Polyphasic Sleep Log: Day 4

Sunday morning after finishing the blog posting I was still feeling tired so I decided to add another nap time to my schedule. I took a 20 minute nap around 8am. If I can ever get in the mode of a 3 hour core sleep, I will be waking up at 4am and not getting a nap until about noon. That's an 8 hour stretch, and a nap at 8am would cut it into 2 four hour stretches. On work days I will have to make sure my class is set up and ready to go, since classes start at 8:30 and I drop the kids off at school at 7:30. That only gives me time for the commute and time for my nap before I have to be ready to teach. I will either have to make sure my class is set up the day before, or maybe try to take the morning nap around 7am before the kids have to go.

Church runs from 11am to 2pm. I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to get my 12 o'clock sleep phase in. I thought maybe I would just try to sleep in church. I ended up skipping out of the tail end of sacrament meeting and the beginning of nursury. Scharese and I are nursury leaders so we have an obligation to run the show. The kids get split into 3 groups and rotate through singing time, lesson time, and snack time for 20 minutes each. Before that happens they get about 15-20 minutes of play time. So I went out to the car at the very end of sacrament meeting and was able to fall asleep and naturally wake up within 20 minutes. I think my nap was probably a little less than 15 minutes, but it did the trick. I was back in nursury before the kids had to split up into their groups. I'm glad it worked as well as it did.

The afternoon and evening naps went off without a hitch. I was also worried about the evening nap due to the normal Sunday routine of spending time with the family. I thought I would have to delay my evening nap. We ended up staying home, so the 9pm schedule worked. We'll see about next Sunday when we will probably have the whole family over at our house.

My core sleep phase should be able to be shortened from 4 1/2 hours down to 3 now since I am taking an extra nap in the morning. If you search for the "everyman" sleep schedule, you will find that it is a core nap of 3 hours, and three other 20 minute naps spaced evenly across the remaining hours of the day. Because of my work schedule that won't be possible. So I'm going to do 4 naps spread fairly evenly across the day: 8am, 12noon, 4pm, 9pm. That should help me to get the core sleep down to 3 hours instead of the 4 1/2 that I've been doing. So, I set my alarm for 3 hours. But in the wee hours of the morning I didn't have will power to get up. I set the alarm for another hour and a half and ended up sticking with the 4 1/2 hour core sleep phase. I'm a little disappointed, but in reality, I had to teach a new class on Monday so it's probably better to stick with the schedule that my body has really started to get used to.

It is pretty amazing how quickly I have adjusted to the new schedule. I have been able to tell when it is noon, 4pm, or 9pm without looking at a clock. My body lets me know, "Hey it's time to get some sleep." Whenever I start to get tired, I look at a clock and sure enough, it's usually about 5 minutes 'til nap time. I have also been surprised at how short some of my naps are. It is more likely for me to wake up on my own than it is for the alarm to wake me. I think I have decided that it's better to get up then, rather than trying to go down for any remaining time in my 20 minute block. I used to set my alarm for 25 minutes to make sure I had time to fall asleep and still have 20 solid minutes of sleep time. Now I just set it for about 20-21 minutes and don't end up needing it sometimes.