What do you do at 2 a.m.?
 

What do you do when you wake up too early and can't get back to sleep? it was almost 2 a.m. when I woke up this morning?

So far, I've looked at a quilt magazine; put on a pot of red beans (for red beans & rice today); gotten the trash together for today's pick up; put up the clean dishes; made a pot of tea; read the QB; and I'm getting ready to head to the sewing room and clean up my mess. Oh, I also made a list of bills that are due this coming month.

What about ya'll? :)

I'm used to being on call, and getting up in the middle of the night, so being up at 2 am is not a problem.. The problem comes up when I have to try, and fall asleep, and I'm on mental stimulation.. I find something boring to read..

If my Dh is home, then i play on the computer, read, or watch stuff on my Ipad with headphones on in another room. If he happens to be on a business trip, then i clean or sew- whatever i can until i can go back to sleep. It happens to me a lot, so i have to learn to do things without making noise. If i can't sleep because of snoring( his) then i dont care if i wake him up! Haha

I HATE that! Happens to me more often than not these days. I go downstairs and read or play on the computer so as not to wake DH. He claims I won't wake him if I sew (upstairs) but I'm a non-believer. Sometimes I can get back to sleep at a reasonable hour but many times not. Being awake for 22 Hrs. plus really bites.

I come here and read all of the tutorials RevPam posted. Takes awhile.

Actually, I am already up at 2 am - by 2 I am leaving my house and heading to my drop to pick up the papers for my morning delivery. So being awake at 2 is not my problem, being awake at 7 pm is! :)

Sounds to me like you did just fine with the extra time. But I agree with the person who said surf the QB. When insomnia used to hit me (when I had a normal schedule) I would surf the web or write letters to my kids (I keep a letter journal for each child detailing their exploits and habits as they grow.)

I read this years ago.
1. Make a list of quite chores you hate ( mine was ironing dress shirts).
2. When you can't sleep, get up.
3. Dress completly as if you are leaving the house.
4. Consult list, starting with most detested chore, perform chores 1 hour ( no cheating).
5. Go back to bed, within a few days insomia won't be a problem. When you wake up you'll know you have to do those chores. You'll groan & go back to sleep.

i woke up at 2 this am. was too tired to bind a quilt before bed, so started cutting away in the middle of the night. it was all done by the time the news came on :)

Before I retired just a few weeks ago, this was always happening to me. Too much stress was raising pure hell with my life. If I'm up at 2:00 a.m. now, it's usually due to DH's snoring, hotflashes, body aches or a full bladder. Very aggravating but definitely not fatal. Now that I'm not carrying around the constant mental "to do" list, can usually get back to sleep. Hormone's and stress are definitely the enemies.

This seems to happen to me in spurts. I can go for months & sleep great! Then all of a sudden, it happens more nights than not. I generally get up, get a small glass of milk to sip on, then cuddle up with my current read, & read till I can't stay awake any longer. Make a pit stop, then hit the hay again. I have to be quiet when I am up, or two crated dogs will want to join me, lol... I no longer work either, so I just deal with it. Actually don't mind some nights, as I get to enjoy some peace & quiet, & time to myself. Whenever DH is up, tv has to be on, & I tend to get real sick of it, lol...

I get up and start cleaning up. Nothing motivates me to go to sleep more than cleaning (which I hate to do).

I close my eyes and snooze. Eventually I will fall back to sleep. Getting up at that time would make me a terrible grouch since I normally don't go to bed before 11:30.

Oh, I'm up most nights at 2 AM. Last night I watched a scary movie (I was sleepy but didn't fall asleep right away.) The movie was so bad, both in plot and scariness that I got wide awake. Usually if I'm watching something not interesting, I'm wide awake but if I want to stay up and watch TV, I fall sound asleep! Or if I'm reading the QB that late...I've been known to fall asleep sitting at my computer! LOL

I wake up often, but learned not to worry about it, try to clear my mind.I tune in the radio (Walk man) and listen for a short while, some times I fall asleep and wake up with dead batteries in the radio.

take some benadryl and sleep some more. Bills really? LOL!!! if benadryl doesn't work muscle relaxers do. I get really tense from work stress and get back pain, which is usually what keeps me up.

That's the time I go to bed.

What? Are there people who sleep the whole night? News to me, LOL! Back when I was still working and I awoke in the middle of the night I'd close my eyes and think about pleasant things and hope to fall back asleep. If that didn't work I'd just lie still and rest my body. Been retired over 10 years and my sleep cycle is 3 hrs. asleep, 3 hrs awake so I've learned to just roll with it, do paper work, read, watch tv, have a nice cup of tea, empty the dishwasher or dryer, etc.

I keep a radio with headphones next to my bed and I listen to talk radio. Sometimes I'm awake for an hour or 2 but eventuallyI get sleepy and go back to sleep.

