My insomnia is well-documented, and Uborka has a good number of insomniacs on what would once have been called its blogroll. Owing to lack of sleep, I can’t describe the history of my sleeplessness, but I do know it got worse after having a child, which was partly inevitable but 11.5 years in that really ought not to be an ongoing factor.
A few things have helped. The most significant of these was getting a bedside clock with a display I could turn off. I discovered that much of the misery of sleeplessness was actually anxiety about not being asleep at such-and-such an hour; if I can’t see the time, this is much reduced. Getting out of bed and going downstairs for a drink often helps. And there is an optimum temperature, but this varies from night to night, and sometimes I can’t find it.
Last week I was staying in one of the nation’s lovely purple inns, unable to sleep as is usual when in a strange bedroom. At some point in the early hours, I thought to myself, what about an app? And randomly chose one called Shhh!
Shhh! plays a combination of white noise, wind chimes, and sort of rainy tropical sounds. It says use your headphones, but who wants to sleep with headphones in? I just set it going on the bedside table. I fell quickly into a doze, but returned to consciousness every now and then, perhaps when the sounds changed, or when there were noises from outside. I woke up feeling disorientated and wondering if I could still hear it or if I was dreaming.
I’ve used it most nights in the last week, with mixed success; and of course without a control me who is not using the app, who knows whether I would have slept that night or not? I need a lot more data. I did find that it didn’t work at all on Saturday when I had overeaten and was particularly anxious about something Pete had said just before he went to sleep, the git.
I’m interested in the lack of information available about the app, who made it, or how it works. Is it stealing my brainwaves while I sleep? And what would happen if I selected ‘Power Nap’ instead of ‘Night Sleep’?
Incidentally, if anyone can correctly guess what it was that I said to Karen to distress her so, then I’ll buy you a pint.
One summer, the heat became unbearable and we purchased several electric fans. I put one in the bedroom and have been using it ever since for its white noise properties. Insomnia visits much less frequently. An app would use much less electricity.