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Tired Of Sleeping Alone - My Sleep Starts Story

My husband sometimes won't sleep with me anymore because my sleep starts or jerks scare him. We have a full-wave waterbed and he says that my jerks create huge tidal waves that practically wash him right out of bed. I get so stressed out about it that I think that I am trying to control or resist falling asleep and thereby intensify or increase the frequency of the sleep starts/jerks. He's frustrated and I was beginning to worry that something was really wrong with me. But now I know that I'm not really "sleeping alone" with this thing. ;) Maybe I can get my husband to read this site and convince him to give me a massage each night to help me relax. Whatever works, right???


I have always experienced these jerks for as long as I can remember, but they didn't wake me often. Now, they are quite frequent and my husband says that they happen throughout the night sometimes. But the stress has increased in my life with recently buying a house (a 100-year old DIY fixer-upper), my mother's sudden unexpected death, and my kids just entering their teens. I am 45, a school bus driver, mother of 2, and rarely get more than 6 hours of sleep each night. I read in bed (a chapter or 2) to help clear my head of all the stuff that I need to do tomorrow or didn't get done today. I have stayed up all night before to get caught up, but it happens less often the older I get.

I will experience the terrible sensation of falling and hallucinate slipping, tripping or missing a step on the stairs. Then I violently jerk my whole body, even my arms are up in front of me to brace for the perceived fall. Afterward I lay there while my heart pounds wildly from fright until I finally settle down to sleep again. This is always when I first start to fall asleep. My husband says that I do not wake when it happens during the night. He has spoken to me to find out if I'm OK, but I do not answer. He has observed me during these episodes and says that I am not experiencing sleep apnea (thankfully).

Well that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Thanks for listening.

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Welcome! This site is continuously being created by students of Dr. William C. Dement's Sleep And Dreams course at Stanford University.

We made this site as a call to action for people all over the world to live healthier, happier, safer, and more productive lives by learning about their own sleep. We have faith that reading the information provided on this site will motivate you to be smart about your sleep deprivation and strategic about your alertness in order to live life to your fullest, most energetic potential.

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Sleep Paralysis: A Dreamer's Guide

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