A Solid Eight Hours
I am pretty serious about bedtime for my girls.
They go to bed at 7:00 (or 7:30 in the summers when it stays light so much later) and then they get up sometime between 7:00 and 8:00.
Occasionally on vacation or a weekend, they’ll stay up a bit later, but even then, it is extremely rare that they aren’t in bed by 8:30.
When they stay up late, I can tell that they are crabbier, so we don’t let them stay up late very often.
And yet . . . I still struggle to get myself to go to bed on time. Even if I’ve felt exhausted all day, as 10:30 comes around, I have a hard time making myself wash my face, brush my teeth and actually get into bed.
I recognize that I’m way more impatient and unpleasant when I’m sleep-deprived and that I have a hard time being a nice mom. Not to mention that it is practically impossible for me to be very productive.
And whenever I do focus for any period of time on getting enough sleep, I see immediate improvement in my mood, productivity, and eating. (All of which begs the question, “Why am I such an idiot about not actually just going to bed?”).
I knew when I started using my Jawbone UP MOVE that sleep would be harder for me than getting in 10,000 steps.
For the first few weeks, I set my goal for seven and half hours of sleep. After I was consistently hitting that, I moved it up to eight hours. I am not one of those people who thinks they can get by on little sleep – I know that I need a good eight hours to get by.
I wear my Jawbone UP MOVE to bed (I worried that I’d have trouble sleeping with it because I have a hard time wearing anything extra – a tiny pair of stud earrings, socks, etc – while I sleep, but after the first night, I haven’t noticed it at all) and in the morning, I can see exactly how much I’ve slept.
Once it syncs to the UP app, you can see how long it took you to fall asleep, how many times you woke up, and when you were in deep sleep and light sleep. I’ve been using it for a month, and I’m still not tired of telling Bart, “Guess how much deep sleep I got last night?!”
Also, when I’m getting up with the baby in the night, it’s really helpful for me to be able to see exactly what times I woke up and how long I was up (and how long it took me to fall back asleep afterward).
Hilariously, one morning when I got a truly terrible night’s sleep, the Smart Coach feature on the UP App told me, “You got two hours less sleep than normal. Resist the urge to be grumpy all day, and go to bed early.” Note that if Bart had told me this, I would have found it much less hilarious.
Also, there is something deeply satisfying about waking up, pressing my Jawbone UP MOVE button and seeing all sorts of twinkly lights indicating that I hit my sleep goal. It’s like you’ve been productive before you’ve even gotten out of bed.
And if I didn’t get enough sleep, I can take a little nap in the afternoon and get in the extra time I missed during the night and get credit for it. How can you possibly complain about that?
I'm definitely someone who needs a solid 9+ hours but it's a struggle with balancing time with your spouse in the evenings and all the other to dos once the kids are asleep and getting to bed on time. I just got a Fitbit that will track my sleep and look forward to using it once I no longer have a newborn who is up every few hours to nurse!
I hear you. Nighttime after my son goes to bed is the only time of day I get to relax or spend time with my husband. It's hard to give that up, even for sleep.
My son is finally sleeping a ten hour stretch (FINALLY), but I too struggle to get to bad before ten or ten-thirty, especially now that I'm off for the summer. I can totally pinpoint the cause- I'm too excited for the free time!
Seriously. I've always been terrible at this. But I know I need at least 8 hours to feel really rested. I've stayed up until past midnight the last week reading. It's terrible.