Do You Ever Feel Beyond Tired?

I participated in an Influencer Activation on behalf of Influence Central for the National Sleep Foundation. I received a promotional item to thank me for my participation.

When I was a kid I never wanted to sleep. I hated taking naps or going to bed early. At the same time, I have never been a person who can go on very little sleep. Even as a child my parents had to set my bedtime the same as my sister’s who was 2 years younger than me. If I didn’t get enough sleep I was a grump.

This has stayed fairly true my whole life. As much as I want to be one of those people who only needs a couple of hours of sleep a night, I’m just not. Except for my college years where I was able to schedule all my classes for the afternoon and evening and would stay up late and get up late, I’ve always been someone who need a lot of sleep.

Then I had kids and any sleep I got went out the window. With two kids under the age of two, someone was always awake and the nights were long. Not only that, for some reason kids love to get up early! So I spent my nights getting up with the kids and then the day started as soon as the sun came up. I’d love to say that I took naps when the kids were sleeping, but they didn’t often nap at the same time.

In fact, that’s why I started this blog – 2 Wired 2 Tired. I was home alone all day with the kids and since they were both under 2 someone was always napping (unfortunately it wasn’t me!), so I spent lots of time indoors stuck in the house.

I decided it was the perfect opportunity to start this blog complete with the tagline, “they’re wired, we’re tired.” This is still true!

Even though the kids are older, for some reason I’m now in a sleep rut. I never have a problem falling asleep. In fact, if given the opportunity at any moment of the day I could lay my head down and be asleep in 5 minutes and sleep for a good 2 hours or more.

Kind of like this!

One of my biggest hurdles, though is if I actually fully wake up at night – I’m up for 1-3 hours. It’s awful. Especially when it’s 4 am and I know the alarm will be going off not long after I finally fall asleep.

It is so strange to me that I can fall asleep within 5 minutes at any point of the day and before bed, but if I wake up in the middle of the night, I’m wide awake for hours on end.

I was interested to learn that insomnia isn’t only the inability to fall asleep, but it is also falling asleep but tossing and turning. I guess that I would qualify then as having insomnia because in those hours that I’m wide awake in the middle of the night, I definitely toss and turn.

Did you know that in the United States, approximately 70 million people are affected by one or more symptoms of insomnia. Of these, an estimated 23.5 million people, roughly 10 percent of the adult population, experience symptoms consistent with the diagnosis of insomnia.

I’ve been looking for tips on how to get more sleep and that’s why I’m excited that the National Sleep Foundation is dedicated to improving health and well-being through sleep education and advocacy.

They have created the site BeyondTired.org – which is a great resource for people who suffer from insomnia. It also shares the journey of four people, all from different backgrounds with busy lives, who are working towards getting more sleep.

I particularly feel connected to the story of Jessica who is a mother of two 2-year-olds who also wakes up in the middle of the night and has difficulty falling asleep. She has tried a number of things that she has found helpful and I’m inspired to give some of them a try myself to see if I see improvement as well.

The BeyondTired.org site is full of stories, blog posts, photos, and videos from the people participating in their quest to get more sleep. It’s very interesting reading about their struggles and what they are doing to overcome them. If you are facing any sleep issues, I recommend this site as well as the website and social media links for the National Sleep Foundation below.