Aaaah, Sleep!

I have had sleep problems for a long time now. It had reached the point where I dreaded going to bed, knowing that I would be facing a night of broken sleep, getting up several times, being unable to go back to sleep, sometimes just getting up and wandering around the house, going on the computer, watching TV, or reading, but NOT sleeping.

Then I was becoming more and more of a zombie during the day. Very few people function well on three to five hours of sleep on a consistent basis.

I realized I was also operating in a low level of depression that was not getting better.

I finally talked to my doctor about this. She prescribed a small dose of antidepressant.

Since I started on this medication I have been sleeping seven to nine hours each night!

It is such a relief!

Sleeping In

This morning I slept in. I realize this is not a particularly newsworthy event, but it is an appreciated event.

When I was young it was accepted common knowledge that the older you got, the less sleep you needed. Life experience has now taught me what sleep researchers finally figured out--it's not that we need less sleep when we age, it's that it becomes more and more difficult to get enough sleep when we age. There are a number of physiological reasons for this, but the upshot is that we senior citizens are often walking around sleep deprived. That's the reason we tend to doze off so often during the day!

This photo has nothing, really, to do with that, except it is a sleeping picture that always amuses me. I took it in 1969 when my first baby, daughter Anne Marie, was quite new. No one in our little family was getting enough sleep during that period, because she was not a good sleeper. One Sunday afternoon Jerry lay down to rest with the baby. When I looked in he was sound asleep with the pacifier in his hand. Little miss Anne Marie was, as usual, bright-eyed wide awake!

I am thankful for the blessing of sleep today.