I also have sleep problems and once that internal dialogue has started, then can not go back to sleep. I get up and take two melatonin tablets and then do something until I get sleepy again because the melatonin takes about an hour to work. You can buy these at Wal-Mart or any drug store. I use to blame it on the full moon or harmones(lack of)and a dozen other things including stress.

LOL. I'll have to remember this.

I think for us of a certain age waking up in the middle of the night is just the way it is now. I used to be a head drop on the pillow and lights out until the alarm rings. Now if I am having a good night I only wake up once or twice a night. When I am having trouble getting back to sleep I use this simple exercise. I count to two over and over and time it with my breathing...one is inhale, two is exhale. I can usually fall back asleep in a matter of minutes. I found that if I get up to do something or turn on the TV or add any stimulation at all I will not fall back to sleep and feel poorly for the rest of the day. I have found a sleep mask, I made one out of flannel, is somehow quite comforting. The gentle pressure of the flannel on my eyes is a cue for me to go sleep now. If I can get just four more hours of sleep it is enough. To make the mask I just took two pieces of flannel and free cut a shape, sewed it with a piece of cotton batting inside, the back was made from a wider, softly elastic head band I already had.

Actually, I sleep!

thats when i punch in for work,so i getup at 1230am every day

When I was younger I would get up and clean out my kitchen cabnets, and do odds and ends that I would be unable to get to during the day. Now I sit on the side of the bed and play games on my iPhone. I have thought about getting up and working on a quilt but then I would be up all night and end up sleeping all day.

I'm finding that having hot flashes is waking me up more! I'll have to read what you all do!

One thing I don't do when I'm up during the night and can't sleep, that is do some sewing. I did that one night and the next morning DH said he had terrible dreams about a train roaring towards him. That's when I realized that since my sewing room is right over our bedroom the train he was dreaming about was actually the sound of my machine sewing! LOl!

I always have an "insomnia project" going. Right now it's a baby quilt. I turn on a video and sew. Right now it's season 4 of Murder She Wrote to keep me company.

I am always reading a book, so I get and read until I get tired again...sometimes that takes several hours, but being retired does have its perks as I just sleep late in the morning.

I use to do that with hotflashes-I now take One A Day Menopausal vitamins and it worked-no more hotflashes-I feel great

I empty the dishwasher, do a couple loads of laundry, dry and fold. With this done I can, without guilt, quilt the next day without a guilty conscience. Sounds like a plan......

With any luck, I am sleeping! If not, then I am reading. I am not one to get up out of bed usually. If I do get up, then I want to eat not work or sew. I make too many mistakes when sleep deprived.

My iPod is a great remedy for sleeplessness. I have an app with several kinds of Solitaire, those are usually enough to put me to sleep after 5-10 minutes. I also have a couple hours worth of old West Wing episodes on my iPod, I don't watch them, I put my earbuds in and listen. They're all dialogue, no loud explosions or music. When I'm stressed, my heart rate and temperature go up, I can't sleep and I can't stop thinking about what's stressing me out. Listening to those West Wing shows keeps my brain occupied just enough to let me relax and go to sleep. Works better than a Benadryl for me. I told my husband if my iPod ever croaked, I'd be in trouble!

If I'm still awake at 2:00 a.m., I take a sleeping pill. This happens more nights than not.

What do I do at 2:00 a.m. - I wake up from the couch and go to bed.

Play cards on the Acer tablet or read on it, watch a football game that I shoved on the tablet as an experiment, watch a recorded football or baseball game on the DVD. Try to convince the Snowshoe and the Siamese that I am entitled to some of the bed. I'd go downstairs and work on a project, but it disturbs the Vulcan I'm married to. He gets annoyed if I decide I want breakfast at 4A.

I keep my Kindle Fire by my bed and if I have trouble going to sleep I can read without turning a light on and disturbing my other half that goes to bed every night at 10:00 p.m. with the pooch. I also have trouble convincing the pooch that I'm entitled to at least a small portion of our kingsize bed.

That sounds like what I do, too. Ever since my health has decided to go nuts, my sleep is all over the place. So being up at 2 AM can be because I haven't been able to go to sleep yet or because I've woken up. Mf DH says sewing doesn't bother him either but I just am afraid it will so I don't sew. I also try not to do anything too active, in hopes I can go to sleep again. So I read, play on the 'puter, watch TV, anything quiet. But I hate it. I lied sleeping "normally" so much better.

If I can't sleep I organize things that need to be done around the house, some times I bake, I read, I work on blocks (which I find I have to wake the thread ripper up early sometimes lol), I do laundry. I'm like SouthP there are nights where hubby is snoring so loud I'm literally wide awake so I just get up do my stuff he leaves for work and I can nap for a couple of hours

I try to rationalize that whatever is on my mind and keeping me up.....that at that hour there is not anything I can do about it. I try to imagine that I am floating in a calm pool of water.
Sandy