erm...no

crashed out at midnight and came around at 8.30 this morning. How the heck did I manage that?

Lucky you! Nicely done... I finally got to sleep at about 3.30/4ish. Got a few hours kip, but then just to prove Sod's Law, I fell asleep during my MRI scan this morning! Why is it I can lie in my warm comfy bed wide awake for hours, but put me in a hospital with lots of nurses running around for just ten mins and I'm out?? Grrr!! :-)

LOL don't think the long sleep actually did me much good as I have had a tension headache all day.

Just thought I'd share my theories of my own personal trouble in sleeping and maybe others can relate to it.

I've suffered for a long while with either not sleeping or dreaming vividly. When pregnant with my first, 29 years ago, I started the ongoing saga of not sleeping well. I go for weeks when I wake, then sleep, then wake, then sleep. Probably for the last 10 years I've had spells when I lay awake for hours and hours.

I recently began to realise it was a habit. I'd go to sleep, wake around 2ish, lay awake until 5 or so, then doze off, or dream vividly. This went on for years. Not every night, tended to go in spells,l it seemed stress related, but uncontrollable.

At some point this year, possibly May, it became intolerable, I'd gotten into a habit and needed to break it, but couldn't work out how. In the end I took radical action. Forced myself to stay awake until 2 am if it was a working day or 4 am if the weekend. So when I went to bed I was absolutely knackered. It did the trick, I broke the cycle and began to get better nights sleep. So now I generally sleep OK and when I don't, I go back to the going to bed VERY late and still seems to break my cycle.

I'm not saying it will work for others, but it did and does for me. I have to say it wasn't easy to function during the day, especially as it was self induced lack of sleep, so I felt guilty, as opposed to the oh poor me, I can't sleep, not easy to say, well I didn't go to bed until 2 am.

I'm writing this now because last night I got less than 5 hours sleep and I know I can't function with that amount, I need at least 5 hours and I'm hoping I'm not about to go into one of my not sleeping phases, so I'm forcing myself to stay awake tonight in the hope that I sleep until the alarm, fingers crossed.