How Long Does It Take You to Go to Sleep? / Sleep Schedules for Grownups

Yeah I love to read before bed but I usually get through a couple of pages before I cannot keep my eyes open anymore. I roll over all fall right to sleep. I also try and take a nap everyday on the couch. Takes me about 5 minutes or less to fall asleep. I would get more done if I was like you. :)

I have used sleeping pills briefly -ambien, when I was pregnant even, to get me into a regular sleeping habit. It seemed to help, but there's the issue of becoming dependent on them, I know. I luckily was able to avoid that. I sometimes try to get non-fiction reading -interesting enough to get me into it so my body/mind slows down, but not interesting enough to keep me up. Sometimes I can read fiction to fall asleep, but sometimes I get into a book and then that keeps me up b/c I want to keep reading. Good Luck.

I flop around like a dog looking for that spot, ya know the perfect spot. Once I find the spot I fall asleep within five minutes and sleep till my alarm goes off. I get about seven hours of sleep a night.

I want to be my husband. He is snoring before his head hits the pillow. If there was something I want the secret to it is how he falls asleep so quickly.

I sleep (actually go to bed) about five nights per week, less than 4.5 hours of sleep on those nights, I hate it!! It has been this way forever and has been worse since my daughter started driving almost four years ago.

I function well with this little sleep but there is absolutely no need to live like this. We have ruled out medical issues, melatonin & Ambien are like tic tacs (not useful), tv, no tv, exercise early or late it doesn't matter. I had one fluke week in Hawaii in September and slept almost seven hours every night...maybe it was a carbon monoxide leak. It felt so good!

I have insomnia and I have since birth. :-) It's just part of my chemistry. Since I started treatment for anxiety and depression, I've also been treated for the insomnia with Trazadone. It's been a lifesaver. The few times I've been hospitalized since then, I've been given Ambien in addition/in place of and I hated it. I had crazy dreams and it made me feel drunk and high. Trazadone just makes me feel normal and, "Oh hey, it would be good to go to sleep now." I've been on the same dose for 8 years.

I need my 8 hour average a night, or I start to become a not-so-fun person. This is one good reason why I will never have a second child.

I'm like clockwork, we usually watch something from 8-10 and then I either turn off the television and read/crossword puzzle myself to sleep. Or, I turn on Burns&Allen and sort of doze off.

Oh, and I didn't mention, but usually advil and a nightcap are involved. That may sound a bit debauched, but most nights if I don't take ibuprofen, I wake up hurting. I've discovered that a nice glass of beer or wine or a martini and three or four advil makes for a very good night of sleep. (It doesn't knock me out, by the way, I still wake up if I hear Kiddo or my husband moving around.) I wake up refreshed and ready for the next day. Perhaps I shouldn't do this, but I really don't care. I hate waking up achy, and I like my sleep. I just drink a lot of water during the day to offset it.

I should also add that I am captive to the routine. I don't sleep nearly as well elsewhere or if I miss that 10 o'clock window. Then I'm up until midnight. ugh.

I don't go to my bed until I am exhausted, or I end up staring at ceiling for 3 hours thinking about all the stuff we've got going on. I usually go to bed around 1, and am up by 6ish. But being pregnant right now I get tired earlier so I might be asleep by 11:30.

My sleep is broken because I can't find a comfortable position since I have to sleep on my side and I am a naturally tummy sleeper. Also, if I hear coughing from the kids' rooms I start to stress out that one of them is getting sick, and how it might affect our plans for the week. Then I start to grind my teeth, and end up waking up with a headache ;-) So, that's how I "sleep."

It's definitely getting harder the older I get.
7-8 hrs a night is a good night.
More often I get 5-6 hrs of sleep.
It's just hard to settle down.
If I go to bed and I'm not tired I'll just lie there for a few hours wide awake.
Several times a year I get insomnia so I don't/can't sleep for about 3 days.
After that I sleep fine for awhile.
I can't have any caffeine after noon and I can only have 1 cup of coffee early in the morning.
I need the bedroom to be on the cool side and dark.
Excersize early in the day is good but avoid it for several hours before bedtime.
First thing in the morning get some bright light into your eyes or use a SAD light early in the day.
Melatonin helps.
Valerian helps too but I have to take breaks from it when it starts to give me strange dreams.
Chamomile tea in the evening helps.
L-ornithine helps.
ZZZ-quil helps.
You might want to see your doctor about it and maybe have a sleep study done.

Oh, R., that sounds miserable. I don't know how people manage with insomnia.

