Snoring

[susyp]

Just looking for some commiseration here really. Anyone else have partners that snore? It has been the bane of my life now for the entire 8 years of our relationship and now that sleep is so important (when I'm running around after a little one) it's really getting to me. We had a huge row last night as normally I just get up, go downstairs, move everything around, get out the sofa bed, etc etc, but last night I thought maybe HE should do it and he went nuts. Then I didn;t go back to sleep because I was so wound up after a row so now facing a day without having had any sleep (and guess who is snoring away upstairs). Which is why I normally just get up. Arg. We are having a loft built soon so will have a proper other bed and I can't wait! My only problem is that I am worried that my little one will try and find me and climb up stairs so really would rather my hubbie was the one that transferred beds.

We had 2 weeks recently when he didn;t snore, and the combination of that and my daughter having been sleeping through for the last 6 months meant i started to feel like a new woman. Now the snoring is back and I do not want to go back to feeling like this!

what do others do. I feel like insisting on separate bedrooms. Is that a marriage death knell. Have to say the way I feel this morning the idea of living somewhere without Mr Snorer is very attractive! If I were to have my time again I would be finding out about snoring on date 1!

susypx

[Saffron]

Have you checked if there is a medical reason for the snoring?

[Claire29]

I know what you are going through!!! My husband has always snored, even on his side and it's worse if he's very tired or had a drink. If I get asleep before him it's normally ok but sometimes during the night if baby wakes up who is next to me in cot I find it hard getting back to sleep and end up giving him a kick or dig in the ribs to stop snoring! Obv this doesn't work and I guess for him it's not very nice getting a kick in the legs while asleep but it's SOOOOOOO annoying! If it's really bad I tell him to go and sleep downstairs on the next level, we have like a sofa bed thing which he goes on or he will get into one of the other kid's beds. Weirdly they don't seem to wake up from his snoring which is a good thing. If he ends up sleeping downstairs halfway through the night we all get a better sleep which works well. I wouldn't like to go down the route of seperate beds etc I think as long as you start off together in the same bed at night and then if one moves it's not the end of the world and hopefully everyone will get some sleep.

I'm dreading when the boys get older.....3 son's and a husband snoring....yikes!

[Bumpkin]

Sorry to hear this Susyp, maybe he was so cross partly due to being embarassed about the snoring.. Mr B is alway paranoid about snoring although thankfully he only does when he's very drunk! I think once you have kids, separate beds are more common than you'd think from vague discussions with friends although maybe not everynight as a permanent basis. I'm lucky in that Mr B always volunteers for the spare bed (I can't sleep in our spare room, it's too noisy!). I think trying to get him to go to the drs is a good idea, but hard to get men to agree to this, definitely approach it when not tired and annoyed! I had a patch of sleeping really badly recently and finally got some zopiclone from the drs, only needed a couple to get my sleeping back on track, but they gave me 6 blissful hours of deep sleep and I woke really refreshed, funny side effect was that apparently I snored really loudly on them which sent Mr B scuttling to the spare bedroom again! Good luck.

[Fuschia]

Mr f not only snores like a wildebeest but has night terrors and will lurch shouting round the flat if I disturb him , and has been known to unset the alarm and wander round the front garden, muttering

[nymom]

I have to admit that my husband and I have been in different rooms for 3 years due to a combo of two small children and his snoring. We are almost at the point of "moving back in" together and I cant face it because of the snoring. When I wake him he gets mad, so I dont know what to do about it either really. Just thought I would commiserate with you.

[Fuschia]

Perhaps they should live together while we have zm all female no snoring commune

Would probably solve the wee on the floor round the toilet and 'basket full of odd socks' phenomena too ..,

[supergolden88]

my hubby snores as well - when he is tired or had alcohol or is flat on his back. The anti snore strips are hit and miss (and expensive). The anti snore spray I got in Boots was good but have not been able to find it since. Boots had their own version and there was a another brand too. If anyone sees it anywhere get me a caseload!

[Sally81]

Just wanted to commiserate and say really do get it sorted if poss. I am sure this will not be the case for you, but I ended up with quite a bad sleep disorder a few years back because of a partner who snored terribly. It became a massive issue. I started wearing foam ear plugs and still use them now (even though my husband only snores lightly, if at all.)Have you tried that? Even if it doesn't block out the snoring totally, it should help to dampen it down and usually the more bedded in the plugs get, the less you hear. I know you need to hear the little one, so might not be an option, but I can usually hear my baby when using mine, I think mum intuition plays a part.

Good luck.

