It relaxes me and forces me to lie still. My minds races constantly so the TV helps ease those stresses I create for myself.
I always need a house fan on to fall asleep, I get warm during the night and if I don’t have something blowing on me I am restless all night long. My husband has a very warm body and the bed is always so hot I definitely need some assistance in keeping cool.
I love being cold at night, but I hate being cold during the day. He laughs at me for my temperature variances. I rarely have difficulty falling asleep, I am pretty exhausted on most days and I fall asleep pretty much after I lie down. No need for sleeping pills or warm milk here!
I always have trouble going to sleep after I eat ice cream so I tend to avoid it in the evenings. I am lactose intolerant and most milk products don’t affect me in the evening like ice cream does. Cheeses and yogurt have no ill effects. Ice cream on the other hand keeps my stomach active which makes me roll around while I am in bed.
