To Sleep, Perchance to Steam

For the first twenty years of our marriage, my husband and I slept like spoons, curled up around each other and turning over in slow synchronization. There was no better ending to a stress-filled day than the comfort of lying skin-to-skin and sensing the rhythm of his sleeping breath.

Then menopause hit, and I was suddenly unable to curl up next to him for more than a few minutes without melting into a pool of sweat. Reluctantly, I rolled over to sleep at the edge of our bed, as far away as possible from his warm body.

Now, at an age well past menopause, my sleep habits have continued to evolve, and not in a good way. I am still hugging the edge of the bed instead of my husband. But temperature intolerance is not the only change in my sleeping habits as I have grown older.

When I was younger, I sometimes had difficulty falling asleep, but once asleep, I slept deeply and found it hard to wake up, often luxuriously sleeping through two or three repetitions of the snooze alarm. Now, the pattern is reversed: I fall asleep easily but find myself awakening almost every night around two or three in the morning. Even though I’m still tired, I find it very difficult to go back to sleep.

Most books and articles about insomnia and sleep focus on the initial phase of falling asleep at bedtime. They suggest limiting caffeine to the morning, avoiding alcohol before bedtime, getting exercise during the day, watching what and how much you eat after dinner. Other suggestions are taking a hot shower before bed, doing some gentle yoga or simple stretches, and going to bed at the same time every night. All of these may help someone who struggles to fall asleep initially, but none of them seem to have any effect on waking up in the middle of the night.

Some friends recommended using benadryl, the over-the-counter antihistamine, to induce sleep. They use it all the time, they say. However, a little research on the internet led to some studies suggesting that long-time use of diphenhydramine, the active ingredient in benadryl, can lead to dementia in older adults. No thank you, I’ll get there on my own in due time no doubt - no reason to hurry it along!

Another suggestion is melatonin, which is readily available at any drugstore. It sounds logical in theory - your body naturally makes small amounts of melatonin, and it’s instrumental in keeping your circadian rhythm consistent by making you sleepy in the evening. I tried it for some months with no difference in my sleep that I could ascertain.

Then I remembered that when I was an adolescent, and had difficulty falling asleep at a reasonable bedtime, I would often read myself to sleep, using a particularly boring book. I had a paperback copy of William Shirer’s “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” whose 1,245 pages helped me to sleep for at least a year. I could not read more than a page or two without immediately dropping off. Nowadays I use a Kindle, so as not to wake my husband by turning on a bedside lamp. Lately, I’ve been working through “War and Peace”, whose Russian names and nineteenth century social scheming can sometimes lull me to sleep. But it’s not a surefire solution, as sometimes the plot speeds up and I find myself reading for hours.

I understand that wakefulness in the wee hours of the night is a common problem among older people. If you have some methods that work for you, please share them in the comments below.