Sleeping While Old
My eyes have not closed for 25 minutes. It is 2:37 AM and I got up to go to the bathroom a little after 2. I get up for this purpose almost every night. Sometimes, when I return to bed, I fall back to sleep easily. Sometimes, like tonight, I lie in wait for sleep and it does not come, for minutes or hours. Such is the plight of older sleepers.
I go through my routine, learned from meditation practices, and articles in newspapers and AARP publications. First, I lie flat on my back with my arms at my sides. I breathe deeply and count my breaths. Sometimes I relax enough to drift off again. If I don’t, I’ll take a drink of water, always by my bedside, and try breathing again, on my side. I rarely turn on the light to read, not because it would disturb my husband — nothing I do would disturb my husband — but because it stimulates me rather than relaxes me. I’ll be reading until 7 AM if I start to read at 2:30. This is odd because reading at 10 or 10:30 makes me sleepy, but after 4 hours of sleep, it wakes me up.
My husband puts on his CPAP mask and calls it a night around 9, at least an hour before I do, and he only sometimes has to urinate during the night. The CPAP machine used to bother me, and occasionally still does, but he’s on his third or fourth iteration, and the machines and masks have improved considerably over the years. If he does get up to urinate, he plays the same game of roulette. Sleep returns or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, he goes next door to our guest room and listens to podcasts until he falls asleep again. He rises at about 5 and reads or watches the news in another room until I get up between 6:30 and 7.
I always have a bottle of sleeping pills (the lowest dose possible, according to my doctor) and I do take one if I’ve had trouble sleeping for several days in a row, but I take it as a preventative step, not a curative one. I find that if I take one at 2 or 3 AM, I wake up groggy and irritable.
Sleep is elusive for many of us as we age. There are lots of tips, medical and otherwise, to help us have a better night’s sleep. Some of them are:
- Mild to moderate — and frequent — exercise, but not just before bed. I walk, swim (under normal circumstances), or do yoga four or five times a week for an hour. Check.
- Limiting caffeine late in the day and in the evening. I have one cup of coffee in the morning with breakfast. Check.
- Cutting down on sugary or white foods. I eat plenty of vegetables and fruit. Check.
- Limiting screen time before sleep. Our TV is in our bedroom. Unless I want to start a major argument with my husband, it stays there. I’m ambivalent about this. Sometimes TV is a sleep aid. Sometimes not.
- Interaction of medications. Some medications, or combinations of them, can impair sleep. I have also discussed this with my doctor. It does not seem to be an issue for me.
- Naps are recommended but only early in the afternoon and for no more than 45 minutes. I belong to a Dream Group. We listen to and try to help each other interpret our dreams. Our facilitator takes a nap every day — to induce more dreams? I don’t know. It’s at least an example. If I haven’t slept well for a day or two, the short nap is a miracle cure.
My bugaboo seems to be stress. I suspect that a great many more people of all ages and all countries are feeling a kind of persistent and energy-sucking stress as we face another month of partial or complete sheltering due to the coronavirus. I really can’t tell whether my stress is different or greater than it was before March of 2020. What I can say is that I am a driven person. I’ve got balls in the air all the time. Not saying this is wise. Not patting myself on the back. Just saying. So even though I’m mostly staying at home, reading at least one book a week (while sitting on my couch for hours), cooking as if I were a French Chef most days, I have plans. I think about what’s next for me. I worry about what I’ll write and teach next for my peers. I worry about my peers. I worry about me. I can’t sleep.
