The thing was that my dog was waking me up in the middle of the night to be let out.
She's old, and I thought it must be harder for her to hold her pee, so got up to let her out into the yard.
Then a couple of hours later, she'd come asking to go out again.
Little rascal.........what happened was that after she peed, she'd walk around, sniff the plants, dig in the dirt, etc. and refuse to come in.
Since it was cold, I knew she'd start howling to come back in soon, so didn't want to go back to bed till she came back in. Eventually, I went out into the yard myself to lead her back in - which set off the house alarm
Nearly had a heart attack!!

The frustration of it all made me unable to fall back asleep, which meant I only had about half a night's sleep for a few nights.

As a result, I really needed a long nap on the days that followed these eventful nights.
And surprisingly, I woke up from these naps feeling really ok.

I have read that we sleep in cycles of 90 minutes - from light to deep sleep it takes 90 minutes, and then we go through another cycle, and another, till we get up.
If we nap for 20 minutes to half an hour, we still wake up before we're in the deep stage (it varies slightly for different people).
But if we nap for, say, an hour we will feel groggy because we were in the middle of deep sleep.

It used to be that no matter how long I napped, I still felt groggy.
These past days, I napped for 2 hours and it was fine.

2 hours is actually 90 minutes + half an hour, which means I was just at the end of light sleep in the second cycle, so it makes sense that I wasn't groggy, but in the past it didn't work for me.

I was wondering if being on a roller coaster of sugar binges back then could have made me feel groggy after napping, even if waking from light sleep.

Sarit

: Sarit,

: If I take a nap, I have to set a
: timer. If I go over a certain
: amount, I wake up groggy and
: grumpy. So no, for me being steady
: still hasn't changed the nap
: thing.

: Colette