Remember that sleep study I did with all the wires and the naps and the nose tubes? I actually got my results this week. And I found them absolutely fascinating. You would too if they were your own results, but you didn't do the study, so you're stuck hearing about mine.
To start, it took me 42.5 minutes to fall asleep. This seemed pretty average to me, but the doctor said it was too long. But not long enough to worry about if it didn't bother me. And it doesn't.
What I was surprised about was my sleep position. I've always thought that I slept on my stomach most of the night, occasionally turning to my right side. But never on my back.
So I've always bought mattresses and pillows designed for stomach sleepers.
And I did fall asleep on my stomach- for thirty minutes. Before turning and sleeping on my back. For three and a half hours. Then a half hour on my left, then on my back again for some REM. After that there's a spot on the chart around 5:30 AM where I was wide awake for forty-five minutes flopping around all over the bed. I don't remember that at all. And I have no idea how I was doing it, since I had over twenty wires attached to me. I fell back to sleep on my left side for ten minutes, before sleeping the rest of the night on my back.
It's not that big of a deal, but I feel weird about it. I've always thought I was a stomach sleeper. My true sleep identity has been revealed to me now, and I'm just not comfortable with it.
But beyond that, my night sleep was really pretty good. I scored 84% on sleep efficiency- losing points because of taking too long to fall asleep and for the 5:30 AM flailing session. I was in the REM stage 29% of the time, which the doctor said was mildly excessive. Something about that made me feel bad, like I was being greedy...
Of course, I wasn't there complaining about my sleep at night anyway. The concern was that I kept nodding off in the middle of the day. So the test was really to see how I functioned after a full night of sleep. That was where all those naps they had me take came in.
After a night with the amount and quality of sleep that was charted, it should have taken me more than 15 minutes to fall asleep for a nap 90 minutes after I woke. The nap session is only 20 minutes, so they actually don't expect you to fall asleep at all. I was out in under five minutes. And woke up cursing and whining that I didn't get enough sleep. After being awake just 90 minutes after nine hours of sleep. And it was also supposed to take me 15 minutes to fall asleep during the next nap. It took 6 minutes. That was the pattern for the whole study.
The doctor told me that my brain has stopped sending the signal that it's time to wake up, and it's leaving me feeling like I'm still supposed to be asleep....
And while seeing all that brain activity on the charts, and being able to identify the problem so we can treat it was fabulous... I'm still obsessing on the fact that I'm a back sleeper.
Ok, that's the sleep study update. I thought I was going to post some links for Friday, but I can't remember what they were, and I'm not working tomorrow so Boyfriend and I can take a fast vacation. So have a good Friday and a fantastic weekend and I will post next week with ideas for a Thanksgiving centerpiece and some tips on how to make the most of the holiday season. Except that I'm totally lying about that.
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