Anyone want to share?

Hello to the select few who read my blog!

I have asked before, but am making another plea - this one is dancing on the fringes of being empassioned - for any folk out there who either sleep separately themselves, or know of others who do, who would be willing to be interviewed for my book.

I now have a looming deal with a publisher and need more material for the book, so am keenly interested in talking to more separate sleepers.

You, or your friends/acquaintances/work mates/relatives, don't have to sleep separately all the time; the separateness may be a part-time arrangement, or a sometimes arrangement.

I am willing to email questions, or phone for a chat - whatever is convenient.

So if there's anyone who would like to share..... get in touch on

                  jennyadams007@gmail.com

If only....

As part of the ongoing research for my book, I trawl through many, many websites. Yesterday I was poking around on YouTube and came across a video from The Better Sleep Council that renders my whole thesis and reason for writing redundant. Oops.

If only……!!!

If only I could have the same the Pollyanna approach to my problems of sleeping with my husband.

If only they had not recognised that you might want to possibly move to another room if ear plugs don’t work if you sleep with a snorer in a 'very-fast-blink-and-you’ll-miss-it' kind of way. 

If only I didn't quite like their sleep facts chart I could be a bit more dismissive.

And if only I didn't triple love this offering in their Press Resources Artwork section!

Finally, if only, I could change the logo to suit my thoughts on the issue......

If only I could say 'thank you The Better Sleep Council' for helping me find my voice in a quirky logo and 5 mins on Photoshop.


(PS     If only Lissa could spell her name sensibly)
(PPS   If only Zombieitis was a real word)

Tooting your own horn

An advertisement for Ikea caught my eye the other day. God bless the Swedes.

The ad was two alternating panels down the left-hand size of a website and they caught my eye.

The images both resonated with, and highly entertained me. Farting in bed - is there anything worse?

If forced (gun to head, about to shoot my cats as well, blah blah blah....) to choose between a snoring or a farting partner to share a bed with, I would choose snoring. Without getting into capitals and bolding text, I hate being forced to smell someone else's farts. And I hate it even more when it's in bed.

The even more galling part about it being in bed is the hilarity that my partners, current and past, have had and still do take from the act. And it's not just my partners who find it hilarious, most men tend to and an array of euphamisms have emerged over years and cultures to add even more humour (please, oh please let my sarcasm be evident) to the practice:

For your edification and enlightenment:

Fartin in da spoon	When you are with someone in bed, (spooned together) and one farts.
Warm the bed	The act of farting in bed in order to provide a more inviting environment for one's partner
Dutch oven	While lying in bed with another person, pulling the covers over someone's head while breaking wind, thereby creating an unpleasant situation in an enclosed space
Middle Eastern Steamer	When a person of middle eastern descent farts under the covers in bed then pulls the covers over their partners face to breath in and enjoy the aroma
Summer Breeze	A Summer Breeze is the act of farting in bed, fanning it at your partner with the sheets while singing Summer Breeze by Seals and Crofts
Hermit Crab	Where a single person, lies in bed, passes gas and then pulls the covers over their own head to enjoy their own essence.

While I have heard of (and experienced far too many times) a dutch oven, the other terms certainly formed a cultural learning from me.

So, some questions.

1. Why are farts funny?
2. Why do men in particular find farts funny?
3. Why are they funnier in bed?
4. Why does anyone think that it's ok to fart in bed when another person is trying to sleep?
5. Why is it ok to kill yourself laughing when you fart in bed with another person in there?

Final questions on this topic.

1. Who thinks the Sultan pocket spring mattress from Ikea would go anyway to improving the lot of those who sleep with brazen farters?
2. Why do I like to sleep in my own bed and my own room?

And so I leave you with the immortal words of Donna Summer.... "Toot toot, beep beep."

Wakey wakey!

