Early Waking Syndrome. On HRT but waking at 5am - halp!

[OrdinaryGirl]

Hello hello. Posting in Menopause rather than Sleep as I do feel this is time-of-life related. Have tried to get all the major points into the thread title… but just for additional context:

I’m looking for something that will help me stay asleep and wake at 6:30-7am.

No trouble falling asleep within a few minutes but every morning I wake up at about 5-5:30am and it’s driving me mad.

If something wakes me up in the small hours, I can rarely get back to sleep again because as soon as I breach the surface of consciousness I am plagued by catastrophising and all the thinky-thoughts. I deploy all the techniques to get these under control but doing that is exhausting and feels like a battle - but not exhausting in the way that would be helpful by making me sleepy - grrrrr.

Happily married, with three boys of primary school age. Demanding pastoral full-time job.

Here are the things I’ve tried:
•Hypnotherapy - in-clinic session. Didn’t go into trance. Didn’t work. £75. 🙇🏼‍♀️
• Acupuncture- amazing for wellbeing, hasn’t helped sleep.
• Tart cherry juice extract - helps a bit 🤷🏼‍♀️
• Kalms night-time - took for 2 weeks. Didn’t help with early waking. Felt kind of weird in the morning.
• Magnesium. Have tried ALL DIFFERENT TYPES and it doesn’t help.
•10pm Night Drink. Great concept. Tried for 2 weeks. Didn’t work.
• Dirtea Cacao with additional Lion’s Mane shot - makes me feel more chilled but doesn’t stop the early waking.
• Banana at bedtime - lovely but no effect on 5am nonsense.

I’m smack in the middle of the optimal BMI for my height and I exercise 2-3 times a week - 20 minute Joe Wicks Absolute Beginner HIIT training - and I dance to a music video for warm-up and cooldown. I go to a yoga women’s circle once a week. All this keeps hormone-related crazies down to a rolling simmer and stops me piling weight on.

I have a Mirena coil fitted and use Evorel 75 patches. Didn’t get on with progesterone tablets as it makes me deeply sad within 3 days.

I cook from scratch every night, get a decent amount of fruit and veg, and I drink loads of water. I take probiotics and Reverse Life collagen and Vitamin B12 spray from Better You.

Ironically I’m probably now in better health than I’ve ever been in my whole life! But 5 hours sleep a night is just ruinous to any sense of wellbeing. I think probably the only answer is to get to bed with lights off at 10pm which is fine while DH is away but not really workable when he’s here.

Would really appreciate any thoughts from people who’ve overcome early waking. Fully prepared to be told my issues are due to my personality and life choices. 😄 Thank you in advance 🙏🏼

I'm an early waker and always have been. I rarely sleep past 6am, unless I'm really really tired. I'm a lark! Early to bed, early to rise.

I know this isn't helpful perhaps but if you are in bed by 10.30 you can still get 7 hours even waking at 5.30

Going to bed after midnight is really late . I'm in bed between 10-30-10-45 every night.

I have to get up for work about 5.30-6 most days so I've just accepted going to bed just after 9pm, lights out by 10. I have white noise (thunderstorm sounds playing) and that definitely helps with getting back to sleep when I wake in the night.

A friend recently told me about counting backwards from 10 to zero repeatedly for helping to fall asleep. I was sceptical but it has helped me go back to sleep when I wake at the crack of dawn and I usually sleep until 7.30/8 on non-work days now. The backwards counting seems to be stimulating enough to drown out the thoughts of doom but not so much that I'm even more awake iyswim.

Counting helps me. Choose a number 10 or something, when thoughts come in start again. Avoid alcohol

Ask your GP to try a different type of Progesterone. It helps with sleep. There are different types out there which might have a better effect on you.

Agree with going to bed earlier, even if your dh is home; better than being exhausted.

A relaxing book to listen to on Audible on timer can help get you back to sleep I find. More difficult again if dh is around, but you could use airpods for that part of the night if he is home.

Hope you find a cure 😀

I'm similar although sometimes wake a lot earlier than 5am.

I now go to bed at around 8.30. I use magnesium moisturiser with lavender and camomile which has definitely helped. I listen to audiobooks to fall asleep. I also take an insulated cup of tea to bed to leave on my bedside table.

If/when I wake up I put my audiobook back on and drink some of my tea. It really soothes me and I quite often fall asleep again.

I have noticed that if I'm at all stressed or upset then my sleep is absolutely awful. I wake from 1pm onwards and just fitfully doze. It's horrible! On those days I have a nap as soon as I get home from work and make sure that there's something easy for dinner, something I've batch cooked from the freezer or something on toast.

