Been toying with melatonin. 6 mg is okay but 9 gets me through a night. Take about 30 min before crash out time. I like it; doesn’t make me groggy.
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I am considering getting a weighted blanket. My old comforter is ancient, and although warm it is very light. The weighted ones are expensive, but I have some gift money squirreled away.
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I’ve looked into these as well. I’m concerned it would get hot; I am in the hot flash stage of life. I did some snooping around and it appears that the design is key; otherwise the weights just shift and pull the covers off the bed. Let me know how you like it.
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The one I was looking at was more of a duvet than a blanket – the weights were in quilted pockets and the cover was removable/machine washable. I was going to measure and see if my current duvet cover would fit over top.
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Yes, it is.
It’s a section of a larger one I haven’t finished.
You can see the whole panel at my Instagram:
@kellyhicksscreenkiss
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Be forewarned: it’s possible to have a reaction to melatonin.
It makes me hypothermic. Leaves me brutally cold, all the time.
I hear it works great for some people!
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My earliest memories of having trouble sleeping (according to societal norms) are from when I was around 6. My childhood was one of reading under the covers with a flashlight or waiting until my parents were asleep to get up and watch the late show and the midnight and 2am movies. Then getting in trouble for oversleeping and being late to school.
By high school, I had kept a log and figured out that my sleep schedule tended to shift forward if I just slept naturally. Going to bed and getting up at the same time just meant gradually more time lying there with insomnia and less time sleeping. (Non-24 SWD) But that doesn’t work with a school schedule, so I tried only sleeping every other night (would go to school, stay up all night, go back to school, then go to sleep as soon as I got home and sleep until it was time to go back to school the next day). Doing an all-nighter every other night and sleeping double shifts in between doesn’t work for adult me, but it got me through a school year.
Doctors weren’t much help, although I didn’t pursue it much. Sleeping pills didn’t help me get to sleep, they just made me stay asleep longer once I finally did get to sleep. The usual suggestions about lighting and exercise and so on have some effect but it’s temporary. Can’t really increase them to keep up with the forward shift.
Now I find that split sleep feels best, and combined with napping helps me jump the gaps when my sleep schedule shifts into/through daytime but I have to be awake during much of the day. A fairly flexible job makes an enormous difference with that.
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Folks with migraines may want to go easy on it too. The first time I took it, I had the migraine to end all migraines after the second day of taking it. I’m also hearing rumblings that using it every night can make your brain “permanently” dependent on it in order to sleep.
Quotes around “permanently” because with the brain and supplements nary a thing is truly permanent. I’m nearly confident your brain would figure it out within, say, six months. Buuut six months of sleep disruption would be more than I’d like to deal with.
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I went from someone who could never fall asleep, woke up groggy, would be getting by on 3-4 hours all the time - to someone who falls asleep within 15 minutes, and wakes up at 7 AM with no alarm.
Sleep Hygeine. This was my approach. It worked for me.
Especially the part where you only sleep in bed. No TV. No reading. Not even sex in bed (at least in the evening 
) until you have the pattern fixed and yourself trained to fall asleep.
Good luck! Sleep is the best. As a wise man once said:
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