How do you like to be woken in the morning? Being lovingly gazed upon by George Clooney on D. Porthault bed linen, listening to Riva boats ferry the rich and beautiful between the shores of Lake Como? Or is that just me?

How we wake, or how we choose to be woken can have a big impact on the relative success of the day ahead. I'm not suggesting this happens all the time, but I'm confident we've all been there.

The methods by which people choose to wake will be many and varied. Us separate sleepers have the luxury of not only choosing the method, but changing it whenever and 'why-ever' we want.

I have written before about the app that I use called Sleep Cycle. This app monitors my sleep patterns throughout the night (I am still COMPLETELY addicted to reviewing them first thing every morning - 75 days after the purchase) and wakes me gently, and caringly, depending on which stage of the sleep cycle I am in. As well as being totally taken by seeing what I got up to during the night, I like the fact that I can snooze a criminal number of times, before my phone eventually says "Enough" and starts vibrating.

(Admission - I can sometimes be heard talking to my phone when it stirs me for the 10th time with it's gentle 'Forest glade' alarm sound. Unilateral conversations of "yeah, yeah", "alright, I heard you", "I know it's time to get up" and "oh shut up" are not uncommon on the mornings of sub-7-hour sleeps.)

So what do the couples who share a bed do when they don't have the same desires when it comes to being aroused from slumber?

I had a boyfriend who wanted to be woken by TripleM on the radio every morning. For the non-Australian readers, click the link and the stories adorning the front page should give you a pretty good indication of the station's target audience. As I link through this evening, here's what's on offer....

If you like naked women and women kissing other women, then you have arrived at your dream radio station. But I digress. The main issue I had was that it is a hard rock station, on which a lot of "great rock hits from the 80s, 90s and now" were played. Quite simply, I kinda hate great rock hits from most eras. For the record, I mostly listen to Triple J - for mine, it's just a little more cerebral and interesting.

So back to the sleeping and the waking..... I can't tell you how many times I was wrenched from my sleep by a mid-40s, gravelly male voice, screaming unintelligible lyrics. I hated it. I would be cranky, and even more so, when I knew the boyfriend took perverse pleasure in knowing it annoyed me. This is just one of the myriad of reasons he is a past tense person.

Some folk wake up in the morning and bound into each day with a vim and vigour that is admirable. I am at the other end of the scale - hence arguing with an app on my phone - and I know there are others like me, who like to gently mosey on in to the day, quietly gathering their thoughts about the adventures awaiting us.

When you sleep with someone who has a different approach to greeting each new day, it can be a struggle to arrive at a mutually accepted method of waking.

So for those who may be struggling with their choice of wakening devices, consider this great app. And the bonus is, it comes with a funky gadget.

Before watching the video of the device in action, check out the great 'Sleep Tip' video the designers of the app have made. This one is #6 - The Cranky Girlfriend.

The app is the Lark alarm and sleep monitoring system. Click here to check out all the deets - or enjoy the YouTube video with at least better acting than the differently weighted duvet videos.

(Was v excited to see some Ikea cushions on the bed that I have too - the brown spotty ones.)

Is this the solution you have been looking for?

Until the morning then, I bid you a good night.

Can I quote you on that.....

Quotation, n.: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Do you have a favourite quote? A saying, or three, by which you live your life and explain away certain actions or decisions? It may, or may not surprise you to learn that there are many quotes about sleeping. In fact, there are pages and pages on the internet - and I haven't even considered looking through books of quotes (don't know if their index will be thorough and swift as Google).

I am using two types of quotes in my book. More formal quotes that capture a particular theme or message of a chaper, and then the quotes of the various people I am interviewing or discovering on blogs and chat rooms.

I thought I would share some of my favourite quotes to date. I shalln't give reasons for the inclusion of each one - suffice to say they have tickled my fancy and pricked my interest for a variety of reasons. I offer them here for consideration and enlightenment.

“All this fuss about sleeping together.

For physical pleasure I'd sooner go to my dentist any day”.

