Early Riser

Have you ever had one of those mornings where you wake up at some horribly awful hour of the early morning and in a deluged and half-awake state get up and get dressed before you realize your day isn't actually starting for another 3 hours?....

... yeah I never have either.

But the other morning I woke up around 3:00 to my side of the bed being totally invaded and nudged Tim to give me some more room.  But instead of just switching sides, he jumped out of bed, flipped on the closet light, and was almost dressed when he looked at the clock, mumbled something I didn't quite catch, and climbed back in bed.

Ironically enough, 3 hours later when the alarm actually did go off, he wasn't phased at all and needed a little help (read: several fairly forceful shoves) to get motivated.  Such a weird morning.

Enough is Enough

Wednesday marked a month and a half since my first bad dream fiasco, and since then it has only been an ongoing, losing battle.

I've tried Sleepy Time herbal tea, reading something good before bed, watching a good movie before bed, humming a favorite hymn, making Tim stay awake until I fall asleep, falling asleep with a dim light on, sleeping with the door open, sleeping with it closed... you name it and I've checked it off the list. All to no avail.

But I am constantly exhausted and was barely making it through finals week... not to mention now the happiness of my summer vacation is at stake. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I decided to ignore studying for a while a few afternoons ago and I did a little bedroom makeover. I totally rearranged everything; moved the bed, washed all the blankets, switched the dressers, rearranged the books on the shelves, I even vacuumed everything. And wouldn't you know we are going on restful, bad-dream-free night number four. I am just as thrilled as can be. I hate to jinx it, but could it be that we may have found the cure?!

Sleepless Nights

Well, it's been a few weeks now since my first bad dream episode and unfortunately my potential for restful nights only has a more dismal prognosis. I don't know what the deal is but they are still happening, they are still just as vivid, and if anything has changed it's that they are more frequent.

I've worked myself into some horrible cycle now I'm afraid:
Round 1: I go to bed thinking of the dreams and even if I wasn't going to have one, I wake myself up every few hours afraid that one is going to come. I sleep on and off all night in some kind of subconscious hope that there won't be enough time for a bad dream to come... unpleasant.
Round 2:After so many nights of sleep like that, I finally get tired enough to really fall asleep, but then a dream does come and I'm up anyway.
And then we're back to round one for a while.

It's starting to wear me down. I love naps, that's no secret.... I'll snag one whenever I can. But lately they've become a way of life. Sleeping in daylight keeps the dreams from coming and I have to make up for the lost time somehow. Unfortunately life doesn't stop for sleepless nights...

...if only....

Bad Dreams

Though I may not appear it, I am actually somewhat of a scaredy cat; I don't watch scary movies, I won't go to haunted corn mazes, and I get totally spooked by ghost stories. So you can imagine what kind of a night I had the other day when I was woken up by the worst dream I have ever had!

I have never been one to have bad dreams. I didn't have night terrors as a kid, I have never (or had never I guess) woken up screaming... aside from the occasional trying to run in slow motion type things I usually sleep pretty pleasantly. But for some reason the other night I had not only the most real dream I've ever had, but certainly the scariest.

I woke up sometime in the night surprisingly bright eyed and looked over at the clock. It was nowhere near time to get up so I snuggled back to try to get more sleep. And I guess I did fall asleep, but I fell right into a dream where I was lying awake in the dark in the middle of the night, just like I really had been. It felt so real, my room was exactly the same, Tim was even in bed next to me asleep just like he really was... and then it happened! Some scary thing came after me and before I knew it I was waking up breathing hard! And when I woke up, of course everything looked just like the dream, because my dream was just like reality... So weird! I was awake for a while & when I finally fell asleep the same thing happened again. This time I must have shouted because Tim woke me up. We turned on the lamp and he stayed awake with me until I fell asleep (quite a while later). Such an odd thing...

It's been a few days now and I still have trouble when the lights go out. I feel so silly. I'm fine all day, but as soon as we get in bed and Tim falls asleep all I can think of is that awful dream! I haven't slept well for a couple nights now, I'm hoping this passes soon. I hate being tired!

If anyone has suggestions about how to not be such a chicken let me know, I'm all ears!