Insomnia, again.
Nearly every night, I'm up at some wee hour. I jolt awake at 1:24, or 3:30, or 4:26. I test my blood sugar (last test was 54), treat a reaction if I have to, often get up to use the bathroom, and then I'm awake for a good two hours or more.
I could chalk this up to pregnancy, but it's happened on and off for years. I could consider high blood sugars the culprit, but in my pre- and pregnant state I've woken up with totally in-range numbers. Could it be low blood sugar jolting me awake, then keeping me awake long after I've gobbled six LifeSavers by my bedside? Maybe.
I read something today about anxiety and insomnia, but honestly, I don't think I'm more anxious than usual. Plus, it's not like I can start taking Paxil with the kid within.
So I wake up and go online, surf, blog, and read.
A nurse awhile back said it was good practice for upcoming night feedings.
Will I look back on these insomniac nights with jealousy, as I wake to feed a kid in the wee hours, wishing I could just succumb to my sleep-heavy lids? Or will it be a lot like it is now, with dark shadows illuminated by a glowing computer screen, near-total stillness and quiet, and the occasional muffle as Mr. L. realizes I'm not in bed and, half-asleep, asks me to return, after I've finally soothed the baby back to dreamland?
In the meantime, since it's just me and the keyboard right now, anyone have any advice on how I can get back to sleep?
14 comments:
Nope, but if you get some good advice, let me know?
My insomnia was really bad when my thyroid was horribly out of whack, got a lot better when I was in control, now in the past month or so, back to insomnia. sigh.
That's pretty much my life all the time. I come from a long line of insomniacs.
My Dr reccommended that I look into sleep hygiene (which sounds weird, but has some sound advice). Just google it. Basically, bed is for sleep and sex, no TV, no reading, nothing else. Also if you don't fall asleep within 20 minutes, get up and do something boring until your tired again, then try to fall asleep again.
Honestly though, preg basically brings on the insomnia in just about everyone. Totally normal. I became a walking TVGuide of Nick at Nite while pg and during those early weeks.
I used to wake up almost every night at least once. Usually it was just a quick blood sugar test, sometimes a trip to the bathroom, and I almost always went right back to sleep. I kinda just got used to it.
When I would sleep through the night without waking, it was comment-worthy in the morning.
Lately, I've started exercising on a regular basis (3+ times / week) and I've found that this has made the number of times I wake up in the middle of the night decrease significantly. I'd say I'm at about 50/50 now.
Exercising helps with sleep (and a lot of other good things too).
sex works for my husband
Hi all. Thanks for all your advice!
R--my thyroid is actually monitored more closely with the pregnancy than ever before. So I don't think that's it.
S--yeah, I've read about the sleep hygeine stuff. Problem is, I have no problem falling asleep at 9:30 or 10:30. It's the wide awake in the middle of the night part that I'm dealing with.
K--yeah, I should make more of an effort to exercise more. When do you work out? In the evening?
And H--yeah, been there, done that. Problem is, Mr. L is always fast asleep in the middle of the night when I'm wide awake. And honestly, taking care of things myself doesn't seem to work, sleepwise. It passes the time in a good way, though!
I don't know if you can do this when you're pregnant, but when I had a period of insomnia (that is, not being able to fall asleep for 2-3 hours after climbing into bed), I started taking Melatonin, which is all-natural and you can find in the Vitamin and Other Weirdly Named Drugs aisle. Perfectly fine when you're not pregnant (like me) and I still woke up when I was low or high, but the rest of the time, I would fall asleep after about twenty minutes and stay asleep all night long. You might want to talk to your doctor about that and see if it will affect anything.
My shrink keeps telling me that insomnia is a "learned behavior". Mine got so bad in the last decade that I had to start taking the bus to work - if I drove, I'd fall asleep at the stoplight and take my foot off the brake. They are always pushing meds at me, and everytime I see that damn Lunesta butterfly I want to stab him with a specimen pin and start a collection.
I would also wake up around 2 in the morning when I was pregnant and lie there, worrying. I got some homeopathic drops that I would take at 2am and some herbal pills to calm anxiety that I took before going to bed. It did help. Deep breathing sometimes helped but the homeopathic remedies were must more effective.
It could be practice for night feedings and the body getting prepared. A friend who had trouble sleeping during pregnancy was told it was due to low iron levels so perhaps test those?
I'm suffering with insomnia myself. I decided to pass the time writing. It helps.
The two things that work for my insomnia is warm milk and/or guided relaxation imagery on my IPOD.
Other than that I'm usually out of luck.
I had major insomnia during all of my pregnancies and got MAYBE 2 or 3 solid hours of sleep per night. The funny thing is that it didn't affect me during the day....
I don't have advice for solving the problem...it was just something I lived with.
I drink one cup of chamamile tea before bed and it helps me sleep through the night. I wonder if that is okay during pregnancy.
I'm back to blogland and I know I'm so late in this but CONGRATULATIONS!!!! I was really rooting for you and this was the first blog I had to catch up on - hoping to see such great news.
sorry that had nothing to do with insomnia ;-)
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