Evelyn Waugh

“If you didn't know what sleep was, and you had only seen it in a science fiction movie, you would think it was weird and tell all your friends about the movie you'd seen”

George Carlin

"Roll, twist, struggle, kick, fuss, sigh" Anonymous

"I think there’s something wrong. Her parents aren’t sleeping in the same bed anymore."
Gretchen Wieners, “Mean Girls”

"While I understand that my husband needs to go to the toilet during the night, must the activity involve the broken waterfall effect, a couple of farts and that much sighing?."   Sue, married 12 years

"It’s one of life’s little luxuries." (comment about farting in bed)

Ross, 42, Draftsman
 

“Sleep is my drug of choice”, Tanlee

The list we need to talk about....

I am feeling all smug and boastful at the moment after the female of a couple who recently stayed with us conceded that sleeping with her partner was not what she really wanted to be doing any more. The plans for her alternate existence involved having her own room where she wasn't interrupted by the short, sharp, but loud and repetitive snorts her husband emitted every night - some nights, louder and more often than others.

She explained to me though that it was what they were expected to do as they were married - they are in their late 60s.

This lady shared that she believed her partner would be most upset, because of the perceived rejection, if she were to suggest they sleep separately. She then, very quickly, followed this up with a well-rehearsed explanation that went something like "even though his snoring keeps me awake at night, it's so special to know that he is there next to me and when we wake next to each other and can lie and chat in bed, it makes all those sleepless nights seem worthwhile".

I do get that part of sleeping together, but the longing look on her face when she spoke about sleeping in her own bed belied the propaganda overtones of her generation's spiel.

As I have stated before, and will continue to do so, I am not anti bed-sharing. I am honestly jealous of those couples who get enough quality sleep each night in the company of their loved one. However, I feel dismay in equal proportions for those people who subject themselves to night after night of broken sleep for the sake of a social construct.

So while there is much that is warm, fuzzy and wonderful (low grade, blatant sarcasm noted by self) about sharing a bed, I put to you readers the list of what can go wrong.

I am supremely confident that I have not captured all the issues faced by couples who undertake the treacherous task of sleeping with each other, and invite anyone so inclined to add to the list either by comment or by email to me. Any new 'issues' will be included in the book.

This list is in no particular order; it includes both in-bed issues and what I call issued 'around' sleeping; some of the issues are ones that we don't really like to talk about (see the last three); and some are specific to a particular time in your life.

However, they are all behaviours or situations that can keep one or both people in the same bed from sleeping, and when they occur night after night, after night, after night....... you have to wonder.

Well, I do.

1. Snoring
2. Movement by partner
3. Sleeping with kids
4. Sleeping with pets
5. Loud breathing
6. Differing temperature needs
7. Getting up in the night to go to the toilet, get a drink, have a wander….
8. Reading in bed – lights on, noise of pages turning
9. Using computer, phone or other device in bed
10. Eating in bed
11. Watching TV in bed
12. Level of sound in the room
13. Level of light in the room
14. How you are woken – device for waking and the level of noise
15. The size of the bed
16. The firmness of the bed
17. Who gets to sleep on which side of the bed
18. Sheet textures
19. Amount and size of pillows
20. Differing sleep positions
21. To cuddle or not to cuddle
22. Teeth grinding
23. Sweating
24. Waking from dreams and nightmares
25. Going to bed angry
26. Sleep walking
27. Sleep talking
28. Insomnia
29. Illness – temporary or long term
30. Sleeping in the nude
31. Farting
32. Sleeping in the wet spot

Are there more? Please add to the list if you can.

I'm glad we got to share.

Heating things up between the sheets

While my blog is focussed on separate sleeping, I do acknowledge and celebrate those couples who happily, and even blissfully sleep in the same bed night after night.
I used to do it too. But those days are long gone.