[zeban]

Separate bedrooms is the key to long marriages. Sleep and good sleep is so so important.

Get him to move though!

[helena handbasket]

Exactly the same problem here. It's fine if I go to sleep first and nobody wakes me in the night, but if my son wakes me up, even for a few minutes, I have to go back to bed next to the rhino-beast and I'm awake for the night.

Earplugs work (sometimes they're no match for the snores though), but I can't hear my son OR the alarm clock in the morning.

I'm thinking a bed in the spare room is less of a marriage killer than the bitterness of ten sleepless years. I keep telling him that I think the two of them are conspiring to kill me, one long sleepless night at a time.

He just keeps telling me I snore too. Very helpful. I like the idea of the communal sleeping man cave or whatever. If they had to live it themselves, would they feel differently?

Anyway susyp, it's a war out there and we do what we need to do, right? Spare room, I say!:))

[susyp]

yes agreed with all of you. making me feel much better. i do use industrial earplugs. and a very loud baby monitor so i can hear her. i think maybe the key is to have a spare room (which we will soon) and not make a drama about the fact that I will really consider it my room! my daughter will just have to learn to climb the stairs safely - she is nearly 3 - so hould be ok

Fuschia how on earth do you cope?

Susypx

[Fuschia]

SusyP I must confess I managed to get him to move out of my bed when I ws pg with the twins! Then I slept with them for a long time and he was quite happy to avoid night wakings. He doesn't go to bed till midnight anyway while I am early to bed so we don't miss out on cosy chats or anything. When we go away overnight together as we do when we can, I end up awake half the night and i daren't really wake him or poke him to turn over as in a night terror he is quite scary. He has asthma so i think that is part of the cause, along with bad hay fever

We are planning on moving back into the same room pretty soon but just thinking about it, I am not sure it's such a good idea! When we move house I think i will establish my own little bolt hole, as you suggest. Good plan!!

[KatsuQueen]

Susyp, I am embarassed to admit that I am the snorer in our relationship :-$ I asked MrKatsu how he deals with it, and he said he just pushes me harder and harder until I change position or stop snoring. I just asked him to demonstrate how hard he shoves me - quite hard (owww) but I just sleep through it all. During the Easter break we staying with in-laws and no amount of shoving would get me to stop snoring, so he told me to stick my tongue out. I dutifully opened my mouth and slept with my tongue out...all done in a sleep haze.

I suppose you have tried a few hard nudges to get him to change position?

[Saffron]

This from Wikiped:

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Causes-

Generally speaking, the structures involved are the uvula and soft palate. The irregular airflow is caused by a passageway blockage and usually due to one of the following:

Throat weakness, causing the throat to close during sleep

Mispositioned jaw, often caused by tension in the muscles

Fat gathering in and around the throat

Obstruction in the nasal passageway

The tissues at the top of airways touching each other causing vibrations

Relaxants such as alcohol or drugs relaxing throat muscles

Sleeping on one's back, which may result in the tongue dropping to the back of the mouth

Enlarged tonsils

Impact-

Snoring is known to cause sleep deprivation to snorers and those around them, as well as daytime drowsiness, irritability, lack of focus and decreased libido.[1] It has also been suggested that it can cause significant psychological and social damage to sufferers.[2] Multiple studies reveal a positive correlation between loud snoring and risk of heart attack (about +34% chance) and stroke (about +67% chance).[3]

Though snoring is often considered a minor affliction, snorers can sometimes suffer severe impairment of lifestyle. The between-subjects trial by Armstrong et al. discovered a statistically significant improvement in marital relations after snoring was surgically corrected. This was confirmed by evidence from Gall et al.,[4] Cartwright and Knight[5] and Fitzpatrick et al.[6]

New studies associate loud "snoring" with the development of carotid artery atherosclerosis,[7] the risk of brain damage[8] and of stroke. Researchers hypothesize that loud snoring creates turbulence in carotid artery blood flow closest to the airway. Generally speaking, increased turbulence irritates blood cells and has previously been implicated as a cause of atherosclerosis.

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[Saffron]

And also check out this site, The British Snoring and Sleep Apnoea Asso:

http://www.britishsnoring.co.uk/

In particular, see 'What Can I Do to Stop Snoring?'

http://www.britishsnoring.co.uk/snoring/what_can_i_do_to_stop_snoring.php?PHPSESSID=f950007d04eefc465aa84d8a0faa828c

[womanofdulwich]

spare room is never a good idea in the long term. it would have to be a desperate measure surely, ear plugs much better. imo.

