When I lie awake at night, I think about what I would actually like to be kept awake by.
– Loesje
For most of my life, I slept like a log. But suddenly, I was frequently wide awake at 2am, listening to my husband breathing like a freight train. Naturally, I got upset with him. I grumbled about the snoring, the throat clearing, the tossing and turning. Whenever he left for a business trip, I slept soundly and took it as proof: he was the problem. My gentle suggestion for him to sleep in the guest room was well… not well received.
It wasn’t until I started connecting the dots between my new insomnia and the onset of menopause that I realised something else might be going on. Had he always made these noises? Was it me who had changed? I had to admit: I was now a feather-light sleeper. A leaf rustling outside could wake me. Worse, I couldn’t fall asleep again. I’d lie there tossing and turning, thoughts spinning like a washing machine. Even meditation didn’t help. My tried-and-tested breathing techniques had abandoned me. I felt powerless. I was cranky, snappy and exhausted. It felt like all the personal growth I’d worked so hard for had gone out the window.
Desperate for a solution, I tried it all: blackout curtains, brain retraining, herbal drops, superfoods like goji berries. Nothing worked. A friend swore by earplugs. I marched into a hearing clinic, determined. When asked if they were for swimming or clubbing, I replied, ‘For a snoring husband.’ The young woman at the clinic smiled knowingly: her mother had suffered from menopause-related sleep problems for years. Instead of custom-made £90 earplugs, I took the budget option. They muffled sound… slightly.
Then I remembered that drop in oestrogen also affects melatonin; our sleep hormone. I unearthed an old box of melatonin pills from the back of the medicine cabinet, still unopened… and the pills were way past their expiration date and looked rather grim and brown. As much as I wanted to sleep, I decided not to risk it.
I read stories online of women who hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in ten years. Some had their body clocks flipped entirely. As a women with big plans and ideas, I was panicking. I had so much inspiration; new books, a calendar, gadgets, a website… but no energy to bring them to life. Was this just how it was now? 1001 Ideas, zero energy. Thankfully, a week’s holiday was just around the corner.
This is a short summary of Chapter 4 of the Hot Flushes Diary. Want to know more? Head to the next blog for Chapter 5!
