New CPAP user having trouble falling asleep

Hello, i know this has been covered, but other circumstances are slightly different...
I am a new user of CPAP and I have the Resmed 10 unit. I am using the pillow, the settings are on 5-20 and have no issues with air leaking. The first night i tried had a very long ramp time of 10 minutes and i found myself air starved and would take extremely long breaths to make up for it. Exhaling took too long as well and after about 4 breaths i felt suffocated and would open my mouth and take a huge breath to catch up. the 2nd night i set the ramp to 5 minutes and after about 5 minutes i felt like i was getting enough air, but couldn't fall asleep due to sounding like darth vader... The 3rd night i set the ramp to 0 and felt like i was getting enough air but darth vader was laying next to me and wouldn't let me sleep...

I did notice that i seem to take longer breaths when on CPAP than i do when not. I am a shallow breather, quick in, quick out, but it seems that when on CPAP i can't get the same pattern to work. I am a very light sleeper as it is and that is making it hard to fall asleep. One of the nights i went to bed i was totally exhausted and still couldn't fall asleep with the CPAP, i end up pulling it off and falling asleep without it.

Is it just a matter of training yourself to fall asleep while listening to Darth Vader? My wife is a deep sleeper (learned to sleep through most of my snorning) and it doesn't seem to bother her.. My sleep study revealed that i had 8 events over an 8 hour period, they told me it was mild sleep apnea. I am at a loss as to what to do to make this work, everyone i have talked with that has used a CPAP machine has said that their quality of sleep is much better while using it, I would like to find out if I will benefit from it as well...

Please help this unsleepable soul!

This is a common problem. From what I can see, you could benefit from some comfort setup changes. Depending on how your machine has been set up, you may be able to do this from the user menu, or if not you will have to go into the Clinical Menu. To do that you hold the rectangular home button and the round set button down at the same time for 5 seconds. I would move your minimum pressure up to 7 cm. And instead of choosing a ramp time, choose Auto. In auto mode it actually holds a fixed pressure until you fall asleep. You also need to set the Start Ramp pressure to 7 cm. These changes will give you a fixed 7 cm of pressure instead of 4 (default) until you fall asleep. After that it will switch to control the pressure based on the number of events you are having.

If a start pressure of 7 cm and minimum of 7 cm is not enough to feel like you can breath easily, then you could try 8 cm. Hope that helps some. Any questions, just ask.

Thanks for the response, I can give that a try, but not sure if it will help, the pressure is already set to auto and within 2 or 3 minutes it is as high as 16, my brother in law has one of these and he told me that if it goes that high, i really need the CPAP... it is going that high while i am still awake and seems that it might be due to my pattern of breathing? Not sure... But i will try your suggestion...

Thanks again!

Yes, i have installed Oscar and have looked at the data, but not understanding some of them doesn't help, i am learning and hope to be able to decipher all of the data as some point..

Re: Darth Vader. Try coating the ports of the water tank with a thin coat of Vaseline, it cut down the noise on my machine. No ramp time and a setting of CPAP 6.4mm works well for me as does a wedge under my pillow to raise my head. Good luck.

The noise is coming from the air going through the pillow into my nose, and when i exhale, how would coating the tank with vasoline stop that? I did make the ramp time 0, that helps, but haven't tried a thicker pillow under my head... I think i realized that i am a mouth breather, is it possible to train yourself to breath through the nose when you have been breathing through the mouth for so many years?

To perhaps give you a bit of encouragement on how things may seem bad now, there is hope with some perseverance to get things sorted out. Here are a couple of my Daily reports. The first is from my first week on the ResMed AirSense 10 AutoSet from 4 years ago. It was in Auto mode with a minimum pressure of 10.5 and maximum of 16 cm or so. The second one is from last night, with the same machine, but with the setting that have evolved over the past 4 years. It is now in fixed pressure CPAP mode, with a set pressure of 11 cm. This is not likely the solution for everyone, but it has worked for me. It does show that while the Auto mode may work for some, it is not a cure all. My wife still has hers set in Auto mode, and that works well for her. In general in Auto mode most end up with a fairly narrow band between minimum pressure and maximum pressure. Set this way, it behave more like a fixed pressure CPAP mode