[Saffron]

The spare room question is really a personal one. For some couples it will be a breaking point, for others it will be a saving grace. (Also, not everone can sleep with earplugs.)

[zeban]

I agree Saffron, womanfdulwich, I don't understand why you think so rigidly, not all couples are the same, and what you say is actually a myth.

[susyp]

womanofdulwich - for 8 years now I have worn earplugs, of different brands, tried pillow over my head, over his head , invariably even on good nights I sleep the wrong way up in the bed! I just realised after 2 weeks when for some reason he didn't snore - how much better I felt. And I have a nearly 3 year old who has only been sleeping through for a 6 months, together with 2 years of illness- only been better for 6 months - so to have 2 weeks where I felt GOOD was a bit of a revelation!

It has been slightly better the last 2 nights - not the snoring - but on sat night he agreed to sleep downstairs on the sofa bed - last night I did. It's been better because I do all thef urniture moving etc and lay out the bed before I go to bed - then if I need to move it's not such a drama. I think it will help me with all the builder stuff as I will be thinking of the loft as my bolthole!

saffron thank you for links will read through this evening. Scary stuff about links to illnesses - his father died of a heart attack and his mother of a stroke - so from now after reading that we are eating even more healthily and taking more days out . Don;t think I will pass that particular gem on to him :-(

fushchia - On holidays I am hoping that I can persuade him to nearly always book self catering - with 2 rooms - so I can escape. A few years ago we spent a week in Barcelona and his snoring was horrendous that week - I have never felt s terrible I don;t thik I slept a wink. Felt like I was tripping. O nthe last night I couldn;t cope and I went and lay on the lobby area we had in our room - he went mental when he found me as it was supposed to be a romantic break. Maybe one day he;ll get how it impacts on me but I am starting to doubt it so all I can do is find solutions that work for me! I think you must be a saint to cope with it all. I would start in different beds but to be honest our sex life is very very slowly getting back to anything resembling normal after everything and I think it would set things back somewhat were I too fully decamp. He has been pretty patient (if moany!) during everything!

and finally sally81 I do sympathise - a few years ago I had pretty chronic insomnia and just before I went onto drugs I tried acupuncture - it completely worked (had tried various other alt therapies none of which worked). Have been fine since then although recenlty have been a bit worse again ie can;t get back to sleep when I wake - but think it may be too much coffee - you get in a vicious circle don;t you.

i get really stressed if he even comes to bed at the same time as me at the moment as I am so desperate to go to sleep first ! very very nice to know I am not alone with this problem ! Makes me feel a bit more resolute about doing what I need to to retain sanity - as I really cannot cope with feeling shitty anymore.

Suspy

[womanofdulwich]

i think you are a saint for 8 years putting up with the man without making him have an operation- whatever it is that Mr Millband is having done etc.Cant you go and see a dr? I am sure I read that he snores and the operation he is having is often done on the national health.I personally find it really hard to sleep in a bed by myself, so will put up with a lot and both of us usually respond long enough to a " stop snoring" loud whisper in the ear for the other one to get to sleep.i know if i have more than a tiny amount of alcohol I sometimes snore terribly and my partner to a lesser extent. can you work out why he did not snore for 2 weeks?

good luck

x

[EmilyE]

I used to snore and drove my partner mad. But then went to a chiropractor about a back problem, and from the first visit didn't snore anymore. It turns out I had a misaligned C2, which can have a significant impact on the whole ENT system. I know it sounds a bit wierd and wonderful, and obviously there is absolutely nothing to suggest that any of you/or partners have the same issue, but an expensive trip to a fantastic chiropractor could start feeling like good value for money...

[Moi23]

Wow, so many people have snoring partners. I guess I feel better too. My other half snores really loudly and it drives round the bend if I'm really tired and can't sleep. He also gets really cross if I wake him up, so you feel really trapped if there's no escape. No practical suggestions I'm afraid. I tend to just lump it...

[Ruth_Baldock]

Another snorer here; my husband says it's terrible whenever I'm pregnant and I suspect that's due to increased pressure on my asthma/spinal problems like EmilyE pointed out. Cheeky S also snores, so when we used to bedshare, poor husband never got any sleep...

My Stepfather snored so loudly that he kept my mum and I and ALL children awake, despite him sleeping downstairs and most of us 2 floors up in the loft conversion. With him it was a weight/fondness of the drink problem, also smoking. If he's going to have a drink now, Mum makes him sleep downstairs and uses heavy duty earplugs. She says seperate sleeping arrangements saved her sanity, I can imagine why.