Sleep Max-PM, How I love thee...

Seriously, I am in love with this stuff! It really works!! It is completely natural, so no drugs! It contains Chamomile, Valerian Root, and Melatonin (1.5 mg). It also has some Calcium and Magnesium.

Last night went really well. I feel asleep quickly. Nathan woke up a lot, but I was able to fall right back asleep. Feeling really good this morning.

I am still going to make an appointment with the doctor to ask him about if I have a melatonin deficiency or not. I have so many of the symptoms, so I am wondering if this has been my problem since I was little.

Here are the symptoms of melatonin deficiency. I have starred the ones that I have.

insomnia**
difficulty getting to sleep**
difficulty falling back to sleep when awaken during the night**
light sleeper/easy waking during the night** I am a serious light sleeper.
early morning awakening**
un-refreshing sleep**
lack of dreaming** Hard to dream when you don't get sleep.
family history of insomnia**
personal or family history of breast cancer**My aunt
personal or family history of prostate cancer
prostate enlargement
fatigue**
depression** I struggled with this a lot in high school and college.
irregular menstrual cycle
unusual menstrual flow (light or heavy)
PMS**Just ask Brandon
scoliosis
poor sleeping prior to menses** My insomnia gets worse before my cycle.
anxiety** I have really bad anxiety and panic attacks.
sensitivity to stress**
cataracts
neurodegerative disorder (MS, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, ALS, etc)
elevated cholesterol
high blood pressure
blood clots
heart attack
heart arrhythmias** Noticed this in college. Diagnosed with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia

So I have 16 out of 27. That is 60%. And most of the ones that I don't have are related to older individuals. Melatonin deficiency is common in later life.

Sleepy time

This was me last night------->


My herb and supplement combination finally worked. I am kinda in shock this morning. Granted it wasn't as fast as it could have been, but I will take a couple hours over 4-5! It made me drowsy, but alert for Nathan. It was nice. I felt ok when I woke up this morning. In fact, I could have slept for a few more hours. I hope that it wasn't a fluke! I am going to try again tonight.

Herbal/ natural remedies for sleep

Um, I've tried them all. :( And none of them work for me.

I've tried:
Rescue Remedy for sleep
Valerian Root
Calm's Forte
Magnesium
Honey
And different combinations of all the above.

I honestly think that it is a physical problem as well as a mental one. I spoke with an herbalist today and he said that Melatonin (around 1 mg) is safe for breastfeeding moms. I am going to try that tonight. Hopefully I will have good news to report. If this doesn't help me, I am going to call tomorrow and make an appointment with my doctor (you know it's serious if I am willing to seek medical help). Hopefully he can recommend a course of treatment or refer me to a specialist. Tired of being tired and going to finally do something about it.

Wish me luck with the Melatonin. :)

Night, night...

Nathan is saying "night, night" now! It is adorable! I say "Nathan it is time to go night, night." And he says it right back and runs over to the bed. Cutie, cute, cute!

In other nighttime news, I am really not sleeping well. Thinking about just going back to some Benadryl or something....am I a failure or what?! I just wish I didn't have to deal with this. I really think that the root of the problem lies in the fact that I am honestly a night owl. I would prefer to stay up late and get up late. But alas, the cutie pie mentioned previously makes that impossible.

Sleep update

Or lackthereof...

It is NOT going well folks. At. All. I have never been so tired in my life. For the past four nights I have had 4 hours or less of broken sleep. No matter how tired I am, I lie awake until 3 or 4 in the morning. It is awful. Clearly the magnesium and honey aren't working.

I am going to try to order another herb that is "supposed" to help with sleep. I will give that a really good effort. But after that, I am going to make an appointment with The Sleep Center in Indy. I honestly think that something is wrong. I, clearly, don't know what that may be, but humans are not supposed to be like this.

I will update after getting the "magic" herb.

