I never have trouble falling asleep. I’d say it takes between 1 – 3 billionths of a second for me to completely knock out. It’s truly a gift and I love it. Once I commit, I can be peacefully slumbering anywhere I choose. I can even wield it during especially tedious dinner party! If you’re one of those unfortunate people who have trouble sleeping or if you suspect you have underlying sleep problems, it’s advisable that you consult a doctor because you might need immediate treatment, such as a sleep apnea treatment that uses cpap machines if you are experiencing sleep apnea, for instance.

Mid-conversation dominated by inane prattle? See you in the morning, I’m out!

Despite this magic, staying asleep has become a bit of an issue for me. I tend to wake randomly sometime between 3 and 5 AM. For most people, that wouldn’t be a problem. Just roll right over and continue snoozing away, right? I, on the other hand, begin to do some calculations in my head. “Well, if I just get up now, I’ll be giving myself a solid 2-3 hours to do anything I want. I can go for a run or a swim. I can watch the news or a movie. Perhaps I dial in my Swahili on Rosetta Stone. Maybe I’ll hit the beach before sunrise and surf for a half an hour and still have time to get the kids off to school.” By the time I’m done running scenarios through my head, I’m fully awake and there’s just no way I’m falling back to sleep. So if that seems to be a problem to you as well, you can try innovations such as a water heated mattress pad in order to get back to your snoozing phase.

I love that this routine affords me the time to watch things I can’t when the kids are around (“In Bruges” and all its profanity-laden wonderfulness?? Don’t mind if I do!!), but I pay the price around 3 – 4 PM when I’m groggy and slow having to deal with hyper-charged children.

I needed to figure out what I’m doing wrong that my brain is turning on so ridiculously early almost every day (seriously, I can tell you when you’ll hear which birds almost every day, always the rare Dickcissel first, then the Brown Booby). It’s not fair to my kids that I’m super energized while they’re sleeping and then I transform into a catatonic heap of barely animated human flesh when they get home from school. I want to say that I looked into finding solutions for this, and thought that the usual methods (wearing devices to sleep for tracking) just wouldn’t work for me (and they wouldn’t, way too obtrusive) but I’m not that ambitious. So I just plodded along, enjoying my mornings and tossing away my late afternoons.

Then suddenly the solution I didn’t search for landed in my lap! We started working with Beautyrest (www.beautyrest.com/sleeptracker) and I learned all about the Beautyrest Sleeptracker monitor. It’s a small processor (only about the size of a smartphone) that slips between your mattress and foundation and monitors your sleep via a connected app. By using this I am gaining a better understanding of my own sleep habits. This is my #ISleepTo. I’m doing it to be more there for my kids when they roll home and want to do SO MANY activities.

I’m happy I’ll have something there to tell me what’s going on without it being a thing I have to wear or being super creepy. “Hey, stand over there and watch me sleep…. Take notes.” Oddly enough, not many people want to volunteer for that! Weird, right??

After only a few nights I started understanding more about my sleep and getting some good tips on how to improve. The app was telling me when I was in REM sleep, what my heart rate was while I slept and even my respiration rate. Every night it gives me a score on my sleep. The higher the score, the closer I am to reaching my sleep goal. Now, part of our work with the Beautyrest Sleeptracker monitor is to improve our score. Improve more than any of the other guys who are also trying it out. Every morning, the app not only wakes me when it’s an optimal time in my sleep cycle (making me feel better about waking), but it gives me some tips on how I can sleep better in coming nights. Things I never thought about like not eating too close to bedtime because digestion can mess with your sleep. I’m making all of the adjustments it suggests and by doing that I’ve been able to sleep through the night way better. I’ve only had my 3 AM wake up twice since starting (fully tracked and wrecking my score, unfortunately). If you also want to fix your snoring problem, you can try these Zip Snore patches from anti snore australia.

I’m going to continue monitoring my sleep every night. I want to get the improve my score not just so I can gloat to the other guys working on this, but so that I’m able to be awake for my kids. I’m done letting these afternoons slip by and there’s only so many sunrises you can see before it just gets old. I’m going to continue monitoring my sleep every night. I may even try a snoring treatment!

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a sponsored post on behalf of Beautyrest and their #ISleepTo campaign, however, the story and snoring are all mine! To learn more about Beautyrest, follow them here, as well as on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.