I'm sorry if it seems like I've been doing a lot of complaining lately. I promise more positive posts soon! Unfortunately, there just hasn't been much of anything else going on around here lately. Recently, I've been plagued with a lot of sleepless nights. I don't know if it because I'm so itchy from the drug allergy, still adjusting to staying up for the the IV treatments, stressed, or just been through a lot. Most likely, it's a combination of all these things. Regardless, it has been quite frustrating. Here's what my nights have been like...
9:30 PM
Hubby and I usually head to bed around 9 or 9:30. We might stay up to chat for a while or I might read while he plays around on the iPad, but for the most part, we're turned in for the evening by this point.
10:30 PM
It's lights out for us no later than 10:30 and hubby usually falls asleep right away. He amazes me that way - haha. At this point, I'm laying in bed, ready for sleep, with my eyes close, but it will be hours that I will be laying here awake.
2:00-3:00 AM
I've been finally falling asleep for the first time of the night around 2 or 3, but it isn't for too long. I'm usually awake again every half hour or every hour, if I'm lucky. Every time I wake up, I feel like hours have passed, but when I glance over at the time, sometimes, it's been as little at 15 minutes. Crazy.
5:00 AM
I'm always awake when Hubby's alarm goes of in the morning. Although he knows that I'm wide awake, he patters around the house as quietly as possible and does his best not to cast any disturbing light my way. He's so sweet like that. And he always kisses me lightly on the forehead and whispers goodbye before he heads off to work.
5:30-6:30 AM
Perhaps his morning kiss does the trick, or maybe it's because the bedroom is getting lighter as the sun is rising outside, or it might just be the stillness of an empty house, but I'm usually able to fall asleep at some point after hubby leaves. This is quite an amazing feat because it's also about the same time that my heavy-footed upstairs neighbor puts on her work boots and rearranges her furniture upstairs. Haha. I really have no clue what she is doing, but there's always a lot of loud stomping and banging around early in the morning, and I somehow manage to fall asleep despite it.
8:30-9:30 AM
Amazingly, I'm able to sleep for a couple solid hours in the morning. Thank goodness I'm still on summer break and I'm able to sleep in. I'm usually awake by 8:30 or 9:30, which makes it about 12 hours total that I've been laying in my bed.
Surprisingly, I don't feel too tired during the day. Although, I sometimes feel nauseous at points during the day, which hubby attributes to lack of sleep. I do sometimes manage a small nap during the day and have grown accustomed to keeping my phone on silent. At this point, I don't want any disturbances if I manage to get any sleep. Hubby seems to feel the same and has even mentioned that if I manage to fall asleep, he fully intends to change our plans for the sake of my sleep.
I use an app on my phone to track my sleep (Sleep Cycle). It's meant to track your sleep cycle (hence the name) to wake you at your optimal sleep state (when you are at your lightest sleep cycle). It works by using the iPhone's accelerometer to sense movement as you sleep. I don't use the alarm feature much, but I do turn it on almost every night to track my sleep habits.
Last night I slept for a total of about 4 and a half hours. I like being able to get an idea of how much (or in this case, how little) I'm sleeping. Of course it isn't 100% percent accurate - sometimes, it seems to be picking up the deep breathing from the pup or hubs and thinking that it is me sleeping. (It probably works really well if you sleep alone in a bed). But aside from that, it seems to do a pretty good job. I also like the graphs and the data that it gathers, although I'm really not sure how it calculates your sleep quality percentage. I'm kind of stumped on that because there are nights that I think I didn't sleep well and it still gives me a 93%.
I haven't tried any other apps to track my sleep, other than using my Fitbit, so I don't have much to compare with. The Sleep Cycle app seems to work better than the Fitbit, in my opinion. Because the Fitbit tracks movement, as long as you're staying still, it thinks you are sleeping. On the flip side, the Fitbit is pretty good at tracking restless sleep patterns, since it can tell when you are moving around in your sleep. The app does cost money (I got it when it was a freebie) and I don't know that I would actually pay money for it (just because I'm cheap). However, I have read a few reviews that rave about this app as an excellent alarm clock.
What do you think? Know any good sleep apps to share? Have some awesome sleep tips?
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