Feeling a little discouraged

Hello

Last night was my second night with my new c-pap machine. I am feeling kind of discouraged, I know it has been said that it takes time to get used to it, but......I've got to be able to get some sleep to be able to work.

I am a night shift worker, and I sleep sometimes in the day time, and sometimes in the night time. I don't rest very well in the daytime. I rest somewhat better at night. When I am working, I maybe would get only 2-3 hours of sleep in the daytime even though I had maybe 6 hours available to me for sleeping. So, even though I didn't sleep as well as I would like on my nights off, I slept fairly well, and was sort of able to "catch up" on my nights off.

Well, the last two nights, with the c-pap, I would wake up every hour or two all night long. I don't want to give up on the machine, I know it takes time to get used to. But the reality of the situation is that I need to get some sleep to be able to go to work.

I have read that it takes time ~ weeks, sometimes months ~ to get used to the c-pap, but I need to be able to get more sleep sometime so I can be rested enough to go to work. I am sort of not knowing what to do.

Thanks for listening.

Hello & Welcome, hope2sleep! Glad you found this forum--SO much useful info and SO many helpful people here!

Yes, what you describe is not that atypical for many (most?) of us as we begin CPAP. It does take time, and the time needed to adjust to therapy (and to get one's therapy adjusted!) varies for everyone. Hang in there! It will be worth it in the end. Good luck!

"You are getting sleepy . . ."

Hey! Hang in there, you are absolutely doing the right thing!
What's waking you up? Are you having leaks from the mask? Is it the noise? Are you sleeping in your preferred position , or in a different way, because of the machine and mask?
We have answers for most issues, so be specific.
You're going to make it, if you keep an open mind. And we on this forum are here for you...
Lee Lee

You really shouldn't expect to sleep thru the nite just yet. You need to be determined to make it work, use it every time when you go to sleep; then sleep as long as you can. If you wake up and can't get back to sleep with the mask on, simply take it off and return to sleep. Keep a log of how things went each nite.

Keep a regular sleep schedule and always fix any problems from the nite before way before you return to sleep. Meaning don't wait until you are too tired to make any corrections and just want to sleep.

I know when I worked 3rd shift, I found I slept less but found sleeping just before going in to work more restful and natural. More like when working days, you sleep then get up then go to work. It always took me about 30 days to get used to any changes in my sleep patterns.

Good Luck,
GumbyCT

Hope2, your experience is common to most of us here. Have you read the wealth of information in "Our Wisdom" at the yellow light bulb icon at the top of this page?

A really important concept to work on is your sleep hygiene. Googling will bring up numerous sites to define this, and this one is just the first one to pop up.
http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/howto.html
Getting these factors in shape is critical to your success, IMO.
Others will have lots of other suggestions. I found that using scents from http://www.pur-sleep.com/ helped me enormously...and I am one who generally dislikes scents of any kind for any reason.

Seems pretty important to hang tough right now through your adjustment phase, and not fool yourself into trading interrupted sleep with xPAP for terrible sleep without. I actually had to miss 2 days of work in the beginning, but with the right pillow, the pur~sleep, and fixing leaks by taping my mouth ---it all came together pretty well. Not immediately, but progressively.

Glad you're here. Keep reading everything you can find here, and keep asking for help when you need to.

hope2sleep wrote: But the reality of the situation is that I need to get some sleep to be able to go to work.

I have read that it takes time ~ weeks, sometimes months ~ to get used to the c-pap, but I need to be able to get more sleep sometime so I can be rested enough to go to work.
Thanks for listening.

H2S, been there, done that, have the t-shirt......don't ever want to go back there.

The first few days are tough.
Ask yourself this:
Are you really getting any less sleep w/the cpap?
It may seem like you are not, but you were not getting any quality sleep before,
you just didn't have the cpap to blame.

For me, it was the 5th morning, I felt just a little different.
No overnight miracles. Just little things, everyday.
Now, 6mths later, I'm not the same person that went in for that sleep study.

Be patient w/yourself.
Keep working w/it.
It's going to get better.
You're going to get better.

It's your life.
It's my life.

Welcome to the forum. My first night on cpap I think I lasted 40 minutes. There is a period of adjustment, but a few hours with cpap is much better than 8 without--- at least in my case. Less than two weeks and I was up and running but still having problems and questions. I think few people feel miracle relief early in therapy. I wasn't one of those. I asked questions on this forum and, like you, expressed my frustration. I was given encouragement and advice. With the help of some really kind people on this forum, I was able to find the right mask for me, learn how to do things with my machine and to control my therapy. I can't imagine life without the machine now. I hope you stick with it. Keep asking questions. You'll get answers. Good luck. It does get better.

thimarine wrote: . . . a few hours with cpap is much better than 8 without . . . It does get better.

Key points, those.

Your body may have gone years without effective sleep. As you start out with CPAP, a few hours of good sleep makes your body think it's through sleeping. It thinks that is as good as it gets. So it wakes you up and tells you to get out of bed. It may not have made it uninterupted through an entire 90-minute (or so) sleep cycle for years, so when it now does, it gets all happy with itself and tries to send you on your way.

Consider it a good sign, and be patient with your body for it to figure out what's going on. If you find yourself awake for 20 minutes or so, get out of bed and read something mindless, then get back into bed to trick your body into doing another sleep cycle. Eventually it should figure out what's happening and let you sleep longer through the night (or, in your case, through the day), maybe even for 8 hours or more, which would be a good thing to do for a while once you can.