Night Three, teeth, and the Great Imitator

Night three did not go so well. It started off kinda rough. Nathan was really not wanting to go to sleep. Around 11 he finally drifted off. I fell asleep shortly after! That was really great! However, my darling husband decided to sleep with his phone in the room. Well wouldn't you know it, it goes off at 4 freaking AM! The one night that Nathan decides to sleep longer than a 3 hour stretch, I get woken up by something else! Grrrr.... Nathan didn't wake up at this time though. Oh no. He waited until around 5:30 when I had just (kinda) drifted off to sleep after the 4am wake up call. Well after that, I just called it quits. There was no way that I was getting back to sleep. So I have been up since 4am. I'm tired and cranky. I'm sure Brandon is scared to come home. LOL!

In other news, Nathan is teething! Fun, fun! I noticed a tiny bit of tooth poking through last week. Well I peek in there today and see that his molars are coming in! They look downright painful.

He is still being a cutie pie though. He has turned into the Great Imitator! He loves to imitate Mama and Daddy. The other day, we saw that he had the can of moouse (for hair). He shook it up, tipped it over, pretended to get some mousse on his hand, put the can back down, rubbed his hands together, and put his hands into his hair! It was the cutest thing. He knows exactly what product goes with what. He will take the contact solution bottle and pretend to put it in the contact case. He is hilarious.

Night Two

Night two went awesome!! I can't believe how well it went. :) It took me about 1.5 hours to fall asleep. Not too bad! I focused on my breathing again and don't really remember falling asleep! That is a good sign for me. Nathan did a little better last night. He was up at 2:30, 4:30, and 6:30. He woke up at 9:00! Mama got to sleep in! I felt really great getting up. Didn't have a headache and was able to bounce right out of bed.

Thanks for being so supportive!! It really means a lot! I am sure that there will be bad times and good times with this but it helps to know that I have done it! Feels really good. Can't wait to tell Brandon when he calls at lunch.

Night One

Well I did it! My first night without meds!

Granted it wasn't a great night by any means. I was extremely nervous going to bed. Very jittery and wired. So I knew that it would take awhile to fall asleep. The dark room really seemed to help though. I was asleep within 2 hours. Big improvement from 4-5 hours! I really just tried to concentrate on my breathing. 5 seconds inhale, 5 seconds exhale. That really seemed to help. Nathan woke up a lot last night though. He was up at 3:30, 5:30, 6:30, and 7:30. It's ok though. I didn't expect miracles. :)

But I did it. And that is what counts. I couldn't have done it without Brandon though. He came up to me last night and said "I really admire you for doing this." That made it much easier on me. Thanks honey!

Insomnia (New info in bold....)

Yes, I have it. I have decided to stop living with it though. I just can't do it anymore. I need to sleep and I need to have healthy sleep habits. I don't right now. So sit tight, you are going to learn far too much about me. Note: This will be a long post. And I thank you in advance for reading my thoughts.

I have struggled with insomnia for many, many, many years. I really don't remember exactly when my sleep issues started. Probably sometime in early infancy. But from what I can remember, I have always been a person that literally CANNOT fall asleep. I remember being around 8-9 and seeing a scary movie at a slumber party. I was literally scared out of my mind and refused to fall asleep. I slept on the floor of parents bedroom for weeks and weeks. I had to see a therapist because my sleep issues were out of control. I remember going to the therapist and talking about what I was afraid of when I was falling asleep. I remember telling her that I was afraid of fire and people breaking into the house and dying in my sleep. I remember saying that I was up all night thinking about school and people and everything. I don't really remember ever being "cured". I just remember not going anymore and sleeping in my own room again.

My sleep issues never went away. I remember in high school, lying awake until 3 or 4 in the morning because I was just thinking. My brain started to actually hurt from all the thinking. So I started to watch late night television to try to concentrate on something other than my own thoughts.

Fast forward to college, when I got my first symptoms of interstitial cystitis. I was up in the bathroom probably every 20 minutes or so. And it wasn't easy to get sleep when the bathroom was a trek down the hallway. You know that pain you feel when your bladder is so full that you are about to burst? I feel that every minute of every day. My freshman year was really hard to deal with. I related my bladder issues to the fact that it was a nervous habit because of my insomnia.

