Beauty Sleep vs Ugly Sleep

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

What are the things that make or break your rest period? What do you do or have to do in order to fall asleep? What little things guarantee that you won’t get your rest? For me, it’s pretty straightforward.

To fall asleep:[ul][li]Nothing helps more than having a woman by my side[/li][li]It’s gotta be dark unless I’m totally exhausted[/li][li]It takes two pillows for me, and sometimes three[/li][li]I have to lie on my side, being prone or supine doesn’t work[/li][li]Even if it’s hot I usually require at least a sheet covering me[/li][li]If my feet are cold it makes it difficult to drift off[/li][li]I must have my mouth open to breathe[/li][li]When it is really hard to fall asleep I put a pillow over my head[/ul][/li]What keeps me awake:[ul][li]A ticking clock (hooray for digital clocks!)[/li][li]A dripping faucet or running toilet[/li][li]A moronic neighbor’s dog barking endlessly[/li][li]Someone snoring (including myself)[/li][li]Having a fold of the blankets under my body[/li][li]If the back of my neck and shoulders are uncovered[/li][li]Developing dry mouth in the middle of the night[/li][li]Re-acclimating to not having a girlfriend in bed with me[/li][li]Having my toes draped over the end of the bed[/ul][/li]
The oddball factors:[ul][li]I have learned to never have an arm extended over the edge of the bed. Doing so hyper-extends the limb after an hour and makes for a very sore body. This can also happen if your limb is placed on a pile of the covers.[/li]
[li]If I manage to drool on my pillow while I sleep, the cold spot will actually wake me up until I turn it over.[/li]
[li]My latest discovery is to keep a sport bottle on the floor next to the bed for when I am thirsty. If it gets tipped over by the mutt it will not spill.[/li]
[li]Turning on any sort of light totally destroys my ability to return to sleep. The same goes for having to engage in any complicated activity like getting up for a drink of water. (see above)[/li]
[li]Recently, I have also noticed that if I open only one eye to look at the clock it is much easier to get back to sleep. I suppose that reduced stimulation to the brain assists in a quicker return to slumber.[/li]
[li]If needed, I will put a pillow over my head in order to muffle the outside world. I have to leave an air gap to breathe, but sometimes this is the only thing that allows me to drift off.[/li]
[li]When I know that rest is essential and I am having trouble drifting off, I will artificially induce sleep by simulating all of the requisite modes of posture and respiration. Blanking the mind, deep breathing and releasing tension in my limbs all help to engage the sleep cycle.[/ul][/li]So, what does it for you? What idiosyncrasies do you have about sleeping and what will help or ruin your night’s rest more than anything else?

#2

Factors that put me to sleep:

[li]My husband and I have established a position that we must be in to fall asleep.[/li]We sleep spoon fashion with me behind him. (he is shorter than me, it works out)
My arm gets tucked underneath his nd threaded through on top of his hand.

[li]Blanket pulled all the way up to my ears.[/li]
[li]One of us must be wearing pajamas or we stick together.[/li]
[li]I sleep with two pillows. One regular, and one lumpy.[/li]
[li]Head needs to tilt up with mouth open.[/li]Factors against sleep:

[li]If the dogs insist on sleeping on or around me. Especially when they settle between my legs and I can’t move. They have trained me well.[/li]
[li]When my husband snores, it shocks me out of sleep. Swift elbow in his ribs stops him though.[/li]
[li]He insists on have two fans on in the room. Sometimes the noise grates on my nerves.[/li]
[li]It gets warm too easily in the room, and I wake up sweating. ugh![/li]
The hyperextended elbow happens to me also when I put my other arm straight under my husband’s pillow

#3

I absolutely cannot sleep on my stomach or on my back, it just bugs me, I have to sleep on my side, always at the very edge of the bed. Sleeping on my stomach is just uncomfortable, I can’t even lie down on my stomach for too long.
I need a pillow, usually just one, but I can’t sleep without a pillow, even just folding something like my jacket up to put under my head works.
Silence makes it harder for me to fall asleep, it makes me think and then I’m up all night, I need a TV or radio or talking or just something non-monotonous to lull me to sleep.
Waking up for any reason at all makes it really hard to get back to sleep, light kills me, once I see light my body won’t let me sleep again.
Stuffed animals are comforting, if I really can’t fall asleep I just find one of my cute cuddly aminals into bed with me, I used to always sleep with my Beanie Buddy Baby Lucifer, he was my bestest sleeping buddy, but if I had him now I’d just end up crying myself to sleep, sigh

Kitty

#4

What keeps me awake

A woman in my bed, (might be due to unusualness of such an occurrence)
Pitch Black bedroom (I must have some light)
Too many pillows (I cannot handle more than one)
Lying on anything other than my back.
No sheets (ok I go with him on this one)
Hot feet (have to keep finding the cold parts of the bed, I still miss the crack down the sides of the bed, when I lived at home and mum would use sheets and blankets instead of duvets)
Having to breathe through my mouth (a real pain as a sinusitus sufferer)
Anything touching or covering my face.

