Soooo... heavy sleepers?

[hiriki]

Hey guys, this is a weird place to ask this but ever since I stopped using reddit I've had a lot of trouble finding places to ask for general life advice.

Here's the deal. I'm a heavy sleeper. I have been since I was in first grade and I'm 29 now. Let me elaborate: I don't wake up well on my own, because I will snooze an alarm 20 times (please do not assume Im exaggerating, Im not). I wake up the fastest with help but not only do I rarely get out of bed the first time someone tries to wake me up, I can sometimes be moody in the process.

When I was single this was whatever. I mean, it did SERIOUSLY impact my life and all, my job performance and punctuality was in the gutter, but it was whatever. I'm married now though and my wife, with whom I've spent every night for the last five years, appears to be very tired of having to wake me up.

I get it. Seriously. Who wants to wake up a grown ass adult every morning? No one. And usually it's my 20 alarms that wake her up, regardless of whether she could otherwise sleep in 2 hrs after my first morning meeting. My alarms wake her up (withOUT waking ME up!!!) and then she in turn wakes me up. It sucks! And depending on the alignment of the moon and stars, some mornings I am filled with weird indignant frustration when like seriously she's doing me a very charitable favor lol.

I cannot emphasize enough that I have tried a lot. I have tried putting my phone on the other end of the room. I've tried sleep trackers that target ideal sleep stages for alarms. I've tried alarms that make me do puzzles or math. All of this with variable success, but none of it so successful that if I just did that again I could get away with just one alarm.

OK so what am I asking. I'm asking for a silent alarm.

I have an apple watch, and what I want is an alarm that buzzes on my wrist. I know the apple watch does that. But here is the fatal flaw of the native alarm app on watch os: you can turn the alarm off from the watch??? I can hold entire conversations and exercise fine motor skills all without actually waking up under certain circumstances, and one of those circumstances is a slightly annoying buzz on my wrist. It's really confusing to me that this one seemingly minor detail completely BREAKS the alarm functionality of the apple watch for me but NO ONE ELSE seems to be bothered by it.

TL;DR this is a long winded, frustrated post about why I want a third party apple watch app that will buzz an alarm on my wrist that I will need to GET OUT OF BED, find my phone, turn it on, and ideally do some kind of puzzle in order to turn it off. As far as I can tell this doesn't exist but you will be my hero if you can provide me an app name of an app that I just haven't found yet.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Greenhouseparrots]

That's actually a really good idea! My phone itself vibrates when my alarm goes off and that wakes me up very quickly. I know there's apps that make you do a puzzle before you can turn your alarm off so you wake up that way, but that's on a phone and not on a watch unfortunately.

You probably have, but have you tried sleeping earlier so you're less tired? Or is it more of a heavy sleeping issue and once you're awake you're not tired anymore?

An alternative suggestion is to put your birds in the same room that you sleep. They'll wake you up at the crack of dawn every day

 

[texsize]

I don’t have an answer but I don’t think a 3rd party app as you mentioned would work.
What would keep you from just taking off the watch?
it’s what I would do.
My wife is what I call (in an affectionate way) “slug a bed”
She is the one that is difficult to wake.
But I knew this before we got married.
So…….. How can I possibly complain about it
if it bothered me I shouldn’t have gotten married.
This was my mindset goi Into the thing so when one thing or another comes up I just have to tell myself “this is what I signed up for “

I will say the thing that makes our different sleeping patterns work out best is separate bedrooms.
It”s not very romantic but it keeps us from having too much of the wrong kind of friction LOL..

 

[hiriki]

That's actually a really good idea! My phone itself vibrates when my alarm goes off and that wakes me up very quickly. I know there's apps that make you do a puzzle before you can turn your alarm off so you wake up that way, but that's on a phone and not on a watch unfortunately.

You probably have, but have you tried sleeping earlier so you're less tired? Or is it more of a heavy sleeping issue and once you're awake you're not tired anymore?

An alternative suggestion is to put your birds in the same room that you sleep. They'll wake you up at the crack of dawn every day

I actually do sleep pretty early. Last night is an exception because I was really focused on trying to find an alarm so I shot myself in the foot a bit haha but I'm normally in bed 9:30-10PM (I have to be up around 8) and I'll tell you, sometimes I'll get sleepy and go to bed at 8 or earlier and sleep through the night like a rock, it seems to have (mysteriously) no impact on how hard it is to get up.

The birds are an idea though 😂 believe it or not I can sleep right through the parrots screaming, I used to sleep with my birds in the bedroom, but my doves cooing wakes me right the heck up haha. Ofc it would wake my wife up too, but...

I don’t have an answer but I don’t think a 3rd party app as you mentioned would work.
What would keep you from just taking off the watch?
it’s what I would do.
My wife is what I call (in an affectionate way) “slug a bed”
She is the one that is difficult to wake.
But I knew this before we got married.
So…….. How can I possibly complain about it
if it bothered me I shouldn’t have gotten married.
This was my mindset goi Into the thing so when one thing or another comes up I just have to tell myself “this is what I signed up for “

I will say the thing that makes our different sleeping patterns work out best is separate bedrooms.
It”s not very romantic but it keeps us from having too much of the wrong kind of friction LOL..

