Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Sleeptracking





Today was my first day as an official sleep tracker. For those who wake up cheerfully each morning blissfully unaware of the almpost painful grogginess some of us face each morning regardless of the amount of sleep gotten, just go back to bed. For you normal readers, have you heard of that new watch that is sensitive to movement and is supposed to wake you up in the morning at a time when you are in a light sleep phase rather than dreaming so that you wake up more refreshed and alert? Well I have. I read about this new alarm watch called the sleeptracker a couple of years ago in the reader's digest (yes I do read this magazine cover to cover each month). I was intrigued and considered buying one because I am always almost desperate for a way to make mornings less horrible but decided to wait till it had been around for a while to see what people thought of it. The fact that the watch was way out of my price range may have had something to do with it as well. Anyway, every birthday and Christmas I have debated asking for this watch but have never pulled the trigger. Some people swear the sleeptracker changed their life but others didn't think it made any difference and there were different issues with volume of alarm, size of the watch (earlier models were huge) etc. and it was still so dang expensive. Well the new model seems to have solved most of the problems and happened to be on sale at woot.com so I got it for Christmas this year (I found the deal, put it in the cart, entered credit card/shipping info etc. but Aaron came over and clicked the last confirm button so it counts as his present to me).

Anyway, for some reason I am having a hard time keeping this short and sweet but my sleeptracker arrived and though I left it in the box for a couple days planning to wait to use it till Christmas a couple days ago something happened to change my mind. Those who have known me a long time know that I talk/walk/dance etc. in my sleep. I am glad that we didn't have cell phones with video cameras when I was younger or I might have been the embarrassed subject of a youtube video. Anyway, I have been sleepwalking a lot lately and it is really disturbing my sleep. Sunday night was one of these nights and I woke up out of my bed 4 times. I woke up Monday tired and grumpy wishing there was something I could do about my sleep patterns but I think it is just genetic (I could go on for hours telling stories of a couple siblings nighttime adventures). I have tried to monitor what I do and eat before bed but I cannot come up with any pattern that coincides with my sleepwalking. Enter the sleeptracker.

I used my new sleeptracker to monitor my sleep last night. Of course since I was monitoring it I actually slept soundly for once but even though I don't remember waking up at all I still moved around quite a bit and had less time between movements than normal. Anyway, I am going to monitor my sleep for the next couple weeks along with keeping a journal of eating/exercising/stress before sleep so try to come up with any ideas of how to stay in my bed where I belong at night. Here's hoping.