I used to take sleep for granted. Until menopause when I found myself waking up and not being able to get back to sleep. It was awful. I was tired all the time, even at night when I couldn't sleep.

Thankfully, that passed after a few (long) years and I'm again able to sleep when I choose and get 7-8 hours a night. But I don't take it for granted any more!

If I have ANY caffeine after 3:00pm then I won't be able to sleep. If I go to bed anytime before 10:00pm I either won't be able to fall asleep, or I will fall asleep for a short nap and then wake up and be unable to fall back to sleep. On a normal night I will go to bed at 10:30 or 11:00pm, read or watch tv for an hour, then put on some soft jazz or classical music and drift off. As long as my sleep is uninterupted I sleep until 7:00am and wake up rested.

i go to bed around 10 (after taking melatonin) and up at 6:30 on weekdays, or 9-10 am on weekends. i couldn't function without sleep. i take melatonin because if i don't i am like you awake thinking about bs things.

oh nooo...i don't sleep like you, sorry. have you tried a good workout before bed?

anyway, i get up at 4:30, work out, get the kiddo to school, work 8-10 hours, pick kiddo up, dinner/dishes/laundry/etc, him in bed by 7:30, and then i am crashing by 9:30. if i think i might not fall immediately to sleep, i pickup the kindle and usually after 10 or 15 minutes of reading, i put it down and am out in about 30 seconds.

My sleep is precious to me. I think the interrupted/ lack of sleep the hardest thing about having become a parent. Before DS, I would be up till midnight, wake at 6:30, then have marathon sleep ins no the weekends when I would sleep till noon or later. Nowadays, I hit the sack at 10:30/11 and still wake at 6:30, but I am seriously missing that marathon catch up sleep.

I usually sleep easily, but can remember that when DS had first started sleeping through the night, it took me about a week to go back to sleeping through myself.

Maybe a glass of wine, a few tylenol, a warm bath, or some other calm down regimen for 7-10 days can help you set some better sleep protocols. Remember, practice makes perfect.

Good luck to you and yours,
F. B.

My kids are 10 and 11 (almost 12....he'll tell you).

They go to bed at 8:30 and 9pm after reading for 30 minutes in bed.

My husband and I usually go to bed at 9:30-10pm, after a shower and prayers together.

I can usually fall asleep within 10 minutes of laying my head on the pillow. After so long in the military, being deployed, in the field, whatev...I can pretty much sleep on demand. I just have to be able to lean my head on something.

I usually wake up at 6:30am, whether an alarm is set or not.

The only time I mess up my sleep cycle...is if I nap. I can't nap. If I pull a night shift, I will stay up until my normal bedtime in order to get back on schedule. Napping just doesn't work for me.

I have insomnia. I sleep some nights 4-5 hours with it all being interrupted constantly. No, not a kid issue but rather a me issue. I do go to bed nightly of course but I don't sleep. I haven't got 'regular' sleep in about 16 years. I've had insomnia the way I do for 10+ years. I'm perpetually exhausted and haven't felt rested in so long I don't even know what that's like. Medications will only knock me out if they're exceptionally strong and I take wayyyyy too many. *Note, none of of 'regular' sleep or drug induced sleep is ever restful.*

I'm envious of people who get typical sleep. Today I'm cranky(due to constant pain and no sleep)and I have to go spend ____@____.com mall clothes shopping with my daughter. I'm dreading dealing with people - good thing I can keep my cool, most of the time.

I sleep extremely well . . . during the summer.

I teach AP English, and I never turn my brain off during the school year. I'm constantly thinking about my students, their problems, their successes, lesson plans, grading, how I can do things differently, what is working well (or not). I also have two of my own children, 9 and 15, and I am of course concerned about all that is going on in their lives. Add my husband to all of that, and well, who has time for sleep?

Unfortunately, I'm a person who needs lots of sleep to function well. This is a constant struggle for me, and I haven't found a solution, yet. If I don't have to get up at a set time the next morning, I sleep very well, but if I need to get up at a certain time for anything (like teaching school), I wake up many, many times throughout the night. It's crazy, but it's just the way I am.

During the summer, I like to stay up until 11:00 or 12:00 with my husband, and then I sleep until 8:00 or 9:00. I get a lot of sleep that way, but I thrive that way. I'm so energetic and productive in the summer. It's lovely!

If I am tired, I fall asleep pretty easy/fast.
But I am also a night hawk and do not need much sleep. (like my late Dad was).
I can do 2-3 days without sleep. Like when I was in college pounding out projects.

But I have taken 'Calms Forte-for adults' too, when I am stressed, like when PMS'ing. It helps.

