Sleep Number … TMI

Those who know me well, know that I am a big believer in the adage, “Knowledge is Power”.

The more information I have, the happier I feel.

I am just as much in love with details as I am with the visionary “big picture”.  Basically I want it all!  When I discovered Google on my computer, I was ecstatic! Free Encyclopedias at my fingertips! 

Ask me to help you work through an issue and I going to ask you a few questions to get a clearer, better perspective. I’m not really a surface responder. I tend to go for the deep dive in.

Ask me a simple iPhone question and I will undoubtedly offer several step by step suggestions depending on which iPhone you have.  Actually, I will only personally remember one, the current one I have in my hand.  But I will happily look up your model and write you a step by step detailed response.  I’m just nice that way. 🙂 I know that the only reason I get these calls in the first place is that I am 1000 times more patient than most people’s adult children after they have been texted 1000 times with the same question, in their defense. 

I empathize…because I have been that parent!   Please don’t ask my children.  They tend to tell the truth.  

Do not mistake me for an expert on technology (and as I write those words I am literally laughing out loud at the irony). My help on iPhones is limited to questions like these: “how to turn it off”; “how to turn it on”; “how to turn your flashlight off when you didn’t mean to turn it on in the first place”; “how to delete your already deleted photos” ( this is such a pet peeve of mine…if I deleted it once, why must I delete AGAIN to save gigabyte space? One delete should suffice, Apple.)  

Also you should know that my helpful response for questions that go beyond this level of expertise is usually:  “turn your phone completely off, grab a cup of coffee, stir the stew, or file your finger nails.  Then turn it back on”.  It’s the phone version of “reboot” for computers and TVs.  We all just need a break sometimes, right?

Well, once again, in order to illustrate a point, I have digressed. And as usual, I have offered TMI!  (that’s Too Much Information, for you less hip folks).  I realize that just saying “less hip” makes me anything but…and I recognize the irony.  

Bottom line here is, I love details. My favorite response to just about anything is, “Tell me more”.   

So when I got my Sleep Number bed a little over a year ago, I was thrilled to find out that in addition to providing a variety of choices of mattress ‘hard or soft’ levels, and finding your perfect “sweet spot” number,  it also calculates the quality of your sleep …in incredible detail!  Bingo!!!  At last someone is going to provide detailed data without my having to ask 20 questions. 

I couldn’t wait to get my morning report, which is calculated in an overall percentage. Following that you are given a myriad of details on several categories. The categories are: Level of Restful Sleep, Level of Restless Sleep, # of bed exits (we all know what those are for). 

And then it gives you advice on how to improve those levels. 

Or it praises you for having had a good night’s sleep. 

Positive feedback, every morning…what a great way to start your day. Before you take that first sip of coffee, you can read a report telling you  how great your day is going to be due to how well you did at sleeping the previous night. It also offers you suggestions on how you can improve your good score.

The problem is I have never received a good score…not even ONE good score. Nary a one. 

Turns out I stink at sleeping. This is really nothing new to me. Since I had my first child in 1989, I have not “slept the sleep of babies”, so to speak, for even one night.

Before having babies, I could fall asleep at a live concert standing up, or on my boyfriend’s shoulder watching a movie, or in the middle of reading HR computer reports, or on my in-laws living room floor at a long family gathering. 

I once was a GREAT sleeper, not necessarily a great date.  

Things have been sadly different in that category these last almost 32 years. And so I already knew I was not a good sleeper. 

But I didn’t know I was THAT bad!  

Certainly I thought I got more than 2 hours of restful sleep per night. Also, I had not known those hours were accompanied by 4 hours of restless sleep and multiple bed exits. Four?  Seriously…I thought it was only two. 

And might I add that you get no credit for the hours you spend in “pre-sleep”. Pre-sleeping is a term I learned from my friend Judy Cook. Pre-Sleep is the number of hours you spend snoozing in your Lazy Boy or in your various couch potato positions. Having spent many post-news hours in pre-sleep, I think those should count for something.