P.S. I’m jealous of his bullet point ability.

#5

Nyquil always puts me asleep…especially after I chug a whole bottle.

#6

I need…
Some kind of blanket/sheet no matter what the temperature.
Quiet area to sleep.
Big fluffy pillows-I can’t sleep with my head horizontal-never could.

But If I’m tired enough I can sleep sitting up-done it @ work more than once.

Also if I’m in a moving vehicle for more than 45 minutes(riding not piloting)I usually will doze off. Cars,buses,trains,airplanes…It’s like when you drive a baby around the block to settle it down-the motion knocks me out.

Anyone else share this affliction?

#7

I am REALLY unpicky as far as sleeping conditions go. I can slep on a hardwood floor, with now padding, perfectly comfortably… as long as i have something covering my feet. I have to have something covering my feet or they start to feel dried out. Don’t ask my why. I don’t know. Also, if it is cold, I have to have blankets. I can’t sleep if I am cold. Otherwise I can sleep in any conditions. Light, Dark, Loud, Quiet, whatever.

#8

Yep! Me, too. Fortunately I can in read in cars, trains, planes, etc. with no problem so that helps, but something about the movement, monotony whatever puts me right to sleep.

Light: usually doesn’t bother me. I have a tiny, dim nightlight that’s very comforting. My Ex used to insist on sleeping w/ the television on. I could sleep with flickering light, but rarely slept soundly.

Noise: I want it quiet. Tuning out outside sounds like traffic and such is no problem. But I can’t, CANNOT sleep with any sort of talking. Soft music is okay, barely, but television or talk radio will keep me awake all night. (I made the Ex wear earphones.) He also liked to set the clock radio to play talk shows for an hour before it would click off. He’d be slam asleep w/in 5 minutes and I’d be wide awake until the damned thing shut off. If it’s talk I can’t not listen, somehow.

Covers: I have to have a sheet covering me, even in hottest weather. Guess it’s a childhood, Bill Cosby throwback: monsters can’t touch covers.

Pillows: one, and feather, not styrofoam. I have to moosh the pillow into shape. Styrofoam don’t moosh.

Oddball quirks: I can’t stand having anything binding either my feet or my neck. I make killer hospital corners in the sheets then promptly kick them right back out again. Gotta have the sheets and quilt loose on the sides lest my feet get paranoid.

The dog: she can snuggle up, hop off to sleep on her floor pillow, etc. and it never wakes me. Once in a great while she’ll have such a bad dream–paws kicking and she’ll almost bark, yodel, growl–and that might bring me back to a drowse. A comforting pat, a hand on her back and we both conk right back out again.

Veb

#9

I can’t stand the refrigerator when a jar is rattling.
I have to get up and shift everything around until it quits.

I LOVE fans in airplanes. I can sleep in a plane the minute I turn it on.

#10

The room must be cool. I can’t sleep in a hot room.
I have to have a cover of some sort–I have a small, light quilt I sleep with during the summer.
I’m used to having my boyfriend in my bed; I have a hard time falling asleep when he’s not there.
I also need darkness and quiet–most of the time. Since I’m a late-night person; I usually sleep well into late morning, so those few hours of sunlight usually don’t bother me.

#11

I also like it cold in the room, but my feet must be warm before I get into bed. I lie on my back until just before I fall asleep, then, without really thinking about it, I curl up on my side. I sleep with a stuffed animal–it started after my boyfriend and I broke up, to get me used to not sleeping with him next to me, now it’s a habit. I’d retire Baronet Louie (the stuffed animal in question), if I had a man sleeping next to me. And Baronet deserves retirement–his nose is wearing off!! Anyway, I also like a dark room, that’s the number one thing I dislike about most hotel rooms, too much light from the hallway or window. And, except on the coldest of nights, I have to have the window open–in fact, if I’m too cold to leave it open when I go to bed, I almost always wake up in the middle of the night and have to open it. If my mind is racing a mile a minute and I can’t derail it, a little quiet music helps–you’re never too old for a lullabye. Oh, and I make my bed when I get in it at night–I leave it a mess in the mornings, but then when I climb in at night, the first thing I do is to pull up the sheet and comforter and straighten them out across my body. Dont 'know where that one came from.

#12

I greatly prefer to have a fan running for a little background noise when I’m going to sleep. It blots out little creaks and other distracting sounds.

#13

I cannot go to sleep if my feet are cold.

Oddly, the inverse of this statement is also true. If my feet are warm, I will get very drowsy. The feet don’t have to be particularly well insulated to get warm enough to send me to sleep. I can be wearing 10 denier tights and it will still happen.
I abhor a dripping tap.

