Trading 3-4 Hours of Sleep For 7-9 Hours

This is an out of the ordinary post for me, as it has nothing to do with small space living (though it is tied to sustainability). Instead, it’s about sleep— something with which I’ve struggled for years without a full understanding of why.

I’ll preface this entry with a spoiler alert: there are no easy takeaways contained below. 

I didn’t pop a pill. 
I didn’t find a magical meditation app. 
I didn’t simply switch up my pillow. 
I didn’t study sleep or sleep habits and make changes accordingly. 

In fact, this was something that happened entirely unexpectedly. However, I can clearly identify why the shift occurred. 

For context: I’ve not slept well for about 12+ years. While there were some outlier nights of either 2 hours or 8 hours of sleep, my average night was somewhere around 3-4 hours. I can fall asleep easily— that’s always been the case. (Shout out to my parents and big sister for carrying me up the stairs night after night, from early childhood well into my teenage years.) But since my late 20s I’ve not been able to stay asleep. 

Prior to living in the cottage, I rented a tiny studio on the beach, and StanLee and I would get out of bed and jog whenever I couldn’t sleep. We logged about 9 miles a day, spread out over 3 outings over the day and night. It was a great way to prevent the lack of sleep from negatively impacting my energy levels or mindset.

When I was pregnant with West, I rested a lot. (I’ve never been a napper, but I certainly became one during my first and third trimesters.) Still, I never slept soundly through the nights, even as everyone kept warning me that I needed to sleep urgently, NOW NOW NOW, as I’d be unable to rest once the baby was arrived. (I never found that advice to be productive. In retrospect, it was downright obnoxious. I vow to never say such things to expecting parents.)

There are of course times in life when sleep becomes more of a challenge than others. Notable examples from my life include the 18 months of nursing, frequent bed-sharing, injury, sickness, phases of heightened stress (hello, tax season), etc. But my nightly habits for the past ~12 years pretty much made EVERY night feel like one of those notable times.

So what changed? Why did I abruptly go from getting 2-3 hours of light rest to 7-9 hours of sleep, with nearly half of that being blissfully deep sleep?

I’ll get to the point, I promise. But first, there were certainly gradual adjustments that helped when all added up, even if they weren’t what eventually tipped the scale.

Tackling Manageable Worries: I can remember spending dozens of nights awake wondering things like: I feel so tired— is it something serious? Should I go get tests done? What will we do when our Cobra health insurance runs out while I’m pregnant? Can I even get pregnant again? The planet is on fire and I feel like I’m not doing enough. What do I do? How much will I have to pay during tax season, and will we be able to afford it? Is there mold in our built-in headboard? Is the artificial grass filled with chemicals that are unhealthy for West’s skin and lungs? (That grass— which has since been replaced— was something we got in a hurry several years ago, which I fully regret.) All of these questions have answers, so I finally made a point to chip away at them every day until they were fully addressed. Converting those thoughts into actions made a HUGE difference in my buzzing brain. It might seem foolish to have waited so long, but money, logistics and time play heavy roles in tackling such topics, and I hadn’t prioritized them the way I should have. It was a mistake I’ll never make again.

Beverages: For about 6 months, I’ve been drinking water from a 32”oz mason jar, which I fill up about 4x per day. Oddly enough, I find this vessel effective due to how bulky and cumbersome it is— it simply cannot be overlooked or neglected. Because I drink so much throughout the day, I rarely have the desire to drink before bed, meaning I don’t wake up due to thirst or to visit the bathroom. As far as alcohol is concerned, I’ve been trying to get pregnant for so long that I rarely drink, or will have just 1 glass of beer/wine/champagne on occasion. As for caffeine, I love an oat milk coffee or latte, but I only drink one cup in the mornings. Limiting these beverages can only assist in achieving sounder sleep.

Bed: After reading about how manufactured fibers and treated textiles contain chemicals absorbed by our skin, I decided to invest in a quality mattress, bedding, pillows and pajamas. This is certainly an investment, so we approached it gradually over time, occasionally with the help of sponsors.

Relationships: I’m lucky to be surrounded by the most wonderful humans. They love. They care. The give. They show up. Still, there are some people who require vast amounts of energy on a normal basis, even if they don’t mean to. I made a point to be available to these individuals as much as possible without letting them inadvertently highjack my ability to focus on my family and my work. There will always be highs and lows in all of our lives, and I intend to be supportive during those moments, as well as the ones in between. But as far as the day-to-day is concerned, reasonable and loving boundaries are required. And they’ve helped… a lot.

Phone: We all know that it’s healthiest to put the phone away at night, curbing our urge to scroll, which can often result in buying things we don’t need while disrupting our minds and bodies during periods of time in which they should be relaxing and recovering. But it’s easier said than done for some of us. I always turned my phone on night mode, but between running my own small business and wanting to be available if a friend or family member was distressed or had an emergency, I would still check throughout the night to be sure that everything was fine. When I realized I was too tired to construct intelligible emails or even drive the car in case of an urgent matter, I knew that putting the phone in another room at night was necessary in order for me to be my healthiest self, and to best make myself of use for others. 

While all of the above helped, something that happened to us towards the close of February was the turning point.

The Big Shift… Stress: Stress plays a prominent roll in about 75 - 90% of illnesses and doctor visits, and is considered one of the primary heath problems in America today. I knew this, and I knew that stress was absolutely keeping me awake at night. But I didn’t know how to shut it down. And while all the above steps helped decrease my stress for clear reasons, I was still tracking just 3-4 hours of sleep per night on my Ava bracelet, with only a sliver of that time being deep sleep.

Then, unexpectedly, my business experienced a major change from external factors. The system we’d had in place for years to help us earn income (via advertising) to supplement the bulk of our work (about 90% of which is unpaid), ceased to be beneficial for all parties involved, and came to an end. To put it in more traditional terms, Adam and I basically both suddenly lost our highest paying jobs at the same time.

I could’ve taken this the opposite way, becoming more stressed and even increasingly more sleepless. Especially because it happened shortly after I decided to shut down parts of my business that accepted small amounts of affiliate money from Amazon, as well as interior decor services that I found to be unnecessarily harmful to the planet. 

But, down deep, I knew this bigger change needed to happen. Because I believe what I read in The Future We Choose: Surviving The Climate Crisis— we all have to do what is necessary to deal effectively with the climate crisis. And, for me, this new chapter in our lives in part of doing what is necessary— not necessarily what is lucrative. 

I’m not patting my own back. Indigenous groups and mindful individuals and communities around the world have managed to be responsible stewards of the planet while providing enough for their families since day one. My actions within this culture of consumption got us here in the first place. It’s time I work harder to correct the the damage done while I was busy being complicit in it.

This is just another step towards (re)training myself and acquiring new skills and habits to help us reduce our negative footprint, increase our positive footprint, and to then share our experiences with our readers. And while it’s absolutely terrifying to suffer a huge slide in income as both a business and a family, I believe that it’s infinitely more important to leave behind an inhabitable earth for our children than it is to leave behind mounds of flashy stuff they don’t need.  

I’ll keep creating, and if if people continue to deem it worthwhile hopefully the money will follow. This time around, I’ll be the one setting my company’s goals. This investment in myself has dissolved my stress to a degree I would’ve never believed possible just a few short weeks ago. 

It is not the easy thing, but it is — beyond a doubt — the right thing. And in the end, THAT is what helps me sleep at night.