Starting again - how am I doing?

I had a sleep study done back in June and got my Dreamstation about a month later. I tried it for a week but struggled with it. The most I could do was a few hours a night, and most of that was awake. So I gave up on it. After weeks of thinking about the damage I'm doing to myself, I'm going to try again. I started last night and was able to keep the mask on the whole night. How is it looking? Anything I need to be tweaking?

Welcome to the forum.

Only thing I see that could maybe stand some tweaking might be that starting minimum pressure. Looks like it is maybe not doing as good of a job as it could.

How long did it take you to fall asleep initially?
What position did you start the night out with....on your back or side?

Parts of the night the 5 cm minimum does a great job and some parts of the night you need more pressure and the machine doesn't get there quickly enough and some evidence of the airway closing or trying to close shows up....the snores, RERAs and hyponeas.
I suspect parts of the night you were on your back or in REM sleep where it is common to need more pressure.

Are you comfortable with the 5 cm pressure? Feel the least little bit air starved?
If you are comfortable with it then I would run with it for 2 or 3 more nights and see what shows up and if the other reports look like this one then I would increase the minimum to 6 cm and see what happens.
If you aren't comfortable with it...increase it now to 6 and see what happens.

Thanks for the reply. It probably took me at least 45 minutes to initially fall asleep. I got up for the bathroom a few times, and again it took me a little bit to fall back asleep again. I normally sleep on my side, but I tried sleeping on my back for a bit. Maybe I will bump it up to 6? Sometimes it did feel like I was "working" to breathe.

Increase the minimum to 6 and see how it feels. You probably need it anyway for REM or supine related events.
Should make it easier to breathe with and less "work". We won't suffocate at 5 cm but it can sure feel like it sometimes and we feel like we have to work harder to move more air simply from a comfort aspect.

Most people feel this way...while a few people are just fine with 4 or 5 cm...most people feel a bit air starved and want the perception of more air moving to be comfortable.

If we aren't comfortable breathing then we have trouble falling asleep and the name of the game is "falling asleep"....defeats the purpose or makes it harder to accomplish our goals. Gotta be comfortable first.

I bumped it up to 6 yesterday and here are the results. It looks like it helped. Would it make sense to bump it up to 7 or just wait and see what happens the next few nights? And is that periodic breathing something to worry about?

The periodic breathing is nothing to worry about. It's probably not even real Cheyne Stokes Respiration but even if it was...not enough to be a worry.
Periodic Breathing is really nothing more than a waxing and waning of the air flow that lasts at least 2 minutes.
CSR is a very specific kind of periodic breathing but it isn't the only kind. Unless it is packed full of centrals/CAs and has a very specific pattern...and it's prolonged...we don't worry about it.

Your choice as to just how aggressive you want to be with the increases. Personally I like to give each change at least 2 or 3 nights unless there is an urgent need for more pressure RIGHT now...like if the AHI was 10 something.
It won't hurt to try 7 if you want to and you are comfortable with it. Sometimes the increases aren't comfortable and it takes just a little bit of time for the body to get okay with more pressure even when desperately needed. Going up slowly lets the body catch up easier when the changes prove to be unsettling.

You can zoom in up close and look at the breath by breath pattern....

Here's an example of a CSR PB breathing pattern and if we saw a lot of this with apneas flagged all over the place with it then we get concerned.


And here is an example of what I call plain boring PB and means nothing of any great excitement.


Even if yours looks like real CSR...it is so brief and rare....not a concern.