3 Simple Nighttime Routine Tweaks That Are Helping Me Sleep Better in Perimenopause

If you’re a woman your late 30s to late 40s, chances are pretty high that your social media algorithm is crushing you in the weight of posts about what your wild hormone fluctuations are doing to your body on a daily basis.

I know mine is.

Like many others, sleep has probably been one of the most impacted parts of my life.

As such, I’ve been trying a few things that seem to be helping improve my sleep, though it isn’t “perfect.”

None of this is ground-breaking, but perhaps the reminder will be helpful to you if you’re struggling with sleep lately.

• Waking 3 or more times during the night.

• Waking and being hot, sort of a hot flash, but pretty exclusive to ocurring once in a 1-3am window (I have not had any daytime hot flashes thus far).

• Waking up far too early, like 4am - no, thanks.

The only things I’ve not really had any issues with are falling asleep or keeping to a mostly standard sleep schedule.

Of note: I was taking HRT for a while, then stopped several months ago in an effort to reset/see my baseline again as I felt like progesterone was making my sleep worse in the second half of my cycle. I am probably going to start up again soon and I’ll report back with new findings if I have them, when I have them. These tweaks have all been since stopping HRT.

When applicable, I may eat a piece of fruit (I love a banana before bed, but why do they have to so rudely have such a short perfect-ripeness window, dammit), a small bowl of cereal, some yogurt and berries, etc… you get the picture - before I brush my teeth and get ready for bed.

We often eat dinner before 6pm, and, if that’s the case, and I feel at all hungry before bed as a result, I don’t tend to sleep that well and often wake up around 3am hungry. This has been sort of the case my entire life, that going to bed hungry doesn’t work for me - but in peri, it feels even worse. So, this is my simple way to combat that.

I don’t love this one, as I truly want to be in bed with the lights out and my covers up around 8pm most of the time.

But, with the turn of the seasons and the longer daylight hours, I’ve just not been as tired as early.

Further, a friend of mine who was working with some doctors on improving her own sleep patterns shared a major piece of advice for folks who find themselves waking up many time during the night - go to bed a bit later.

So, I’ve been getting into bed closer to 9:30-10pm and falling asleep in the 10-11pm window.

This ends up compressing my sleeping window a bit, and I do find that instead of waking 3 or so times and getting up to pee each time as I had been for a while, I’m typically just getting up once during the night, peeing, then (mostly, more details on this next) going right back to sleep.

I know, this one is so obvious and talked about all over the wellness world. The annoying reality is that I often don’t like to be cold as I’m falling asleep, but my body tends to feel warmer overnight and in the middle of the night when I wake up feeling too warm, so starting out by turning my A/C to 68 degrees (I may push it to 67 soon) is helping.

Bonus: I’ve been using my sleep mask again pretty religiously, and that’s also helping me not wake up around 4/4:30am given that the window coverings in my bedroom are not exactly the most darkening that they could be.

What else have you tried? Anything that’s worked?

I am not big on calling things hacks, so I’m not doing that. Please let me know I’m not alone!

Cheers,
Diane