Sleeping/Waking Patterns

My Fitbit tells me that my average sleeping time is just over six hours. There are times, like this morning, that I wake up at 4 or even 3 am and can’t get back to sleep. So I’ll get up, do some stuff, maybe eat something, get on the computer, and go back to bed around 7 am and sleep til 9-ish or so. Being retired, I can even do this during the week. :slight_smile:

I read somewhere recently about a woman who was staying with her grandmother (80 years old or so) and the woman was surprised when she got up to pee during the night to find grandma sitting up in the kitchen, drinking tea and listening to the radio. Turns out that was Gram’s pattern-- sleep for a few hours, get up for a couple of hours, then go back to bed to finish out the night.

I’ve also read that so-called bimodal sleep has been a common sleep pattern in the past:

And then there’s this:

Does that mean insomnia is just another name for nothing left to lose? Sorry, couldn’t help myself. What are your opinions on and experiences with sleeping patterns?

I’ve worked nights (01.00-06.00) for the last 14 years and I’ve had all sorts of sleeping patterns including sleep - work - sleep. Despite paying attention to the matter it feels like I’m still not very good at figuring it all out.

Sometimes I go to sleep and wake up 6 hours later totally refreshed, then the next day I go to sleep around the same time, sleep 10-15 min and wake up alert enough that it takes 3-4 hours to get to sleep again. Or I try to take a short nap after evening sauna during a day off and wake up disoriented 4 hours later, sleep pattern totally messed up.

Mostly I try to sleep from morning to afternoon since it’s the easiest for social life. If I wake up at 16.00 it’s not much different than getting off from work after regular office hours. Second best sleep pattern is going to sleep late in the evening for a few hour nap, then working and 1-2 hours after work going to sleep again for maybe 6 hours. The first one often leaves me a bit tired in the afternoon after I wake up, the second makes me tired when I’m working but makes getting to sleep after work easy. The worst sleeping pattern is not getting any sleep after work, then falling asleep after noon and waking up late in the evening. It keeps me feeling rested but I get nothing done in the morning waiting for sleep and skipping evenings ruins whatever meager social life I do have.

All in all it’s not too bad for me. I always get enough sleep eventually. Biggest drawback is family gatherings scheduled for around noon or early afternoon, those often pass in a zombie-like state for me since I need to skip almost all of my sleep. On the other hand it’s easy for me to handle being tired - I’ve had to skip sleep so often that it’s no big deal.

This is my first week of retirement. Almost immediately I switched to a different sleep pattern 6 hours at nite + 2 hour afternoon nap.

I lie down for bed at 9:00 and am immediately deep asleep. This continues till around 3 am, when I drift in and out for an hour or two, but mostly awake. Then at 1pm I’m down for a couple of hours of deep sleep.

Not bimodal sleep exactly, but I found it odd I went to this stable pattern rather quickly. [Yawns] Oh! Look at the time (12:50pm CDT). Off to bed for me I guess.

I don’t follow any pattern that I can determine. I’ve done all sorts of activities when I’m wakeful in the early morning hours. I’m a confirmed insomniac. I’m more relaxed about it now. I just quit fighting it. Fighting it wasted too much energy.

Welcome to retirement! Regardless of how I sleep at night, I usually take a nap. My one cat Tikva really appreciates it, as she always finds me and crawls up on top of me.

This. I have no schedule to my life, and I can sleep or wake whenever I please. This means sleeping maybe two hours, three times a day. I generally wake up when I need to pee, and stay up. I can do my art work any time of day or night, so this is not a problem. My husband sleeps through the night, and nothing I do disturbs him.

My family all slept like the dead. I have actually vacuumed in the middle of the night and no one woke up. I do all my art at night, anymore. I’m alone alot now, so I have no reason to concern myself with disturbing anyone. Oh, except the Siamese. They give me dirty looks if I make too much noise at any time!