Carol - Interview 18

Age at interview: 66

Brief Outline:

Carol has noticed her sleep has changed as she has got older. In particular she now finds she has to get up to go to the toilet in the night, sometimes as often as six times, which she finds very disturbing. Now Carol is retired, she finds her days vary from being very full and busy to having little planned, and she wonders whether she doesn't sleep so well on the days when she has been less active.

Background:

Divorced, 3 children, retired Telephonist/Receptionist

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Since Carol has retired she has enjoyed the fact that she doesn’t have to rush around every day and is no longer under pressure to get up early in the morning. Carol feels this helps when she has had a bad night, because she knows she can stay in bed a bit longer if she wishes.

 

Occasionally, Carol may nap for ten minutes or so in the afternoon, but would never plan to do so because she feels guilty if she sleeps during the day. Carol also finds that sometimes she may wake up in the night and find it difficult to get back to sleep. When this happens she may go downstairs, have a cup of tea and a snack, but Carol doesn’t worry about not sleeping because she doesn’t have to go to work the next day.

 

Carol has arthritis and this sometimes wakes her up, and has recently learnt from her sister that she snores, although she doesn’t hear herself snoring.

Carol remembers not being allowed to stay in bed in the mornings when she was a teenager, unlike young people today.

Thinking further back to when you were a young girl and at home did you have a bedtime routine or did you choose? I am quite interested in how people’s histories impact on…

 

No I think, for those days, obviously it is totally different now, but in those days it was perfectly normal until I left school. When I left school I worked in the centre of [Town], and then I would go out a couple of nights a week and definitely Saturdays and Sundays with my friend. In those days we used to go to dance halls. There wasn’t a great deal for us to do, or the cinema or shows or what have you.

 

And you were allowed to sleep in the next day or did you have to have a set bedtime routine?

 

Was I allowed to sleep in? In those days, you mean like they do now, sleep all day. Never. Nobody ever did it. No we just didn’t do it. Saturdays we got up, my sister and I. Mum worked half a day six days a week at a fire station as a cook and on Saturdays she worked as well and before she got home, I had done downstairs all the cleaning and upstairs my sister. Or whatever vice versa. And so I think we were a lot less selfish in those days. I mean dinner, lunch or whatever was on the table when Mum came in and the house was spotless. We never thought twice about it. We weren’t badly done to. No way. We felt we had a perfectly normal childhood. Yes. Family around and even on my Father’s side my Grandma, we walk her on Sundays, the four of us my Mum and Dad and my sister and I walk over there for tea and it was miles, absolutely miles, but we walked there. I think about it now. I can’t begin to think how far it was but we did without thinking.

 

And back again?

 

Yes, oh yes. there were two buses to catch if we did get the bus get but…

 

But you just got out and walked?

 

Oh gosh yes, and the cinema. The cinema was miles away but we would go in a group and walk all the way there and all the way back.  

Carol always likes to have six pillows on her bed, and will even ask for extra pillows when she is staying at a hotel.

And do you have a duvet or blankets?

 

I have a duvet and I have just got my wafer thin summer one on because I was so… I kept going hot. I do.

 

And pillows do you have special pillows?

 

Two, not too fat ones. Actually there are six pillows on my bed. Don’t laugh. You know, it is a habit you know, both sides and I have them for reading. But the minute I am going to sleep then I take off the bit fat reading pillows as I call them and put them to one side.

 

Do you take them with you when go away?

 

Oh gosh no I wouldn’t have any room for them. There is lots and lots of pillows on my bed at [town] and if I am at a hotel then I will ask for more. And they always say yes. And when I go up they are all there. I ask for three, sometimes as many as three more. Yes.

Carol has heard somewhere that she shouldn't have a television in her room, but she enjoys it as it is company and entertainment for her.

So you have the television on. At what point – what is the trigger for you to say ‘right I am going to turn this off and go to sleep’?

 

If I think I have fallen asleep and I am saying to myself in my mind, well this is ridiculous, turn it off and go, you know, turn the light off. Or that is it basically or if I am reading often you fall asleep when you are reading. So … yes, you do. So that is it basically really.

 

So it is about you are waiting until you are almost falling asleep is that it?

 

I certainly don’t climb into bed, turn the light off, put my head on the pillow and wait to go to sleep, because I don’t know why, nowadays it seems why do that, when you can watch the television. I know they say you shouldn’t have one in the room, but I quite enjoy it. It is company. Apparently a lot of old people say that, their television is their world. 

Carol's suggested strategy for a good night's sleep is to not do what she does.

If you could give somebody, anybody any advice, about strategies, helping you get to sleep or keeping asleep or what to do if they wake up. What kind of things would you suggest? What would be helpful?

 

All the things that I don’t do. Seriously. You know, like having just lately I have not been eating until about, it could be eightish, maybe later. A lot of that is to do with going to visit my Mother at lunchtimes. So I don’t get lunch so then I come home and possibly have lunch round about half two which is too late really. So that makes my dinner time in the evening further back. So I don’t think any of that helps. And then I sit down and stay sitting down and I know it’s all the things you shouldn’t do. I am sure I should get up and go for a walk somewhere. But … in the summer it is different I have got to admit until it is dark I potter and I sit on the patio and I read and I see something and I will get up and go oh I will pull it up. Back and forth like a ditherer but I quite enjoy it. 

Carol has noticed she wakes up more in the night now she is older, and sometimes gets up to have tea and toast.

It varies it is so different. I am obviously beginning to realise a lot of it is down to me, my fault, if I have something to drink. Coffee and so on shortly before I go to bed which is naughty but I do it. Then I suppose that is probably going to make me go to sleep, taking longer to get to sleep. There are very occasional days, nights, I should say, when I wake up and I can’t get to sleep again. So I have done what I have heard other people do when they get older, because I know that you don’t sleep as well when you get older. I heard that other people simply give in, go downstairs and get a cup of tea and maybe a piece of toast and then go back to bed. I don’t feel that terrible about it because I am retired. So if it was work the next morning I would be shattered, but I don’t think I did it then. It didn’t happen then.