A year or so later, I remember taking benadryl every night to fall asleep. I was so dependent on it. I couldn't sleep without it.

When I met Brandon, I was finally diagnosed with IC. And we made every effort to try to treat it. There is no cure for IC so we were kind of lost. Benadryl seemed to help. However at this point I was taking double the recommended dose because I had built up a tolerance to it (I am not proud of this). Because of the excess benadryl, I was also having to take Tylenol everyday because I woke up with a headache.

Over time (I have no idea exactly how) I gradually stopped taking it. I think because we were trying to get pregnant and I didn't want any baby to be getting that kind of medication. I was still up a lot and it still took hours to fall asleep. But it was different because I was thinking of the proverbial baby.

When I got pregnant with Nathan, my IC went into a remission period. It was great. I was still getting up several times a night but nothing like every 20 minutes. It was really nice. Every once and awhile I would have horrible nights but overall I was doing better.

Fast forward to Nathan arriving (yay!) and add a wakeful newborn to my IC and insomnia. It wasn't a pretty picture. It was taking me hours to fall asleep in the first place. I was having to sneak out of bed every hour or so to go to the bathroom. After every nighttime feeding, I was awake again for hours at a time trying to fall back asleep. It was a nightmare. I began to become resentful of Brandon. He was able to fall asleep in 5 minutes and slept straight through the night. This was a source of fighting in our marriage. I felt so alone at night. Alone with my thoughts.

When Nathan was around 9 months old or so, I decided that I couldn't take it anymore. I researched and found out that Ambien was safe to take while breastfeeding. So I made an appointment and got on Ambien. It was so much better. All of a sudden, I was sleeping soundly but still waking up to tend to Nathan. I was able to fall asleep quickly after every nightwaking and I was becoming less angry with Brandon. It was like a miracle or something.

After months and months on Ambien, I found out that there was no way that I could sleep without it. If I didn't have it, there was no sleep for me that night. When my bottle would run empty and I didn't make it to the drugstore I was frantic. I resorted to an old standby, Benadryl. I knew that it was also safe to take during pregnancy but it was really not as good as Ambien. I would still lie awake for hours and wake up with a headache.

So moving forward to a couple nights ago, I went to refill my script for Ambien and discovered that I was out of refills. I took this as a sign. I needed to stop. I needed to stop being so dependent on something to fall asleep. So I gave it a try. At 3 am, I decided that I needed to sleep so I took a Benadryl. Two hours later, I was alseep. Between waking up to pee, Nathan wanting to nurse, and an early morning waking, I got three hours of sleep.

The next night (last night) was more of the same. I tried to go without the Ambien and ended up taking a Benadryl. Awake still at 3 am, I realized that I really have a problem. My mind just kept going. I would thinking about Nathan and about what I would do if something ever happened to him. I would think about circumcision and how wrong it is and how stupid I was. Then I start berating myself and yelling at myself. It just kept going. My mind just didn't stop.

Around 4am, I made a pact with myself. This ends now. I can't mentally or physically handle this anymore. Today is a new day and I am going to try to end the cycle of insomnia. I am going to be looking for more natural ways to help myself. Any thoughts would be most helpful. I am done putting chemicals in my body that dictate when I sleep. I had to type this all out because I needed to be held accountable for this.

Thanks for reading. I am not proud of where I am right now. I know that it sounds bad. But the good thing is that I am working on change.

After I wrote this, I posted about my stuggles on Mothering. I got several responses of support and ideas for my problem. I am going to try the following:

1. Turning off the nightlight and getting some darker curtains. I have kept the nightlight on since Nathan was born so that I could see him and help him latch on at night. Well, I don't really think this is needed anymore. He normally does just fine on his own.

2. Start taking a Magnesium supplement. Several have said that it really helps them.

3. Eating 2 tablespoons of honey per night. According to the Hibernation diet.

I figure, it can't hurt to try! :)

Thanks also, to Mandy for suggesting Melatonin. I looked into that, but like you said, it isn't safe for nursing. Thanks so much though for taking the time to read and post. Means a lot!