While some couples 'sleeping planets' align perfectly and they can lie next to each other in perfect harmony, some do still have small niggles that need some attention. The temperature of the bed is a very common niggle. But fear not - there are companies out there that have heard the call.

(Disclaimer: this is not a comprehensively researched blog entry and there may indeed be companies that have a similar solution, but not a cheesey video, so I didn't include them)

First there's CosyCool adjustable duvets (doonas). The company's video to describe how their 'solution works' wasn't quite as entertaining as they may have intended it to be, but it gets the message across.

Maybe there's just not that much money in tog-adjustable duvets (doonas) and CosyCool hasn't been able to really sink some big bucks into an advertising campaign as yet.

Then there's the Twovet - the duvet for two who brush off the suggestion of sleeping apart to solve temperature problems - herecy!

Another solution that I can offer is to purchase two differently weighted single duvets (doonas) and enjoying your own bed clothing that can't be wrenched from you in a dramatic rolling manouvre during the night.

While the solution does not make for a very interesing product or possibly a great video. It's simple and doesn't require an overseas purchase.

If social modesty inhibits such a brash display of individualism, may I suggest a cover is strategically placed over the single doonas to give the illusion of togetherness.

So once again planets can align, and mars and venus can lie peacefully next to each other.

The silence of the sheets

I have written about many of the overt and obvious behaviours that create problems in bed. There are the in-between-the-sheets problems, such as snoring and bed cover stealing, and the problems that are created 'around' sleeping, such as differing bed times and temperature requirements.

But there is also a silent sleeping issue that instills fear into a loved-one's hearts, or that fuels the fires of an angry interchange between bed-sharing partners.

Allan Pease would be a more informed writer on the topic - it's the non-verbals of not getting along.

We all know that non-verbals are as equal, if not more powerful, than verbals when it comes to how people 'talk' to each other. I have such strong memories of heading to bed with a partner after a fierce showdown and dreading having to lie next to him. The urge to punch and/or suffocate said partner was often strongly resisted, balanced equally with the desperately sought desire to sleep.

Similarly, I was often the person in the partnership racked with guilt about bad behaviour, but unable to climb over a high wall of pride to admit my wrong doings.

Either scenario, however, probably looked a little something like this.......

I'm neither a pyschologist, nor relationship counsellor, but I don't think that any of these images scream "I'm getting a great night's sleep!!". (Mind you, the men in pictures 1 and 3 do look particularly peaceful - I won't even go there)

Taking a stressful situation to bed with you is not an ideal environment in which to sleep. The non-verbals associated with an argument can become a physical presence in a bed with a couple. It's the other 'person' who comes to have a threesome, that you really didn't want or invite.

Turned backs, stiff bodies, seriously loud and exaggerated sighing, dramatic turns in the bed, and innocent pillows punched, can all add up to lying for hours staring at the clock, the ceiling, or the inside of your eyelids.

The double whammy comes in the morning when you both awake to try to sort out the problem. You've got a foggy head and are unable to reason through the issues, because you have barely slept and are genuinely incapable of good logic.

How about this for a suggestion? You and your partner have a disagreement/argument/
stoush/whammy of a fight; you say what you can to smooth some waters over before bed time (or not); you then agree that some time apart might give you space and the chance to think things through.

Logically, what I am working towards is separate beds - be it for a night or longer. I can hear thousands, nay millions screaming that you need to go to bed with your estranged partner to keep the intimacy there in times of crisis and how can you have 'great make up sex' if you're not lying next to each other?

Sorry. I just don't agree.

I think there are many times where time apart can give you physical, emotional and mental space to work through problems and come to resolution faster than sticking it out in that small shared space.

And honestly, it's a personal thing. If my husband and I cannot resolve a fight before we go to sleep (and he is best at trying to get it resolved) we will still make sure we say 'I love you' and agree to sort the problem out the next day (or the day after). We realise that a tired head and heart aren't always the best tools to solve a breakdown in our relationship.

