Insomnia is more common in women, especially older women, than in men.
https://www.womenshealth.gov/a-z-topics/insomnia
"Hello," says my bladder.
I do not, however, WANT to chat; I roll over, pull the blanket tighter, and I manage to drift away for a little bit.
But, "HeLLOOOOOO," says my bladder again, and this time, it demands my attention.
I stick my feet out of the warm cocoon and force the rest of my body to follow, and I totter off. I check the time as I go. It's 12:34. (How's THAT for a sequence?)
I have been asleep since 9:30, when the words in my book blurred and I realized I was dreaming, not reading. I want to be up by 5:30 to get to the gym for a good workout before work.
What if you can't get back to sleep? whispers my internal worrywart. You might miss the gym! But if you get up and go to the gym, you might be tired all day.
Oh no! What if you can't get back to sleep???
SHUSH, I say. Just SHUSH. But I look at the clock as I crawl back into bed, and I think, What if I CAN'T get back to sleep?
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I find this whole insomnia thing very annoying. For most of my life, confronted with a quiz question that asked me to rate ten things I'm really good at, "Sleeping" would have been in my top two answers—probably number one. Not only could I fall asleep at night and STAY asleep—often for ten hours at a stretch—but I was a darned good napper.
And none of that "...twenty minutes of nodding off will make you perky..." stuff, either. When I napped it was for large chunks of afternoon time. If I slipped into sleep at two, for instance, I might see you again at 4:00.
I was always pretty skeptical of older friends and relatives who complained about not being able to sleep.
Huh, I'd snort. That will NEVER be me.
Well, hiya, karma.
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I thought for sure I would beat the statistics, which tell me that ten to thirty per cent of adults, especially adults whose years add up to more than 60, have sleep issues. And of that group, women are more likely, because of hormonal realities, to experience more insomnia than men.
Alexa Fry expands on this in "Insomnia and Seniors," an essay on sleepfoundation.org. My over-60 peeps and I are more vulnerable to sleep difficulties than our whippersnapper counterparts for many reasons.
Fry points out that my age group has more physical and mental issues that cause insomnia.
Our internal clocks, she tells me, change as we age.
And we might be taking meds to treat conditions of aging (harumph!). Those medications may well mess around with our sleeping cycles.
"Some studies suggest," Fry writes, "that, beginning in middle age, the average person loses 27 minutes of sleep per night for each subsequent decade."
I do not like that idea at all. I want my 27 minutes back.
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It is quiet, quiet; only the shooosh of Mark's CPAP machine breaks the silent night's rhythms. Or wait—is there some sort of industrial hum coming from outside?
Is it the AK Steel plant, down the hill, through the woods, and not quite over the river?
Could the leaf sucker be at work at this time of night?
The pondering has me fully awake. I realize that I can't sleep on my left side because something hurts. I have started using a new machine at the gym—a 'recumbent trainer,'---and I upped the work load today to stretch my legs a little more. I realized I might have been too proactive almost as soon as I turned the dial under the seat, but I was too stubborn to turn it back.
So I pushed through my eight minute cycle, and when I was done, it took me five laps to walk off the gelatinous protest my legs staged.
I refused to listen to them then, but at 12:45 a.m., my legs know, in a kind glee-filled vengeful way, that they have my full attention.
Should I take some Tylenol? I wonder. I think that, if I got up, I could take a melatonin, too, although I don't do that too often. Even if the potion is organic, just a supplement, I don't want to grow dependent on taking something to help me sleep.
I position myself on my back, wiggle my legs, and realize that, right here, right now, nothing hurts. This is GOOD, I think, and I weave my fingers together and command, "Drift off now."
My mind responds by replaying an event that our Foundation staff attended that afternoon, a wonderful Habitat-for-Humanity dedication in which a young mom and her three- and six-year-old sons got the keys to their new home.
I rewind the spool of the inspiring afternoon event, thinking of the little boy proudly showing off his back door ("It has TWO locks!" he said. "And I can lock them BOTH!")
I am not falling asleep. My eyes have popped open. It's been well over twenty minutes since I returned from my midnight jaunt.
And Fry, like other sleep experts I've read, advises that, if you have been awake for twenty minutes or more, you should just get up.
I sigh and stick my feet out of the cocoon once more. I grab my book and my phone and head downstairs.
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It is raining, raining. Puh-dip, go the raindrops. Puh-dip. Then they take a deep breath and speed up: puh-dip, puh-dip, puh-dip, puh-dip.
I love sleeping on rainy nights. Why can't I sleep now?
If I don't get to sleep soon, I'll get a scant—what?—four hours of sleep, total?
I cover my feet with a knit throw and snuggle deep into the reading chair. I open the book, a sweeping saga of a British family that begins just before World War II. There are eccentric aging parents, handsome brothers with very different wives, and a sister with a secret love. There are winsome children, each nursing his or her own special worry, each careening toward a future they can't imagine.
The book has loyal hounds, and a mean maid who kills Polly's cat, and the death of a newborn twin. The section I'm reading is like an indrawn breath; it is at the moment before Britain knows it will fight Hitler, at the last moment that Britain's people thought, "Well, life will always be like this."
It is the perfect cozy book for a hard-raining night. I finish the first section and start Part II.
