Sleeping problems

I remember the nights when I got eight hours of sleep.  Of course there were times when I would have something on my mind, and tossed and turned half the night, but those were seldom.  I'm not sure when that changed, but I do recall saying to Cliff when I went back to work at Kohls that apparently God must be telling me that I only needed six hours of sleep, because it had become the norm.  That would have been in the year 2000.  Actually, I did pretty well with six hours.

Old age has made me have to get up many times nightly, so my problem now is getting back to sleep.  

However!!!  I'm not so sure this fitbit watch is so accurate.  I am very sure I wasn't awake for an hour and twenty-two minutes.  Here's why:  Quite some time ago I went on a Google quest to find something I could listen to that would help me sleep, or at least give me something to listen to so it wouldn't be so boring when I can't sleep.  I found many, many podcasts that are supposed to work for that problem, and finally chose NothingMuchHappens.com.  It's free, and the stories are boring.  It works for me at least 3/4 of the time.

Since Cliff sleeps in a chair in the living room and can't hear anything when he takes his Cochlear implant processor off for the night, I could hold a party in the bedroom with babies crying and Green Day singing full-blast.  No worries there.  So that's a plus.  There's no way any sounds will wake him.

At first I was using an Alexa device to listen to the stories, but I've lost a little bit of hearing these days; so I'd tell Alexa "louder" and then it was sort of hard for me to understand the words.  So I'm now taking the iPad to bed with me.  I put it on Cliff's pillow, start the story, and when it's over (long after I'm asleep) it shuts off.  Each time my bladder wakes me up and I come back to bed, I wake up the iPad and start the story again.  

Many nights, I never hear the first line of the story:  By the time Kathryn Nicolai, the author and teller of the stories, gets done telling her name, what she does, which charity they are giving to this week, and telling me to inhale a deep breath through my nose and then breathe it out of my mouth (twice), I often don't hear the title.  

I'd say it works for me about 75% of the nights.  I did have two nights this week when I only got 5 hours of sleep, so one of those nights I took one-half of a teeny-tiny Unisom pill.  If I take the whole pill I am groggy the rest of the day.

I sure do appreciate finding something that seems to help.