Noise and Sleep

I have the same problems. I have to run my fans not only for the air flow but also for the fan noise which drowns out other nuissance background noises. They start cutting lawns, trimming bushes, running chainsaws, etc. at 7am in my neighborhood. Every time something starts up that early...I want to shoot these people and flip out on them. Also, I get these damn birds that start up yacking around 5-6 am. It's just one noise after another. All I can do is turn the fan up, sleep with the pillow crumpled in two with each side over each ear, and try to sleep through it. Then, I have the damn neighbor dogs who start barking for no reason at all. I also have my own dogs who wake me up at 3-4 am so they can go out.

I'll tell you...I don't ever get a night's sleep without interruption any more. Sometimes, I wake up and I feel tired because my sleep has been interrupted even though I've put in enough time. I think it's because I don't get enough uninterrupted REM sleep.

I can only wonder what it's like to get a full night's sleep interruption free.

 

I can't sleep with noise either, especially if the noise starts before I go to sleep. One of my college roommates and her friends couldn't understand this. (2 in the morning and they're hanging out talking. I tell them "I'd like to go to bed. I've got an early class." They say, "Go on. We're not in your bed." Even though they're right next to it. Please, if you're in this situation and your roommate is trying to get some rest, go to the common room.)

It helps to get earplugs. Finally started on that when the med center moved one of the helicopter landing pads and the helicopters were practically buzzing the roof of my dorm at Rice. My husband started on that when he lived in an apartment complex with thin walls. Of course, now we're in the habit and can't sleep well without them, even if there's not excessive noise. Home is quiet, but the birds would bother us. So might our own cat, who likes to whine at us just to see if it will work.

 

Try this: go to bed obscenely late, like 3:30 a.m. every night. The good thing is, you're so damn tired you get uninterrupted sleep. Bad part is, if you have to get up at 7:30 every morning, you only get four hours.

It worked for me first year of college though. Being tired actually tends to make classes more pleasant.

 

I have to have a noise maker like a fan going before I can fall asleep and I am a very LIGHT sleeper. The slightest sound wakes me unless I am in deep sleep. My roommate in college used to make fun of me all the time for having a noise maker, but I didn't care.

 

i sleep through everything. in fact, i could be sleeping right now.

 

Sam makes fun of me living out in the N. GA mountains in my "compound," (We've just bought 100 more acres and now own an entire, albeit small valley), but it is quiet here. The sound of crickets, spring peepers and whipperwills put me to sleep better than anything. When I'm at my parents' house in the Mobile suburbs, the noises tend to keep me awake and I've got a mix tape of smooth Miles ballads to put me to bed I play.

 

I sleep with the TV and the fan on, so it's probably pretty loud in my room while I'm sleeping (especially whenone factors in my snoring).

I sleep pretty heavily, though I do sometimes wake up simply from changes in the sounds in the room. For example, if someone shuts off the TV, that wakes me up, I guess because I can't hear it anymore.

I'm also one who has trouble falling asleep if there are unusual noises going on. If I can hear talking outside my window (no matter how softly) or if my fan is off balance and is barely making a noise, I focus on it and it keeps me awake.

 

I have to sleep with either the TV or Radio on, I can't sleep without noise

 

Interesting. I had another college roommate who did that. Of course, what if your roommate likes quiet and it's a small room. I told her to set it on "sleep", but she wouldn't. For this and other reasons, I got my room changed. I used to think that "quiet while sleeping" was the accepted norm. Apparently not for my generation.

Of course, I used to sleep with the radio on when I was a kid, now that I think about it. I knew all the music from 1985 really well, as well as the DJs' complete schedule. It was to keep from feeling lonely; my parents were very far away at the other end of the house, and I had an overactive imagination regarding storms, intruders, falling trees, earthquakes, nuclear weapons, and any other disasters that could possibly have happened to us. The music was a welcome distraction, and a reassurance that the world was still OK.

 

I actually didn't start sleeping with the TV on until I was about 23 or so. When I was growing up, I went with the silent room.

What really changed for me was not having to get up at a set time anymore and not having anyone else around (I was married from the time I was 18 until I was about 22), so I'd fall asleep watching TV. There were many years I didn't even have a TV in my room.

 

I started falling asleep to the radio when I was 14 - incidentally, that's when I got my first radio.

In the dorms, I slept with my computer playing music at an incredibly low level, but the speakers were aimed right at my head, and with her fan on her side of the room, she couldn't hear the music. We both were happy.

I stopped falling asleep to music when I got my second roommate - she and I had different tastes in music. So we settled on nature sounds - it was still noise, so I didn't care.

Nowadays, if my WMP is playing when I go to sleep, I let it play, if it's not, I don't go and turn on the music. But I always have my fan running regardless of music.

The real funny thing is, I wake up better to a radio alarm when I fall asleep to music.

 

Solution: Three glasses of whine and a doobie

 

Bingo

 

Big N little y Giant F*cking Q