The thread on old people’s schedules got me wondering: What’s the longest you’ve slept when you weren’t sick?
Many years ago, I had a client I shared with a friend/colleague whose time management skills weren’t all that terrific. We had a project that required both of us that needed to be completed for a big meeting with a dozen people from the client organization at 9:00 Friday morning.
We ended up having to work until about 3:00 am on Wednesday, and got back to work at 9:00 Thursday morning. We worked through the night and completed just in time to get ready to go to the meeting.
Friday afternoon I sat at my kitchen table and decided to take a nap. So I went to bed. Next thing I knew it was 8:00am on Saturday.
When I used to travel a lot for work and my body would get bumfuzzled as to what time zone I was in, I would sometimes sleep about 10 hours in an effort to re-regulate my internal clock. As a rule, my normal night of sleep is about 5 hours, so a 10 hour night of sleep was a marathon for me.
But, um, wait: does “waking up and then going back to sleep” cut the sleep into two separate periods? If that’s the case, I doubt I’ve ever in my adult life done better than five hours.
After basic training, I had a hotel room on the base, and I crashed for about 12 hours straight of my 36 hour pass, plus another five hours or so. I spent the rest of the time eating junk food and watching television. Pretty much whatever was on-- Rugrats, I remember in particular enjoying for some reason after basic training.
Now, I’m sure I got up once to pee during that time, but I don’t remember doing it.
When my son was eating enough solid food that he could make it for a while without nursing, my husband let me sleep until I woke up on my own, and I slept for 10 or 11 hours. This was after six months of never sleeping more than four hours in a row because I was home with a nursing infant.
My husband had gotten up with the baby on a Sunday, and fed him cereal with fruit, yogurt, and a little watered down juice, then bathed him and dressed him in a blue shirt, brown pants, and yellow socks. I took pictures because he was so proud of himself for his solo babycare. And really, except for his color-blindness, the baby was clean and happy. He did tummy time, and played ball with him. I was a SAHM, and so DH was flying by the seat of his pants, and did great. He didn’t usually solo for more than a couple of hours at a time.
Once when I was a teenager, everyone else got up early on a Saturday and went out to go berry picking, but they kindly let me sleep. Only I didn’t know anything about it, didn’t know they were gone, and so even though I sort of half woke up there were no house noises so I just turned over and went back to sleep.
They woke me up when they got home around noon. I think that made it about 13 or 14 hours.
My record: 18 hours, when i returned from summer camp as a young teenager.
As a teenager and into my twenties, on the weekends I would regularly sleep until 1 or 2 o’clock in the afternoon, even when I went to bed “early” (i.e. I went to bed by midnight). So around 14 hours were not uncommon for me then. Funny to hear, that for some people that is even more than there record.
When I was a kid I got a yellow jacket sting one day. It swelled up a lot, so when my mom got home from work she gave me my first-ever dose of Benadryl. I went to bed and slept for 14 hours.
As an adult my record is probably 11 hours, after partying all night in college.