So here we are then, four days after the doctor’s visit.

I found a fix for the lying-awake-thinking-about-the-diary problem by buying a cheap* Fitbit Versa. It lacks many of the activity features of the more expensive Fitbits, but it does track your sleep, which is more than an Apple Watch can manage (out of the box). Also, its battery life is much better: I’m on 66% after wearing it for two days and nights without putting it on the charger. It also tells the time, though I suspect its screen waking in response to an arm lift is a lot slower and less reliable than an Apple Watch. Usefully, Fitbit syncs with Sleepio, which is convenient, and provides you with a useful graph of your night. It’s a shame the Sleepio phone app isn’t very good, however, as it crashes more often than not when I try to edit the sleep diary on it.

While (it says here) it’s “quite normal” to wake up 20-30 times during the night (☑️), it is less normal to be awake for 40 minutes for two of those periods. I’m also a bit more relaxed about the amount of “deep sleep” I’m getting, which seems to be slightly below average, but not terribly so.

No, the major problem is still the trigger pulled at 2:30 or 4:00, or whenever, or both, and the being wide awake after that, even though I don’t want to be.

Yes, I know about Second Sleep, and I completely buy the idea, but unfortunately our nation’s great* employers are not so sympathetic. If I could indeed potter abut for an hour or so and then go back to bed for Second Sleep, that would be great. But school timetables do not work on flexitime.

Day two gave me a Fitbit sleep score of 56 (rated “Poor”), although the amount of time I was asleep was fairly decent. I do think the Fitbit confuses lying still reading with being asleep, however.

Day three was always going to be a shitshow, because I was driving overnight to France. The Channel Tunnel was quiet at midnight, and we crossed over without delays and without seeing too many sharp-elbowed SUV drivers. But! Junctions 7-9 of the M20 were closed and the diversion was long and traumatic. I believe this closure was part of the preparation for leaving the EU, which made the diversion longer and even more traumatic. I drove for the first three hours, slept a tiny bit in the tunnel, then drove another hour or so. We then swapped drivers and I dozed a bit in the passenger seat. But I do jerk awake a lot (my other half is not a smooth driver) and I had the jimmy legs.

I then drove for the last 3+ hours and we arrived at 10 a.m. local time. Between 11 and noon I slept on the couch: 58 minutes, so that was my night’s sleep. That hour allowed me to do the round of visits until early evening, when I was wrecked, so an early night was called for.

Day four: A “fair” Fitbit score of 78, although it ended my night early, counting nothing after 4 a.m. as sleep, even though I think I did sleep a tiny bit more after that. But it was always going to be a weird night: in bed super-early and getting a reasonable 6 hours-ish, even if that did mean being awake too early. Also I’ve had a heavy cold and spent a lot of the night coughing or trying not to. But it’s the holidays, so I could just keep turning over in bed until 7 (local time).

The experiment continues. Today will involve some mowing and I may bury my parmesan in the garden. No cycling though, because of sore lungs.