My wife and I also lived together for 3 yrs before marrying, so she was fully aware of the situation before tying the knot lol.

Idk what we'll do once we have our own house but we don't currently have the spare bedroom for me to get my own bed, and when I mentioned sleeping on the couch she got upset, so I want to try to make something work. It would be nice to at least be able to try a silent alarm--it's true I might take it off, but I haven't even been able to try it

 

[hiriki]

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Well. I did it. I bought yet another stupid device that, I'll have to admit, feels pretty redundant to the several hundred dollar apple watch I already own.

I feel kinda bitter about it, buuut 1) the apple watch can't *literally* shock me, that's a new one, maybe electrocution is what I've been missing from my morning routine? and 2) the thing has an actual "locking mechanism" to keep it on my wrist... I'll have to see how that works for me. But yea the app does everything I described for the low low price of $150 and another stupid electronic I have to strap to my body lmao

 

[Greenhouseparrots]

I actually do sleep pretty early. Last night is an exception because I was really focused on trying to find an alarm so I shot myself in the foot a bit haha but I'm normally in bed 9:30-10PM (I have to be up around 8) and I'll tell you, sometimes I'll get sleepy and go to bed at 8 or earlier and sleep through the night like a rock, it seems to have (mysteriously) no impact on how hard it is to get up.

The birds are an idea though 😂 believe it or not I can sleep right through the parrots screaming, I used to sleep with my birds in the bedroom, but my doves cooing wakes me right the heck up haha. Ofc it would wake my wife up too, but...


My wife and I also lived together for 3 yrs before marrying, so she was fully aware of the situation before tying the knot lol.

Idk what we'll do once we have our own house but we don't currently have the spare bedroom for me to get my own bed, and when I mentioned sleeping on the couch she got upset, so I want to try to make something work. It would be nice to at least be able to try a silent alarm--it's true I might take it off, but I haven't even been able to try it

My boyfriend is like you! He sleeps through the birds screaming with no problems at all. It doesn't matter how much he sleeps either, he's just a heavy sleeper. What he does is set about ten alarms all varying times after each other. So he'll set one at 9.15, 9.17, 9.21 etc. And he has to change the alarm sound every so often or he starts ignoring it.

 

[hiriki]

My boyfriend is like you! He sleeps through the birds screaming with no problems at all. It doesn't matter how much he sleeps either, he's just a heavy sleeper. What he does is set about ten alarms all varying times after each other. So he'll set one at 9.15, 9.17, 9.21 etc. And he has to change the alarm sound every so often or he starts ignoring it.

YES!!!! I can relate, down to the having to change the alarm sound 😭

 

[texsize]

I don’t know what you do for a living but……

I always hated waking up to an alarm clock.
It would leave me feeling jumpy and like I was running behind even though I wasn’t.

For most of my 30+ years of my working career I was a swing or 2nd shift worker.
This meant I didn’t have to start work till early afternoon so I could just about throw away my alarm clock.
I really hated it when I had to work the normal day shift.
Now and then I would have to for training or to fill in for someone on vacation.

 

[hiriki]

I work in IT, and there's definitely 2nd shift IT jobs, although once you get to network or security engineer levels of the ladder the 2nd shift offerings are much slimmer pickings. I'm not sure I've ever seen a 2nd shift posting for those positions... just help desk basically.

I personally have done both 2nd and 3rd shift, 3rd shift was brutal and just totally incompatible with my birds but I did love 2nd shift! Unfortunately though it just kind of shifted the same sleep patterns to later in the day. I do genuinely think it's slightly easier for me to wake up at noon than 8am all things being equal, like down to the level of sunlight coming in through the window I just think it's a better time for me... but, when I worked 3pm-12am daily, I was STILL somehow chronically late. So an alarm is, sadly, non negotiable. Sigh.

 

[hiriki]

Um, this crazy shock watch thing arrived today and like, I hate it? Lol I hate it so much that I kind of circle around into liking it?

I put it on and test zapped myself and it was AWFUL........ at 30%. I set an alarm, there's a ton of settings but basically:

1) I set the alarm for 7:30am and it'll use sleep tracking to wake me at my lightest sleep stage before 7:30am.
2) It has a strap lock that is so hard to remove that I won't be able to do it in my sleep, guaranteed, and if I tried to do it half awake to avoid getting out of bed to grab my phone, it would take me so long I'd get shocked multiple times in the process........
3) To get it to stop, I have to: grab my phone and go to the other room to scan a QR code. If I wanted, I could set it to ALSO make me do jumping jacks AND a puzzle. I don't quite hate myself that much.
4) If I scan the QR code and then get back into bed................ the built in sleep tracker claims that it will KNOW and it will SHOCK ME AGAIN. Only time will tell if its sleep tracking is smart enough to not electrocute me even though I'm sitting upright and at my desk. This can be turned off.

Whoever designed this torture watch is either a genius or just really and truly evil to the core. Maybe both.

 

[wrench13]

A shocking resolution!

 

[Vampiric_Conure]

Oy.. you sound like a person I knew in university! She literally slept through a pipe bomb that went off across the street from her! Totally serious!

I gotta hear how that contraption works for you. I have the opposite problem. I wake up if a fly farts, but I usually get to bed okay again.