HRT did help but hasn't got rid of the issue.

OP said she's used Utrogestan and it had side effects.

I've been using a pillow speaker, and listening to audio books when I wake, whether that's 2am or 5am. I've found it enormously helpful in keeping thoughts at bay. The upside is that even if I don't go back to sleep, I'm still resting. I set a timer for an hour, or a chapter if they are long ones. More often than not I'm out for the count in minutes. Pillow speaker means it doesn't disturb DH, and it's much more comfortable than headphones.

Avoiding phones/ screens an hour before bed helps sleep quality. You could try mindfulness or yoga nidra before bed to clear your mind. As others have said though, you might have to accept you need an earlier bedtime. We go to bed at 9pm because we have to get up early. Ensuring you stick to the same bedtime and getting up time every day is important. We don’t stick to the routine at wknds and my sleep isn’t great. When I prioritised sleep, it was far better. By prioritise I mean- keeping to the same routine, being strict with screen etc. it works.

I think you are thinking about 5 am when you go to sleep, as in ‘I hope I don’t wake up at 5 am’, and you are unintentionally setting yourself your own body clock alarm. I know saying don’t think about the time you need to wake up is like saying don’t think about Pink Flamingos, but I think you are thinking about sleep too much.

You definitely need to shift the bed time. Why isn’t 10pm workable when DH is there?

Thanks all VERY much for the speedy replies. 💐

@Liondoesntsleepatnight ooh good point, I forgot to mention alcohol in my post - yes absolutely I’ve been mostly avoiding alcohol altogether for about 3 years because of the terrible impact it now has on sleep.

@CheeseDreamsTonight good point - I may be NLP-ing the 5am thing subconsciously. I’m always suggesting to people to focus on what they want, not on what they don’t want, so need to take my own advice! Perhaps if I focus on 7am as a figure in my mind it’ll act as an embedded hypnotic command to my subconscious. Or something. I will make an effort to do that from today.

The 10pm lights off bedtime doesn’t work for a whole bunch of reasons really - the boys (11, 9 and 9) are in bed but often don’t stop wittering to each other until 9:30 - the twins share a room which is right next to their brother’s.

And if I go to bed at 10 it just feels like DH and I don’t get an evening at all - we just work, look after the boys and sleep, which kind of sucks. He is naturally a night owl and I’m naturally a lark, so the dream for me would be to go to sleep at 10 and wake up at 6, but even if this were possible, it would mean we’d never see each other.

And even if I do go to bed before DH, I’m so alert that I can’t go to sleep if someone’s still up, and if I manage it, I wake up as soon as someone walks into the room.

I’ve never ever been able to nap in the daytime either. Not on planes, trains, boats or cars. Not even when we had 3 under 3. It’s so princess and the bloody pea! It needs to be night-time, silent, cool, pitch-dark, I need to be fully horizontal and with nobody else awake, or I don’t have a hope of dropping off.

And I know with that last bit, it sounds like it’s the stories I’m telling myself that is the problem, but I’ve been like this since being tiny… and I’ve DONE all the stuff like just lying down to rest, quieting my mind, doing all the visualisations and calming exercises etc.

I could try sleep stories again actually - those have helped in the past now I think about it but the headphones were too uncomfortable.
@WinterFrogs I’m intrigued by the pillow speaker - I’d sort of discounted getting one on the basis that it would wake up DH but it sounds like it somehow it is quiet enough?

@Jurassicparkinajug Screens are probably having more of an effect than I realise. Skippy dopamine brain. I’m a week into restricting screens before bed and reading something gentle instead, in a proper book - will keep doing that and hope it starts to have a bit more impact.

@WomenInSTEM love the idea about a flask of tea. I don’t drink coffee (for sleep reasons) and only have 2 cups of tea a day - the last one just after lunch. But on the vanishingly rare occasions I do go down and make a cup of tea when I wake at night and can’t get back to sleep, it does tend to help me drop off again!

@Reallybadidea I will give the counting back from 10 thing a go, thank you.

@Chamomileteaplease I’ve sort of abandoned the progesterone angle due to having a Mirena… bit too much of a faff now to have it removed and find a different contraception (laughs hollowly) when another form of progesterone may not help the sleep anyway.

You’ve given me lots to think about and I really appreciate it. Anyone who’s not yet commented and has something that might help, I’d still love to hear it 🩷

One thing you haven’t tried is Phenergan - it’s an antihistamine that makes you drowsy. It helps me stay asleep- like you I was waking up and not able to get back to sleep. My GP prescribed it and I take it only when I have those phases.

