I have been a side sleeper my whole life! Not just a side sleeper but a scrunch up into the fetal position like a little roly poly bug type of sleeper!! lately I have been noticing when I wake up in the morning my back, neck, hips and shoulders are always so sore. I even sometimes get numbness in my arms from pinched nerves in my neck. I also have permanent cleavage wrinkles and just recently noticed face wrinkles that don’t fade away after a couple of hours of being awake anymore, they are becoming permanent too! Ugh! And to top it all off I get heartburn almost every night, which is a huge bummer! So I decided something has to change!!
I have always known that sleeping on your back is supposed to be so much better for you and I have tried to sleep that way many different times in my life. I would start out at the beginning of the night and then after a few hours of torture I would talk myself into side sleeping because no sleep is probably just as bad if not worse for me and then I would slip back into my old habits. But the older I have become the more in pain I am when I would wake up, so i finally decided to get serious about this!!
First off I started by sleeping on two pillows stacked on top of each other, it seemed to help a ton with my acid reflux but my lower back would kill and I usually woke up on my side somehow in the middle of the night despite all my efforts to stay on my back. So I decided to do a little bit of research and found this pillow that I figured might help me stay on my back. It’s called the Back to Beauty anti-wrinkle Head Cradle. Not going to lie, It took me a few weeks to actual bite the bullet with buying this, but I figured if I was going to give this back sleeping a fighting chance I had to try things that I hadn’t tried before and buying a special weird looking pillow I guess was something i needed to try! LOL
Look at all the benefits this little weirdo says it can do for you!
This pillow at first made such a weird crackling noise when I moved around to get comfy I almost said forget it before even starting! After the first night I woke up with the sorest back ever, i almost threw in the towel right then, why is sleeping on my back so freakin hard?? But I wasn’t going to give up that easy so I went back online and started to read more and discovered that I should also be using a pillow under my knees or even a wedge type deal. I of course had tried the pillow under the knees before so figured if I am going to be serious about this I would get this wedge thingy.
You guys this made a huge difference in how my body felt when I woke up, but to be perfectly honest, It is taking me forever to actually fall asleep, I think it will take a few more weeks to really get used to this new way of sleeping, But what keeps me trying is that I do feel a huge difference in my shoulders, hips and neck and now with this wedge thingy my lower back too! My cleavage wrinkles are a little lessened, my face wrinkles are lessening too! Another thing I didn’t realize would be a benefit would be i haven’t woken up to a sore jaw either!Apparently I clench my teeth when I sleep and wake up with serious TMJ most of the time, but ever since I have been sleeping on my back I notice that has gone away, an added bonus! What?!? Who knew?!?!
The only Con I can think of and it’s kind of huge for me, is Doug is sad, He loves to spoon with me while we are falling asleep, it’s been like that since forever, so he is missing that personal contact and to be honest so am I, So I am still trying to figure that one out. I may spoon with him for a while then break out the ole pillows once he’s fallen asleep? I don’t know there has got to be a way, because I finally am starting to feel so much better physically after sleeping, but Not having that physical touch daily with him is going to be not so good for us either! Ugh I guess this is still a work in progress, but I will figure it out and I will hopefully become a back sleeper once and for all…even if it kills me!!
Janna's Journey 