Staying asleep

hello. I am new with my cpap. I am wearing the dreamwear nasal pillows. At first I wore the under the nose kind, but it would shift and blow in my eyes and I wasn't wearing it. After consulting with my doctor we switched to the nasal pillows.

Its taking me a bit to get to sleep, but a lot of that is getting my body into a good position.

The harder part is staying asleep.

Im getting about an hour with the cpap. 2 hours max. Then I have to get up to go to the bathroom. And when I get back into bed I can't fall asleep with the cpap the second time. Sometimes I just wake up and can't fall asleep the 2nd time until I take the mask off.

Any advice would be helpful.

Hi sappire726

For me everything to do with CPAP is a matter of resignation and endurance, even after many years, but there are a few things that might make it slightly more survivable.

Just some practical things like not drinking too much fluid of an evening and experimenting with positions as you have done, as well as using bedding to reduce draughts and noise.

I find that some form of relaxation prior to bed helps and I also use Melatonin to enhance my chances of getting some sleep.

Others will venture more into the technical areas but I would suggest that you have someone reduce the machine's function or settings to not much more than the actual pressure that you need so that you can wear the mask more loosely in an effort to be comfortable, without having the machine amplify every little leak.

Some people (myself included) prefer to use the machine with the ramp function disabled.

None of these suggestions will fix anything but sometimes making a few adjustments of our own is enough to give us a sense of ownership or control.

Others will be able to offer more, but for me it was the other way round. I had the same thing a few weeks ago, I was peeing 3 or 4 times each night, and read up on this. Nocturia, or waking up to go to the bathroom, is a symptom of sleep apnea. Counter-intuitively, the lack of sleep is causing you to go to the bathroom; going to the bathroom is not causing the lack of sleep (as long as you're not drinking excessively just before bed)! {According to one website I read, going into REM sleep stops you producing urine as the body becomes paralysed or something, but with sleep apnea you may not get into REM sleep as it usually takes about 1.5 to 2 hours to get into REM sleep. But like anything on the internet, treat with a little caution}.

After just a few weeks I don't have this problem any more. I've taken the advice on this forum around improving settings (I've not got it right yet) and am sleeping so much better and the nocturia has gone. I think that if you solve problem 1 then problem 2 will be resolved too.

First, what make and model of a CPAP machine do you have? There may be some opportunity to improve the comfort settings.

Some of the issues with sleeping through the night can be in trying to sleep too long, and napping during the day. To optimize a single quality sleep it is better to try and sleep 7-8 hours and avoid daytime naps. It can also help to go to bed later and avoid liquids during the evening.

These are all great responses! Since the topics relates to insomnia, I wanted to share these two articles. You touched on many of the points, but figured a comprehensive list of 'sleep hygiene' guidance might be helpful. The first one is more related to COVID-times:

https://myapnea.org/blog/2020/04/strategies-to-promote-better-sleep-in-these-uncertain-times

https://myapnea.org/blog/2018/11/no-more-counting-sheep-proven-behaviors-to-help-you-sleep