The Perimenopause Husband
Perimenopause and Sleep: The 3am Side of the Bed
Some nights a hot flush, or a hot flash, was quick. Over, and she could settle again.
Other nights the heat never really left. Not a quick one that came and went, but warm for hours, right through the night. That is not seconds. That is the whole night.
Covers off, covers back on, shifting around, trying to manage something her body was not giving her any warning about. And that went on for months.
And I was lying next to her, getting the draft every time the doona moved.
What was I thinking at 3am?
My own sleep. That is the honest answer.
Some nights I slept straight through it. Other nights I would half wake, over and over, and I would be irritated. Not at her exactly. At the night. At how tired I was going to be. I never once lay there and worked out what the night was costing her, because I was too busy counting what it was costing me.
I'm not proud of that. She was the one doing the night. I was just losing a bit of sleep beside it.
Why does she wake at 3am and not get back to sleep?
I am not going to explain the why of it. I will tell you what it looks like, because that is the part I got wrong.
She would wake at three, sometimes four, and that was it. Not back off. Night after night. Up to the toilet, back into bed, lying there with her mind going. Then I would wake at six, rested, and walk into the kitchen like it was a normal morning.
Her tired and my tired were not the same thing. Mine was a short night. Hers was one night stacked on top of the last one, for months.
It is real, it is common, and she is not choosing it. It goes on the same list as everything else that turns up in the years before menopause, and the symptoms post has the rest of that list.
If the nights are wrecking her for weeks on end, see a doctor or a specialist in this field. She should not have to white knuckle it, and there are things they can do that a husband cannot.
Why is she creeping around the bedroom?
This one I saw late.
When she got up in the night she would creep. Tiptoe across the room. Back into bed as quietly as she could, like she was trying not to be there at all. Apologising with her whole body for being awake.
And the creeping was keeping her awake longer than the trip to the toilet did. She was not just awake. She was awake and guilty, and guilty does not go back to sleep.
Some of that guilt came from my side of the bed. Not from anything I said. From what I did, some nights, when the bed moved.
What is the one thing to stop doing?
Stop sighing when the bed moves. Ever.
That is the whole tool. It sounds too small to matter. It is not.
You roll over, you let out a breath, maybe a bit heavier than you meant. To you it is nothing, you are half asleep. To her, lying there at three in the morning already feeling like a burden, it is the loudest thing in the room. The sigh is the thing she hears. It tells her she has woken you again, and she is costing you again.
So no sigh. No huff. No rolling over hard. If the bed moves, let it move.
That is one. We did a fair bit more to sort the nights out, and it is a whole chapter of the book, Fixing the Nights. But the sigh is the one to drop tonight, because it costs you nothing and she will notice it is gone before you do.
Is it going to be like this every night?
Not every night. There were quiet stretches, and then a run of bad ones out of nowhere.
The winter night post has the night it started in our house. How long this lasts is the honest answer to the question you are probably lying there asking by now.
Start With the Weather
The Weather Report is the two-page guide to reading these days: telling a storm warning from an overcast day from a fog day, and knowing the one thing to do in each. Free, on your phone in thirty seconds.