Recently, I’ve been doing that 5am thing again and I am now convinced that the more I sleep, the more I need to sleep.

A rather debilitating side effect of Sertraline for me has been fatigue. I mean to the point where I could sleep all day and all night and still feel tired. I did see the doctor about it and he suggested halving my (already small) dose but it really didn’t help. Feeling out of control, I decided to try and restart my circadian rhythm with a week of early mornings and TO MY SURPRISE, I no longer felt like I needed to nap by midday.

I’m almost 2 weeks in to this and can say, hand on heart, if I sleep late I feel worse.Example: I woke up 5 days in a row at 5am, no naps during the day, went to bed at around 11pm as usual.. no issues. I decided to let myself sleep in at the weekend and by Sunday, 2 days of getting up at 9am had me sleeping on the sofa for hours.

It could be argued that I was ‘catching up’ but I felt that fatigue hard on the days I decided to sleep in. Today, it’s Monday, 6.10am.. I haven’t done anything particularly productive so far.. tootled around on instagram and taken my pills but I already feel more awake than I did at any point this weekend.

I want to clarify, I AM NOT A MORNING PERSON! My Mum always said I was a child who needed her sleep - she actually had to wait for me to wake up on Christmas morning!? - so this does not come naturally to me but this time around I feel like it could stick. When I tried it in the past, the first time my kids were too young (don’t even try if you have children who still wake in the night - your sleep is precious) and then last year I made it about getting things done and felt like I wasn’t accomplishing enough to justify the time. THIS TIME it’s about how it’s making me feel. It’s not impacting my lifestyle in any way, I’m not sending myself to bed at 8 and giving up my TV time with my husband and because I so rarely drink these days (more on that in another post) hangovers don’t factor in either.

So, if you’ve been feeling lethargic and low energy.. give it a go! Do it for a week as a reset and maybe that will do it.. maybe, like me, you’ll develop an unexpected taste for early rising? Either way.. I always think we’re looking for control in our lives and this is one thing you can certainly control - again.. unless you have gremlins who won’t let you have a moment to yourself.