So we fight like any other couple, but don't need to get in to bed together to sort out the problem. Make up sex still happens, but it's not dependent on getting into a shared bed.

When we do disagree though, neither of us have to lie next to a stiffened board, or a flailing animal in death throes, huffing and puffing, as they work through their anger. We still make our way to our own rooms, taking care of each other's emotions and enjoying the gentle and welcoming silence of our own sheets.

I can't bear sleeping with you!

I've written before about famous couples who are quite open about sleeping separately.

There's the Queen and Prince Phillip, Helena Bonham-Carter and Tim Burton, Diane von Furstenberg and her husband, and Bob Ellis and his wife. (For the non-Australians, Bob Ellis is a political commentator and journalist).

However, I came across another famous couple who are separate sleepers. And this quite famous couple might surprise you - it certainly did me.

They are a couple that many people would not expect to sleep apart as the veneer of their life is one of a happy, normal family with two loving parents. They eat together, exercise together and take care of each other when their family unit is challenged.

For years, it didn't cross my mind that they were thought leaders in separate sleeping but have been getting the message out there since the beginning of the 20th century.

Readers, I give you Mother Bear and Father Bear.

To quote Goldilocks - on discovering their avant garde sleeping arrangement:

    She climbed on to Father Bear's bed and said "this bed is too high for me"
     She then climbed on to Mother Bear's bed and said "this bed is too low for me"
     She then lay down on Baby Bear's bed and said "this is exactly right"

They slept in separate beds!! How did I miss it?

If only they were still around to interview.

Feeling appy?

I have a chapter in my (yet to be finished, picked up by a publisher, or printed) book about the science of sleep.

Part of the chapter explains why us human folk will sometimes wake up feeling just grand and sometimes waking up feeling like a grand piano has landed on us (and may still be there). It's all to do with body clocks, circadian rhythms, sleep cycles, and goes something a little like this.

We all have a sleep cycle that we move through each time we close our eyes to rest. There are five stages to the sleep cycle; each cycle lasting approximately 90 minutes. Four stages are non-REM (rapid eye movement) and one stage is REM sleep, when we do most of our active dreaming and our eyes tend to move – hence the name.

Getting good, restorative sleep is not just a matter of spending enough hours in bed. The amount of time you spend in each of the stages of sleep matters. A normal adult spends approximately 50% of total sleep time in light sleep, 20% in REM sleep, and 30% in the remaining stages, including deep sleep.

Each stage of sleep in the sleep cycle offers benefits to the sleeper. However, deep sleep and REM sleep are particularly important.

The most damaging effects of sleep deprivation are from inadequate deep sleep. Deep sleep is a time when the body repairs itself and builds up energy for the day ahead. It plays a major role in maintaining general health, stimulating growth and development, repairing muscles and tissues, and boosting your immune system. In order to wake up energised and refreshed, getting quality deep sleep is key. Being woken in the night during the deep sleep or REM stages can impact significantly on the quality of sleep had each night and can contribute to an increase in the symptoms experienced from lack of sleep.

After telling a friend about this aspect of sleeping, she shared with me that she has an app on her iPhone that monitors your sleep cycles and wakes you up at some point within a half-hour window, but at an appropriate pace and time to coincide with what part of your sleep cycle you are in. The app is called Sleep Cycle.

It's a reasonably priced app and I really quite like it. As well as having very calming sounds to wake me, it does do the whole 'work out where I am in my sleep cycle and wake me appropriately' thing, but best of all - you get a very cool graph of your sleep pattern each night, a record of how long you have slept, and an average sleeping time over the nights you use it.

Example of sleep graph

I'm not on commission to sell the app - just wanted to share with any like-minded geeks who think that seeing your sleep pattern and knowing how long you have slept each night (and average sleeping times) will add value to your life.

It is certainly keeping me 'appy at the moment.

BTW - avg sleeping time over 19 nights is 7hrs 22mins.