To think sleep is weird?

[MarineIguana]

So DD 3 months has started sleeping longer at night - she's really pretty good at getting off to sleep and going for a good few hours (OK shoot me but my point is...)

She doesn't sleep well at all in the day, at most a half-hour nap here and there. So how does she know it's bedtime and then just stay asleep for hours? How?

And for that matter isn't it really freaky that we all do it - just go and lie down at night and conk out unconscious for (if we're lucky/don't have small DC) 7 or 8 hours? That's ages - it's like a full working day - just lying there not being aware of anything. It's weird!

Well even more interesting is the fact that we don't physically need to do it. Sleep is mainly about our brain which needs to go into restorative mode. Physically, it's only really hand/eye coordination that suffers from lack of sleep.

And how do we know when to sleep? It's our circadian rhythms, informed by zeitgebers (time givers) such as light.

Experiments have found that the 24hr clock is slightly too short for our natural circadian rhythms too. I wonder how much that affects us day to day. If we'd function better/be more productive if we followed natural rhythms as opposed to the clock.

Ah sleep. I remember it fondly. Do you think one day the feckers darlings will let me do it some more?

I think it's weird too! But it's a great way to end the day - I love going to sleep.

I suppose all human brains have something chemical to tell the body when to rest and I think (not very brainy, me ) darkness helps too. My DD1 was like this as a little baby, hardly slept during the day but conked out for hours on end at night. Wonderful isn't it?

It's to do with Malanin or some hormone/chemical thingy, I think...

I love sleeping. I just adore it. Bliss. In fact, I might go to bed right now.

It is very, very freaky, and I don't recon even the sleep boffins know exactly why we do it.

I think I'm right in saying you die if you go a certain amount of time not sleeping at all because your immune system breaks down.

Hmm but SOH, it's blazing sunlight when DD goes to bed (middle of summer and we're in scotland, so it's light till 11pm). Are there other timegivers - or maybe is it just that she's up all day and eventually gets tired (and full) enough to have a long sleep?

Sleep is fabulous. I remember the days when I got some with great fondness. I also sleep when I'm feeling down or blue. It's slightly weird but not enough to put me off it.

dreaming is even more weird

especially when you have v vivid dreams, its like going off to live in a different world for a while

Although I think it's weird, I do also love it.

Shortly after giving birth this time, obviously I wasn't getting long stretches of sleep, but when I did sleep it was so DEEP - as soon as I got the chance I would just collapse and feel it engulfing me and it was the most amazingly delicious feeling. (Not cosleeping luckily - I think I am too heavy a sleeper for that.)

Daylight is the main one, but when you eat and drink, sociological interactions, temperature etc all give exogenous cues though the circadian rhythm is internal really.

Dreaming is not understood at all but physiologically speaking it's just random synaptic firing. And I think the human condition encourages us to give meaning to the firing. So you interpret it as or tell yourself a frightening story in times of stress for example. It's just neural pathways doing what neural pathways do.

I've thought that before too..it is a bit weird.

Melatonin, around 3pm, (or approx 8 hours since we got up) in the afternoon our brains start to release it and it increases til we finally have to go to sleep.

I was an insomniac for years and got additicted to sleeping pills at one point.Horrible things. I took melatonin to help me get off them. Sadly it's not available licensed over here but commonly used elswhere in the world. Worked well for me, I sleep really well most of the time now.

Good clever stuff melatonin, yippee for it!

I have often thought this. I try not to think about it too much, tbh, because it freaks me out! Same with dreams...

anyhting is freaky if you think about it for too long though

take dancing for instance..we all get up at a wedding and fling our bodies around to the beat of the music. for fun

Yes I often think that when I see those kind of "ooh look at the natives and their strange dances and rituals" type documentaries about mali or wherever - when you think about what westerners do at weddings and birthdays etc it's just as remarkable.

Sleep is the best thing ever. I love the feeling when you just start to drift off and your thoughts go all weird and dream-like.

Not sure if I like sleeping or eating more...

Yes sleep is the BEST so much so I went to sleep the same time as ds last night 8pm ....
I was thinking this morning about sleep tis morning babies and children look very cute when asleep, adults.. awful mouth open catching flies not a good look!

Re weird things that we do - in hundreds of years time don't you think that folk will find it really weird that there was this game that people played, and men who were really good at it played it in front of hundreds of thousands of people and got paid a fortune for it, AND that even countries had teams who played each other to see who the best team in the whole world was???? Oh and this game centred around kicking a ball into a net... WEIRD

I often look at my children sleeping soundly when I go to bed. At this point they've been in the land of nod for over 3 hours and I just find it so amazing that they are oblivious to me moving them/covering them up/kissing them/teasing random objects from their fingers. When do we lose this sense of deep sleep?!!

I love my sleep though. Could quite happily have 12-13 hours every night. Sadly the children narrowed me down to 5 or 6!

thinking about sleep stops me from sleeping. i become all self conscious