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I know about the stages of sleep because my Fitbit, Connie, tracks them. I know that a lot of my sleep is light, but that I DO have REM sleep every night, and every night, at least for a while, I fall into that state called deep sleep.
I don't think there is dreaming in deep sleep; I think of it as a dark, quiet, renewal time. It is when sundered things weave back together, when my mind does the quiet work of lining everything up in perspective, where my muscles refresh so I can start the day without a hobble.
The deep sleep is always the scantiest kind of sleep I sink into, according to Connie. How much deep sleep does a 66-year old woman need, anyway?
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There is a point at which, in the depth of the night, being up and awake when everyone else sleeps starts to feel a little like a party. I LIKE being all alone with a good book in the dark and the quiet. The only thing that could improve on this, I think, is something to eat.
I've just realized I am hungry. I pad out to the kitchen and cut a thick slice of banana bread (a yummy new recipe!). I put it on a Fiestaware dessert plate, spread a little butter over the top, and nuke it for 35 seconds.
If there is a better, more self-indulgent treat than banana bread with chocolate chips and walnuts, buttered and heated, savored slowly in the wee hours, I just don't, myself, know what it is,
I eat my banana bread, I read my book, and the house seems to sigh and settle in around me.
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According to the definition of 'insomnia' Fry shares---("Insomnia is a common sleep disorder characterized by a persistent difficulty1 to fall or remain asleep despite the opportunity to do so"), I do sometimes have insomnia. But my insomnia, thankfully, is short-term, not chronic: I generally don't have sleepless episodes three or more times a week, and the string of sleeplessness has never lasted more than three months,
And there are things that I can do, Fry writes, to improve my sleep. I can examine my life and routine to see if there are root causes for sleeplessness…am I, for instance, obsessing over some up-coming event or opportunity? Have I recently started a new medication or changed an intrinsic part of my routine?
Maybe something is worrying me, and I keep holding that worry's head right under the surface of my aware thought.
If that's what's keeping me up, I need to deal with whatever issue I uncover.
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I am starting to drift. I relocate to the couch, where I stretch out, nuzzle my book almost under my chin, start to read, and fall right into sleep,
When I waken briefly, I pad back upstairs in the quiet, quiet house.
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Fry also recommends creating a bedtime routine. This starts to sound like new mommy advice, except that the 'baby' in question is none other then myself.
I take myself to bed at about the same time each night, I want to report. Often, I soak in a nice hot tub. I prop up the pillows, put my phone out of reach, and crack open my book.
"I'll read at least three chapters," I promise myself. Twenty pages in, I am drifting, drifting…gone.
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Keep a sleep diary—that's another thing Fry recommends, and that's one practice I don't have to worry about in the least. Connie, my Fitbit conscience, does that for me. She tells me exactly how many hours of sleep I've gotten each day, and how much was light, heavy, or REM sleep.
Connie even grades me. "Seven hours and twenty minutes," she'll assess. "GOOD."
Other nights, she'll shake her little screen sadly, and award me a 'fair' rating. I've never gotten worse than that, even on the rare, three-hours-of-sleep nights that sometime tumble into my life. I think Connie is afraid of demoralizing me completely at those times. So, "Fair," she'll mumble…or she just won't rate my sleep at all.
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Alexa Fry also says that my sleep environment should be as near optimal as I can make it—dark, quiet, and cool. I think we achieve that, although Mark and I have different opinions of the perfect sleeping temps. (There are nights when I'll wait until he drifts off; then I'll creep downstairs and turn the thermostat down, welcome the chugging off of the furnace, and go back up to snuggle into the cocoon.)
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If none of those practical, easily implemented steps help me, says Fry, and if I experience sleep difficulties on a regular basis, I need to see my doctor. I could have a breathing disorder, or restless leg syndrome. My circadian rhythms could be off. There's even a sleep malady known as REM sleep disorder; people so afflicted often act out their dreams, which is a frightening thing. (This, says Fry, is much more common in elderly men than in women. That's a little reassuring, but when Mark mutters softly in his sleep, I sit up and watch him till he rolls over and his breaths grow deep and regular. Who knows what the man might be dreaming about, after all?)
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But this night, all my concerns are moot. I crawl back into back, and the next thing I know, it is 6:10 a.m. And because Mark does not have to be up at 6:00, because it is not a workday for me, I shut my eyes again and sleep until almost seven.
Connie is not entirely thrilled. She tells me that I slept five hours and 57 minutes. She rates that 'fair.' I imagine her little screen with rolled eyes and pursed, electronic lips. But I've earned 'good' scores from the Con-meister three of the past five nights.
And today is Friday; I have a morning appointment or two, but then, the afternoon is clear. The day is cold and rainy; I make some soup and put it in the crockpot to simmer; I take chicken bones from the freezer, clean out veggies, stir in herbs and spices, and put a big pot of broth on the stove to bubble all afternoon, scenting the autumn house.
With Jim's collaboration, I mix up a sour cream cake and bake it in the Bundt pan.
And I do the dishes and wipe down the countertops, and then I find my book. I head to the sleeping chair; I take advantage of a rainy Friday respite. I open the book and close my eyes.
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I may not sleep through every night, but I'm still darned good at taking a nap.
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