Weirdly the 75mcg patch causes me to wake up between 4-5:30 am and struggle to get back to sleep. I’ve gone back to 50mcg (where I have issues with cold flashes and body ache) as the early am waking and a tendency to minor hot flashes was worse than the symptoms at 50mcg for me. This makes no sense to me so I’m not really suggesting it as a solution for you but given it’s similar to what you’re going through thought I’d mention it.

(I’m on utrogestan but about to get a mirena coil due to a bit of spotting between bleeds - I’m hoping the mirena coil will not introduce any new issues!)

The title of your post suggests you're thinking about this as a "syndrome" which in itself is creating a problem, when perhaps it's more a matter of accepting your body clock - you said you're a lark but you're trying to live more like an owl. Plus the worrying about 5am just cements it in your mind as a major problem. I'd try having a few weeks going to sleep earlier, doesn't have to be forever but just let your natural cycle enjoy itself for a while. Your marriage will hopefully survive and adapt, see what happens!

Menopause is absolutely the time to stop fighting your body, fighting your self, your reality. If your body is wanting you awake at 5am, especially at this wonderful time of year, I'd go for it - your family can work around you for a change.

Maybe you need your own room away from your DH for working days?
Seriously.

Is that possible?

If not, I think you need a compromise.

As your kids get older they will be awake far later than you- teens become nocturnal.

So staying up until they are asleep or settled it not going to work.

Can't you agree on a compromise of in bed by 10.30 during the week?

You could even think of it as menopause wanting you to have some solitude and space in those early hours before everyone gets up and makes demands on you.

But I'm a lark and love the peace of early morning, so I'm all in favour 😊

I know what you mean about not being able to sleep if there's someone else up in the house - I can't get to sleep until my husband gets in bed because I'm anticipating being disturbed. But at least by heading for bed earlier I've got all my sleep preparation stuff done, so I can go to sleep as soon as he's in bed too iyswim. Roaming teenagers in my house are expected to keep the noise down and as they reach late teens you may find that they're up very late, so I think you need to try and get in the habit of being able to sleep before them.

I'd be wary of the "need to have an evening" way of thinking. I recall my parents saying the same thing when I was a teenager and as far as I can see, they just ended up chronically exhausted and with enduring sleeping problems.

I don't think it's always down to the menopause.

I'm years and years past menopause (but on HRT) and my sleep pattern has been the same all my life. I'm an early nighter and early riser.

Also, I don't find Utrogestan sedating. I find it makes me wide awake, sweaty and restless with crazy dreams.

I am an early waker too and am on the same HRT. I sometimes I wake in the night too. Listing things alphabetically (animals, cities and towns, words that can’t be related in any way, words with 5 syllables, food, the 13.5 times table backwards starting from a random number, etc) can help me to fall back asleep, but I am lucky as I live alone and can listen to the radio, or read if I’m still awake after about an hour.
I sleep better if I have done some exercise, but not gone overboard as then I get cortisol sloshing round and can’t get to sleep to start with.

Changing when I go to bed changes when I wake up, but doesn’t change the length of time I sleep.

I have just come to accept that this is the way it is and appreciate that I get a lie in every morning.

I think you might just have to try going with it for now. Eye mask, ear plugs, white noise on, early night, get as much stuff as you can done when you get up early so you don’t have to do it in evenings (meal prep, sorting stuff for next day) and give it a couple of weeks and see how it goes. Acceptance is sometimes more helpful than trying to ‘fix’ something that is very hard to fix.

@OrdinaryGirl the pillow speaker works so that you only hear it if it's under your pillow at ear level. DH is quite a noisy sleeper sometimes, but even if I have it quite loud ( say on ¾ sound level) he can't hear it.

I keep an eye mask on the bedside table and put that on if I wake early - I find it's usually this time of year with the increased daylight. It helps as it makes it darker and also keeps my eyes closed. Even if I'm not properly asleep, at least I'm resting.

What about getting yourself completely ready for bed a bit earlier then spend time with your dh and get straight into bed at 11pm?

https://amzn.eu/d/8bPUl5J I have this one

Ive started doing the same recently which is really frustrating as I am naturally a night owl, so like to go to bed around midnight and wake up at 8ish, later at the weekend. But struggling to sleep past 6am now no matter what time I go to sleep

Ive tried a bunch of stuff but honestly, going to bed as early as possible and training my body to fall asleep earlier is the only thing helpful at the moment. It does mean I'm not getting much of an evening with my DH but at the moment I am prioritising my sleep as it has such a knock on effect to everything else

i have found that my sleep is very disrupted when I was relying on mirena for HRT progesterone. Now I take a utgesteron at bedtime and it’s very helpful.