It’s amazing to me that some nights I sleep like a brick while other nights I deal with serious insomnia. Last night I fell asleep just past 11pm and slept soundly until 5:30am when I woke up bright eyed, bushy tailed and refreshed. But tonight, tonight is a different story.
It’s currently 3:33am and I am wide awake. I’ve been tossing and turning praying I fall back to sleep before my dreaded alarm goes off screaming at me that it’s time to start another day. Luckily, I’m working from home tomorrow. Wait, let me rephrase that, I’m working from home today wich means I can stay in bed later. A total sigh of relief. However, I still don’t understand what my deal is? Why can’t I just sleep through the night EVERY night?! My mother tells me I was a fabulous sleeper as a baby. Why I couldn’t take these secret ninja sleeping skills with me as an adult is beyond me.
Insomnia gets old fast. I hate feeling tired and like a zombie in the morning. I’ve had countless nights where I lie awake for three hours or more just starring at the ceiling counting sheep waiting for my eyes to be so heavy that I can’t keep them open. By the time this happens it’s almost always time to get up and start my day. The fact that my body decides it’s ready for sleep when the rest of the world is waking up is incredibly frustrating.
I recently read that 67% of women deal with insomnia when they’re PMS’ing and/or while they’re menstruating. Sorry boys, this paragraph may not be for you. But, I found this to be very interesting because since coming off birth control I have found a definate correlation between the time of month and insomnia. I deal with at least three nights of waking up and not being able to fall back to sleep when I have PMS. Then when aunt flow finally makes her arrival forget it. Usually the first and sometimes second nights are brutal. It’s as if I have an electric current running through my body. My brain and head are tired, but I feel so wired and “off” that I simply cannot sleep. I have literally had nights where I don’t sleep at all. In plain English, it sucks! At the moment I’m at the end of my cycle, so who knows what my issue is this evening. But, apparently the rise and fall of womens hormones play a major role in our sleep cycles, so who knows what’s going on inside my canvas right now. I have mentioned insomnia to my Doctor before who suggested I take melatonin, but anyone who knows me, knows I am not one for pill popping. Whether it’s natural or not, I don’t care to put stuff into my body and rely on some supplement to help me sleep, “be healthy” or live. I simply don’t believe in that approach. And now that I’ve done a little of my own hypochondriac research, I may bring it up to my Doctor again to see what she thinks about when I notice insomnia to be a definite major issue.
Typically when I can’t sleep I resort to my phone catching up on Facebook, Twitter and current news. I know, stimulating my brain with my mobile device is probably the worst possible thing I could do to help me sleep. But, I get bored and quite frankly I don’t feel like turning on lights and reading a book because light signals our body to wake up. Tonight, instead of Facebooking, I’m glued to my phone writing this blog. I mean let’s be honest, not much is happening in social media when the world is sleeping so it’s pretty boring this time of night. Plus, I am very curious to know how many other women suffer from insomnia too? And if they notice it to be a more frequent issue at certain times of the month.
So if you’re not dreaming the night away and are laying awake in the middle of the night just waiting for your eyes to close, chances are I am too and that you’re not the only one. Now that’s 4:06am and the birds outside my bedroom window are starting to chirp, I think I’ll put my life line away (aka my phone) and attempt to close my eyes…
Sweet dreams lovahs, readers and bloggers!
SLP