How much sleep do you get

Separate rooms, a Scandinavian crime drama on iPad, industrial earplugs and occasional meds which my gp is happy to give short term if I’m heading for a bout of depression/anxiety. I can actually function on far less sleep than I think I need, it’s just the ability to get away from the ‘washing machine head’ which we all need for our sanity.

Until three years ago I was getting up at 4.30 to get to work at 5.30..... Now I get to sleep about 12.30ish and wake at 3.30 on the dot..... then I sleep til daylight which at moment is 4.30 and that's it! Night over !! I'm as fit as a fiddle . Jump outa bed make a cuppa , go back to bed ...read for an hour.... go swimming at 7....come home at 8.30 and eat breakfast. My husband ( the laziest man ever born) is still sleeping. Forgot to mention while making tea at about 5 ish I also put a wash load on. It's done by the time I. Home from swimming and hung out by time hubby falls outa bed.I LOVE early mornings. Was brought up on them. I was that milk mans helper who woke you up at 5 or 6 every day before school rattling the old glass 'empties'.

I go to bed at 10.30 most nights and don’t have any screen time, iPads etc, except for the tv during the evening. Sleep like a log and if I am disturbed by him next to me dreaming he’s playing football and kicking his legs then in darkness I just move to the spare room. Other night he was dreaming he was trying to blow out the candles on his birthday cake! Takes somedoing when you are 70. Anyway any trips to Lloyd or spare room done in darkness and too flushing the loo. Works a treat.

I go to bed at 10.00pm and am up again at 4.45am as I do a paper round for my village newsagen 7 days a week - the only day I have off is Christmas Day and of course holidays. I do need a little doze in the afternoon though.

My sleep 'pattern' is very erratic., and I consider a good night's sleep if I get about 5 hours. What makes me cross is the medical 'experts' telling us that lack of sleep, or poor quality sleep, is bad for our health. We have no choice!

My DH snores louder than a jumbo jet taking off. After numerous operations to try and cure it he was given a C-pap machine. It’s amazing. He has always fallen asleep no matter where we were- cinema, trains and planes, in the pub. You name it, he’s snored in it. He cleared a campsite over night when we were camping in Northumberland. We went to bed surrounded by other tents and caravans and woke up to an empty field at 6am. Everyone around us left in the middle of the night due to his noise. That’s when he realised how loud his snoring really was. With the C-pap it’s now blissfully quiet. Now all I need is something to stop him falling asleep in public, that way I can take him to the cinema again

Yes, holidays are a double edged sword! I have ear plugs, husband is instructed to use nasal spray, 2 pillows and those snoring strips. Sometimes it’s ok, but mostly it’s not. My gp will give me zopiclone for a week ( I suspect he has many others our age with the same problems), but when I’m still woken up with the snoring I get really pissed off as I refuse to take more! So we get a ‘junior siute’ when we can, costs less than 2 rooms, and he sleeps on the sofa bed in the living area. It’s not ideal, but I don’t want to give up holidays yet while we are still able bodied!

Apparently, many many decades ago, people used to go to bed until maybe 2-3am then get up and visit friends, family, neighbours and make love (or any permutation) They would then go back to bed and sleep for another few hours.
THAT is the true cycle of sleep. It comes in waves.
I can sleep for England and have no qualms or guilt about reading in the afternoon either outdoors in good weather or on the bed if too hot, with a fan on, windows open, shutters closed, waking up to find it's 5 or 6pm.
Still, that's one luxury of being retired.
Normally bed around 11pm, read, sleep and wake around 6-7am.
I do occasionally wake around 3am and make tea which I take back to bed. I also keep tabs on my sleeping and eating habits, BP, heart-rate, stress and oxygen levels via the Samsung Health app which is pre-loaded. I find it handy in that it keeps graphs of your health history.

I’m from the US and curious as to what DH means. Damn Husband? Sounds like it might be so. Love this group. My DH sleeps all night. I’m right with you gals - I’m lucky to get 5 hours sleep.

My husband went to bed and fell asleep instantly and snored for years so we ended up in separate rooms - then he was diagnosed with sleep apnoea and given a C-Pap machine. Now he's quiet and probably gets better quality sleep but hates the machine especially 'Pipe' which has a personality all of it's own and often tries to strangle him during the night He's recently been given Amytriptaline for his sciatica but can't take 2 at bedtime as he has to drive an hour to work - one seems to be ok and possibly helps him sleep better.

We go to bed at 10 and I'm up at 5 - even if I don't have to wake him up for work at 5.45. I read for a few minutes when I get into bed then fall asleep. I usually have to get up to the loo at least once but often its my cat who wakes me up as she goes in her tray - this week she's had cystitis which has been horrendous and I've only had a couple of hours sleep. Even if we've been out and are late to bed I'm still awake at 5. I often start work when I get up if he's not working and have got loads done by 7am! When we were in the same room I slept very badly so separate rooms are a godsend!