I get thirsty. I keep a 2 litre bottle of water beside the bed to fill my glass for night time drinks. I can pour the water into the glass without putting the light on. If I have a new 5 litre bottle I have to wake up properly and put the light on: it’s very easy to overpour from a 5 litre bottle.

Related to the last point: I need to get up to piss in the night. I don’t bother putting the light on. There’s enough ambient light around that I can quite easily see my way to the loo.

I don’t like it hot, but I don’t like it too cold either. My partner likes the window open, but I ask him to shut it if it’s very cold outside. I can’t sleep with a frozen face.

Before my partner and I lived together, he used to sleep in the gap between his single bed and the wall. He still has some pre-sleep rituals to do with insulating the feet from the outside world while allowing them to jam up against the bottom of the bedstead. Occasionally he does pre-sleep talking: a kind of free-associative churbling. I find it endearing up to a point, but there comes a time when there must be quiet if there is to be sleep.

#14

Thanks TVeblan-I thought I was the only adult who suffered from that. I do read or do crossword puzzles but as soon as I stop…

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

I’ve tried drinking coffee before a trip and I STILL fall asleep.

#15

12 years of school have conditioned me to be able to sleep anywhere/anytime/any position and I use it well, heh. As a result I can sleep in pretty much any condition (noisy classrooms, quiet buses/libraries, a room with a radio blaring, etc.) and any position (sitting on a bus, collapsed on a desk, standing, sitting on a hardwood floor, etc.), even if I’m not tired (a few minutes of keeping my eyes closed and tuning things out and I become groggy like I haven’t slept in a week)…it’s nice to be able to do, but there are times when I just can’t sleep, no matter what. This usually happens when I REALLY need to sleep, heh…The one night of the week that I get to sleep in, I can’t sleep at all, that kind of thing. Drives me nuts.

Anyway, I’ve amazed and astounded people around me time and time again by being able to sleep sitting up in a class (without getting caught no less!). :slight_smile:

Ideal conditions though are to be in my nice comfy bed, window open so it’s cool in the room, but I’m warm under the covers, pitch black, and the radio on.

  • Tsugumo (ramble ramble ramblzzzz…)
#16

Yep. Except I start nodding off within about 10 minutes. Sometimes less.

It’s been years since I slept with someone regularly, so when I share a bed with anyone anymore, I have a hard time falling asleep. Too hot. Can’t turn over freely. The covers get stolen (like Zenster, even on the hottest nights I can’t sleep without at least a sheet). And the bed always seems so much smaller when someone else is in it. Can’t understand that; I’ve been sharing the bed with the cats for years now. Still, I do miss having someone to cuddle with. :frowning:

Getting to sleep when I’m alone is usually easy enough. Getting to bed, though . . .

#17

I can fall asleep anywhere if I’m sufficiently tired. Why, just last week at work, I was resting on the floor and I actually wondered: “Would that two by four make a good makeshift pillow?”.

Back when I was in high school I was able to almost get to sleep sitting upright (arms crossed) in a desk. By “almost”, I mean that once I’d start to actually doze off, my head would sag, I’d lose my balance, and then immediately wake up and bring my head upright again. It’s a very odd sensation indeed.

#18

I used to have very strict requirements to fall asleep. That changed after getting married, but before I had to have…

  1. Almost complete darkness. A simple nightlight would be too bright. If I was already asleep I could sleep into the early morning, but it was impossible for me to fall asleep if it wasn’t dark.

  2. Complete silence or white noise. Complete silence is a near impossibility, so I usually had a window fan a few feet from my head. I have sensitive hearing, the clicking of my second hand on my watch will keep me up. If I could hear music, even faint bass, it would keep me up.

  3. Covers, preferably a comforter. A sheet alone wouldn’t cut it. A sheet and a light blanket really wasn’t enough either, but I would get by with it.

  4. Nothing blowing on me. Yes, the fan on the end table was pointing away from me, there only for the noise.

Now I work nights, don’t get home until after sunup. I have learned to fall asleep in a fairly well-lit room. I can fall asleep even if I can hear music or the TV, but not if I can understand the words. And best of all, I have finally learned how to nap. Because it was so difficult for me to fall asleep, I never slept except at bedtime. Now I can go lay down and kill a couple of hours sleeping, I can even fall asleep in a car if I’m tired enough.

#19

What, you crasie or something? This always puts me right to sl…Oh, wait. You said “Nothing”, not “No one”.

Nevermind.

#20

It’s also the funniest thing to watch in a slow class with a boring teacher. There are always a couple people doing this and if they’re tired enough they’ll repeatedly do it, over and over slowly bobbing their heads down and then snapping them up quickly until they bonk their head on the desk eventually. :slight_smile:

  • Tsugumo (one sleeping guy with his head on his binder drooled like a faucet and woke up “sticking” to it, heh…took a while to live that one down)