I had never seen a report card on my own sleeping abilities. And I have never had it laid out so blatantly for me as to why I was consistently performing in the low 30 percentile level. Now, you would think I would love all this detail. And I did at first.  I tried all their suggestions. I had the motivation to get better sleep, sleep longer, and not exit the bed so much. I can’t tell you the number of nights I went to bed thirsty, just so my score on bed exits would improve.

In all honesty, and great envy, I think this report of detailed, helpful sleep data and all the sleep suggestions was written by a few really brilliant and earnest 30-somethings, whose only fault was not having experience being 60+ something sleepers.    

I have to say waking up to a failing grade on a sleep report card every morning was depressing and kind of demoralizing. I was downright despondent. Too bad I wasn’t graded on “Use of Alliteration”.  I would have Aced that category.

After weeks of trying all the suggestions and progressing to a measly 41%, I began to ignore the report. And that’s so NOT me!  Ignore data?????? But who wants to start every day with 3 pages of how you failed last night.

Here’s the thing…you get a daily % grade, then you get an accumulated % grade. Any student knows that a bunch of 30% and lower ratings added to even a mild improvement is still failing.  I figured I would be in my mid-70’s before I could bring my grade up to passing. I felt as deflated as a 12% Sleep Number bed.

Then, I had the brilliant idea to trick the bed’s computer. 

I started sleeping on the other side of the bed! I would give myself another name on the bed’s register and start over.  My alternate personality, Linda Victoria, would have better grades than Linda Beth.  I went to bed all smug. I knew I could at least hit 50%! 

All I needed to do was:  Stay in one position all night (they don’t like moving around); Stop looking at the clock or my phone (how they know this is unexplainable to me and kind of creepy); Quit doing my stretching exercises in bed (they interpret this as restless sleeping…I interpret it as  60-something joint survival); and finally, Limit my bed exits to 1 (right…HA!).  

The next morning the only report was: “There is no data on last night’s sleep”. What?  I checked the profile and it did not recognize Linda Victoria at all.  Hmmmm…turns out if you sleep on the side of the bed that you did not register for, you are lost to their data!  Hahahahaha!  Bingo!  I’m certain one of the 30-something tech folks could figure this out, but I just thought…nah!

I had such glee it was concerning.  I was hiding out from the Sleep Number police…in my OWN bed!  That’s just sad.  

I took a long, sober look at myself.  Crazy didn’t quite cover it.  

I considered deleting the Sleep App on my phone.  

I figured no news would be good news in this particular realm of my life.

I woke up to the reality that the best one could hope for in terms of a good night’s sleep for someone in the senior range of life means not consuming caffeine after 4:00; not eating after 7:00; getting to bed at a decent time each night. All the things in all the articles…blah, blah, blah.  I also woke up to the reality that “sleeping like a baby” might not be a realistic goal anymore.

I no longer look at the report…and I moved the APP on my phone to a less prominent place.  I’m sleeping on both sides of the bed and sometimes in the middle. This is as close as I get to living on the wild side.  

And I exit that bed whenever I need to without guilt.  I’m almost 70 years old…and I’ll exit a bed when I want to, by golly!

Also, I’m back to doing my stretching exercises in bed and my back and my neck thank me daily!  So there!  

It’s a marvelous bed! It is the best bed I have ever had! And I love sleeping in it!  I just don’t need all the details.

Moral of the story: There are times in life when you really can have “Too Much Information” for the task at hand. 

Sometimes enjoying what you have is enough! Sometimes a little mystery is a good thing! 

And now I’m going back to bed.  I exited the bed at 5:00 am to write this story to distract myself from something that was robbing me of sleep.  There are no statistics that can explain that reasoning to anyone, so let’s just let that pass.

I’m now sleepy enough to grab a couple of hours of shut eye. 

And I know I’ll wake up tomorrow morning, not obsess about a report card, and get on with my day.  

I don’t need a report to tell me that.  🙂