Anyway, I do get about 8 hours of sleep a night.
But I am also an early riser. I wake by 6:00am most times.
It is rare, that I wake late. I am not a late waker upper. Even if I am still sleepy.
I just naturally wake the next morning by a certain time.

You would hate me. After lying down with the lights off, I am asleep within about... a minute. On the rare occasion I do not fall asleep almost instantly, I know there is something wrong...emotionally... or these days, because I had caffeine. Caffeine used to not affect me - I am genetically a rapid caffeine metabolizer. But with age, yes, it now can keep me up. When it is due to emotional stuff, well... that is a warning I need to do something about my life or my attitude or my organization (get things done I need to so I don't worry about them while avoiding them - *not* productive!)

But my sleep, before I got too arthritic to sleep as soundly, was...a joyful event. I layed my head down with a huge sigh of relief as my body relaxed and sleep swept over me. I always dreamed and woke up usually loving remembering the dreams, although sometimes they were disturbing or scary, but usually not. I loved them. Sometimes I would wake myself up at night talking, yelling, falling, or laughing, but even so, I could fall right back to sleep. Now-a-days, I wake to change positions because of pain, but I can still fall right back to sleep.

The way I used to get up in the morning (most of my life until recently) was springing up out of bed from fast asleep to wide awake, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready for the day. Because my health is not the same, I cannot say I wake up that way anymore... I always now wish I could sleep...some...more.... zzzzz....

Ugh. I don't know how you function. I know you've had some terrible, terrible stress in your life. Was it better before that?

2 Benadryl, dark room, 1 hour of boring TV, make sure i am not too hot and maybe I can sleep. I got a foam topper on my mattress 7 yrs ago and its way too hot. I usually miss the time I want to go to bed so I settle for when others want to and by then the rhythm is gone. If you add worry to that like I did Wed night, I was up till 3 and back up at 6. I stopped complaining years ago.

I tried $80 a month lunestra. Got it 1/2 filled and cut the pills in half but they leave me groggy. That's also too rich for my blood.

I hope to find an answer too.

After recovering from complications of pneumonia, not to mention breaking my leg on Christmas Eve, my sleep patterns are all over the place. I hate it.

I also have a crazy neighbor that lives above me who is very loud at night and it sounds like she's herding cattle up there or something. My poor son drags butt to school most days because she keeps him up as well. It doesn't do any good to say anything to her because she deliberately just gets louder. We've tried earplugs, but that doesn't really help with the feeling that we're having an earthquake. After my son leaves for school, I'm usually able to drift off for a couple of hours.

I don't drink caffeine at all, I've tried nice baths and showers before bedtime. If I manage to drift off, I usually wake up in a couple of hours and can't get back to sleep. I've literally been up in the shower at 3am trying to get myself relaxed.

I have GOT to get this under control because at some point, I will be released to go back to work and going to sleep when it's time to head out the door isn't going to fly.

I'm not happy if I can't hit dream sleep and I get really loopy after a while without good rest.

Have you tried looking at the health food store for natural sleep remedies?
They might have something that will help you. It can't hurt to check into it.

Best wishes.

I sleep horribly.

I try to be down by 9 - except for the nights that I work till 9:30. But I mostly bounce off the walls until 11 or 1. Then I am up by 6am during the week, and between 4 and 5 am on the weekends for the other job.

I think I average, on a good week, 5 hours of sleep per night. I can, and often, function on less than that.

Weekends I want to nap, but that screws up what little sleep cycle I have managed to attain.

If I could choose a pattern, I think I would sleep between 3:pm and 9:pm that seems to be when I am most sleepy. But, that is also when I need to be awake for work or my child.

Eh, I'll sleep when I retire - oh wait, that will be never. LOL

My husband is one of those people who can fall asleep the minute his head hits the pillow. It ticks me off! I am more like you but not quite as bad. I have to read and settle down for about an hour and then if nothing gets me ramped up again I can fall asleep in about 15 to 30 minutes. But there are lots of nights where it takes me an hour or two to fall asleep. And sometimes I'll have insomnia for longer than that...I have stopped watching the clock so I have no idea how much of the night I end up being awake for on those bad nights. Then I'm shot the next day. Some nights it is like my hormones are weird or something and I am hyper alert and touchy to any small sound. I often sleep with earplugs and this helps me a lot. I highly recommend it! No matter what time I fall asleep I'm pretty much always up at the same time in the morning. And, yes, like you, if I spend the day mountain biking, skiing, hiking up a peak, rock climbing or something like that I sleep much better. If only I had time to do that more often.