Nonna

That killed me.
???

When my daughter was born 37 years ago I got used to very little sleep. From birth to 18mths she would sleep for an hour a time about 4 times in any 24.
From 18mths until 12yrs it settled to 4 hours exactly between 9.30pm and 6.30am. Exactly on her 12th birthday she began sleeping 12 hours a day, longer if permitted!
By that time I'd learnt to exist on 4-5 hours sleep a day! Doing shift work as a nurse didn't help matters. Now I average 6 hours unless I am exhausted. Even having ME/CFS for the last 20 years hasn't changed that. On occasion I can be awake for 36-40 hours at a time, usually reading the night through, (not through choice!). I have now learnt to sleep when I can during the day as a survival technigue

gretta

I wonder if it works with currants as I hate raisins.

Pjkoctur DH is for Dear Husband, but Damn Husband sounds good to me. There’s a link to a list of acronyms at the bottom of the last page of any thread.

Re. The not sleeping - I find I sleep better if the room is cool, cold even. My Damn Husband is the opposite, he likes it hot (the room, that is) but as we don’t have the luxury of a spare bedroom I have the windows open wide and he wraps himself in (most of and often including my share of) the duvet.

I don’t like going to bed, and hate getting up! I reckon to sleep 8 1/2 hours but often wake around 3 , thirsty. Sometimes takes a while to drop back off. Damn Husband (thanks for this!) snores v loudly but it’s only when he doesn’t snore that I can’t get to sleep, go figure, as they say. He does wake me at 8 with a cuppa, for which I’m truly grateful.

Love the idea of the raisins but my DH eats a whole packet at a time when he goes to bed but maybe it's because they are covered in chocolate that they don't work.
Since his diagnosis of PTSD and the medication he is on he is the one who doesnt sleep well although they have now given him a relaxant tablet but that makes him sleepy in the morning and he can sleep until 10.30am.
I always do a few giant sudokus before I settle down for the night then I am asleep within a few minutes of turning the lamp off. Mostly now I wake around 8.15 (having gone to sleep before midnight) needing to spend a penny. I then let the dogs into the garden and go back to bed and read for a while. The joys of being retired. I needed to go to the bathroom at 6am in Wednesday, put my foot out of bed and felt a sopping wet rug. My husband soon woke up when I squealed. No sleep in as the upstairs floor was covered in water an inch deep!!

Love Dam Husband

I have never slept well but a couple of years ago I started to need the loo three times most nights. I went from getting 6-7 hours each night to 4-5 hours at most. Along with other health concerns I decided to take early retirement. Now I sleep about 4-5 hours each night, dh snores and I lay awake listening to him. I do take a 1 hour nap most afternoons though which I quite enjoy as wake up refreshed. I am home on my own so my family are none the wiser.

I usually have seven hours sleep, I tend to go to bed about midnight, but never go to sleep immediately (mind working, and Husband snoring) I sleep quite well once I drop off,then I am disturbed by my "not so quite" Husband who arises about 6am, yes he has retired!
I usually get up about 9am as the same Husband doesnt like me to sleep any longer, if allowed, I could sleep for hours longer. He doses off in front of the tv, but doesnt admit this.

I can’t imagine what it just be like to shut your eyes and go to sleep feeling “at peace with the world” . My sleep is always fits and starts and lying awake for hours, then falling into a deep sleep just half an hour before it’s time to get up.

gillybob I know exactly how that was - waking up in the middle of the night and worrying about work - finances mostly - I've been known to get up at 3 and try doing cashflows. Husband on the other hand who had the weight of the world on his shoulders when we had the business just went to bed and slept for 8 hours (probably not good sleep as it was before his SA diagnosis). It was hell and although there's been different 'hells' since I wouldn't want to go back there!

I thought old people were supposed to need less sleep, after all, we are less active than when we were young.
I fall straight to sleep at about 9.30 and get up about 4 and that’s enough but I often have a short nap after lunch.

Mmm I did wonder about chocolate covered raisins. . . .

How strange is sleep and what is expected. As a child and even a teenager I was sent to bed at 7.30 and lay awake for hours. When I was older and away from home I could lie in bed till late morning. When I was working I could manage on 4 hours a night with a half hour nap at tea time and a binge sleep of 12 hours at the weekend. Now I am retired I seem to need 7 or 8 hours but from 2 to 3 in the morning to 10 or 11 the following morning. Around midnight is my most wakeful time!! What is that all about?

Your post made me chuckle! As you can see I'm nt asleep at just before 4am but did get some hours earlier.