Rough week sleeping

I'm sort of having a relapse lately. After 2 months of CPAP I was finally getting through the night, only waking for a few minutes at a time and falling back to sleep easily. My AHI has steadily improved. For the past week,I am waking up more and having a lot of trouble getting back to sleep. I feel stuffy and wide awake. I used ambien for the first month or so and gradually weaned myself off of them. I have been taking cacium, magnesium and 5 htp, which seemed to be working great for a while. I wonder if it can be all the holiday goodies I have been consuming these past few weeks. Thats really the only difference in my lifestyle lately.

Could be, or you might be coming down with something. Schedules can be very disrupted during the holidays and sometimes we drink more than usual, too.

Everyone has a few bad nights here or there. If they persist, then you need to look at other factors.

I've been having terrible insomnia again. Last night I was really tired after a bad night of little sleep. I went to bed exhausted and fell asleep at 10:00, I woke up at 12:00 and stayed in bed, mask on for 4 hrs. before I finally fell asleep for 1 hr. Now I'm up caring for my 18month old twin granddaughters. Why is this happening. I really was seeing an improvement, I feel like I am starting all over again.

trytryagain wrote:I've been having terrible insomnia again. Last night I was really tired after a bad night of little sleep. I went to bed exhausted and fell asleep at 10:00, I woke up at 12:00 and stayed in bed, mask on for 4 hrs. before I finally fell asleep for 1 hr.

Laying in bed for four hours with the mask on and most likely fretting about not being able to get back to sleep may very well have fed the insomnia monster and made the situation worse. As counterintuitive as it sounds, you may bave been better off getting out of bed after 30-40 minutes, leaving the room and doing something very quiet and relaxing for until you got sleepy enough to try going back to bed again. Things that are often suggested for severe "can't stay asleep insomniacs" to try when they wake up and can't get back to sleep are:

• sitting in a semi-dark room in a comfortable chair for 10--15 minutes listening to quiet, soothing music
  reading light, boring, NON-work related material
  deep breathing, meditation, or focus relaxation "exercises" to help clear the mind and allow one to get sleepy again

and then returning to bed only after you start to feel genuinely sleepy again. And it is important to get out of your nice warm bed and go into a different room before you get too anxious about the fact that you're wide awake and not sleeping. [I know it sounds hard and ridiculous---I'm fighting my own battle with the insomnia beast myself.] But this is an important part of good sleep hygiene: Your bed has to not become associated with anxiety. And if your brain has started to associate your bed with anxiety (like my poor brain has), then it takes a lot of effort and discipline to help re-educate the brain that your bed is a nice, safe, warm secure place and that anxiety happens OUTSIDE of the bedroom and OUTSIDE of the bed. One tool to help that re-education process is to take your anxious body and brain out of the bed and bedroom when you know you have become too anxious to fall asleep.

And try to NOT watch the clock when you are lying in bed hoping for sleep.

And hard as it is, try to NOT take any naps during the day. They just fed the insomnia monster.

And try to learn to pace yourself during the day and learn how to go to bed when you are feeling sleepy and not when you are feeling exhausted or tired. And note that feeling sleepy is not the same as feeling exhausted or tired. And overexhaustion can make it very difficult to get and stay asleep.

Good luck in dealing with your insomnia.