On HRT and Still Up at 3:15 Every Night? After $378 of Sleep Aids, a Sleep-Lab Tech Asked Me the One Question Nobody Else Had

My nightstand, most nights for two years. That's my husband's shoulder. He slept through all of it.

Wide awake at 3:15, heart already going, like someone just said your name?

Lying there doing the math until the alarm?

Then "I'm fine" at breakfast, on three hours?

That was me, every night, for two years. I'd done everything right. I asked for the hormones, I got them, I took them on time.

You might be doing everything right too, and still be awake at 3.

Then one question at Thanksgiving, over the pie, changed how I saw the whole thing. Six weeks later my husband said, without turning around: "You're not getting up anymore."

Here's the question, and what I did about it.

I'm 54. I run the front desk at a veterinary clinic outside Grand Rapids. I check in Labradors with ear infections and cats who hate the carrier, and I'm good at it, when I've slept.

I got on HRT at 52, after a year of asking for it.

A patch twice a week. Progesterone at night, next to my face cream, so I don't forget.

And I'll say this clearly, because I believe it: it worked.

The hot flashes went from a dozen a day to maybe one. The rage went. The crying in the car on the way home went. By Christmas my husband Ron had stopped asking me if I was okay.

I felt like myself in the daytime again.

But the nights didn't come back with the rest of me.

At 3:15, my eyes opened. Not drowsy. Awake.

Heart already going, like someone had said my name in the dark.

I'd lie still. Then I'd look at the clock. Then the arithmetic started.

I was never asleep by 3:30.

Some nights I gave up and went to the kitchen. One night I was standing at the counter at 3:15, eating a bowl of cereal in the dark, and I thought: my gynecologist was thrilled with my numbers last week. And here I am.

Most nights I drifted off again around 5:30. The alarm went at 6:15.

Ron slept through all of it. I don't blame him. I'd have slept through it too, if I could.

I went back to my doctor. She's a good doctor; I want to be fair to her.

She moved my progesterone from 100 to 200. Two good weeks. Then 3:15 again.

We switched the patch for the gel. Nothing changed at night.

She checked my thyroid. Normal. My iron. Normal.

"Your levels look great," she said. And they did.

So I started reading forums at 3 a.m., which is its own kind of lonely.

Woman after woman writing the same sentence: on HRT, still awake every night.

And under every post, the same three answers. Up the dose. Switch the brand. Try magnesium.

I had already done all three. And then I'd done the rest of the drawer.

That's $378, give or take, of things that worked at bedtime and quit by 3.

My nightstand drawer was full of them. Every one of them was aimed at falling asleep.

Falling asleep was never my problem.

My sister-in-law Denise works nights as a tech in a hospital sleep lab. She wires people up at 9 p.m. and watches their brains until morning.

At Thanksgiving, after the dishes, I asked her, half joking, why my HRT fixed everything except the one thing I most wanted fixed.

She didn't laugh. She put her coffee down and asked me a question.

I had never once thought about the order.

That week I paid attention. Five nights in a row I noticed the same thing: I woke up first. The heat came a minute later, when it came at all. Two nights it didn't come.

I called her on the Sunday. "Awake first," I said. "Then hot."

"That's common late in the night," she said. "That's what I wanted to know."

Here's what Denise told me, and I've since read it myself.

In one sleep-lab study, women past menopause were watched all night. Early in the night, the hot flash came first and woke them up. Later in the night, it was the other way round. The waking came first.⁵

"So it's not only your hormones," she said. "Your hormones are being treated. The wake is something else."

I want to be careful here, because this is the part people get wrong. She didn't say my HRT wasn't working. It was. It did exactly what it was supposed to do.

It just wasn't built for the thing waking me up at 3:15.

Everyone wakes up about five times a night. Kids. Ron. Denise. You. Between every cycle of sleep, the brain surfaces for a moment. ¹

Almost nobody remembers it. A wake has to last about four minutes before you remember it the next day.¹ The short ones are gone by morning, as if they never happened.

And the night isn't the same all the way through. The deep sleep gets used up early, in the first few hours. After 2 or 3 a.m., sleep is lighter, and a wake is easier to stay in. ²

Denise drew it for me on a napkin. Five little wakes. Four of them closed by themselves.

The one at 3:15 didn't.

She put it like a door. Every wake is a door that swings open and shuts on its own in a minute or two. Unless something props it open.

I started calling mine the propped-open wake. It's the most useful thing anyone has said to me since this started.

In the morning, write two times on any scrap of paper: when you woke, and when you were back asleep. A guess is fine.

If you wake first, and your hand goes to the clock or the phone, you have a propped-open wake. Most of us do. And there's a part of it you can work on, without touching your prescription.

I did all three. Every night. For years.

I wrote Denise's three on the back of a receipt and stuck it in the drawer with the bottles.

Then I said what everyone says. "So what am I supposed to do, not look?"

She shrugged. "Give your hand something else to do."

I tried the free things first. I turned the clock to the wall. That helped a little. I put my phone in the kitchen. Two nights. On the third I went and got it, at 3:15, in my socks.

At noon it's easy. At 3:15 your hand wants something, and your willpower is asleep before you are.

So I made a list of what the next thing had to do, if there was a next thing.

That's how I found the disc. Not from Denise. From me, the next week, awake at 3:15 with my phone, which I know, looking for anything that met those three.

I ended up reading about an engineer named Georges Lakhovsky.

In January 1925, in Paris, he set an open ring of copper around a sick geranium, its two ends not joined, and wrote down what happened next. He spent the rest of his life on open copper rings.

His 1929 book, The Secret of Life, has a preface by Arsène d'Arsonval, one of the fathers of medical electricity. In 1934 the US Patent Office granted his open-ring design: patent 1,962,565. You can look it up; I did. Nature reviewed the English edition in 1940.

That year he fled France through Lisbon to New York. In 1942 he was hit by a car there and died, his work unfinished. His rings were mostly forgotten.

His idea was simple: every living cell works like a tiny oscillating circuit, and open copper rings set close by help it hold its own rhythm. That's what his patent drew.

But a patent I could check, a book one of the fathers of medical electricity put his name to, a review in Nature: that was a real history, not a trick. That was my third thing.

And what I understood was the object.

Remember my three things? Nothing to swallow, and nothing that touches my HRT. Already under my pillow at 3:15, with no light, no sound, no clock, and nothing for my willpower to do. And a 1934 patent behind it that I'd checked myself. It was the only thing I found that did all three.

And it isn't instead of anything. I kept my patch. I kept my progesterone. I'd tell you to keep yours.

At Christmas I showed it to Denise, half expecting a laugh. She turned it over, looked up the patent number on her phone, and said: "It doesn't light up, it doesn't make a sound, and it doesn't go in your body. Keep the diary and show me." From Denise, that's a yes.

They sell it with a 60-night trial and refund every cent if it doesn't help, opened or not. So the worst case was mailing it back.

I bought two. One for my pillow, one for Ron's, because when I'm up at 3, he's half up too.

Night 1, nothing. I woke at 3:10 and lay there annoyed with myself for spending the money.

Night 4, I woke at 3:20. I didn't look at the clock. I slid my hand under the pillow onto the disc, and the next thing I knew it was 5:50.

Week 2 was mixed. Two bad nights, a work thing, a dog that didn't make it. I kept the diary anyway.

Week 3, I saw it in my own handwriting. 3:15, back at 3:40. 2:55, back at 3:20. One night with just a dash, because I didn't remember waking at all.

I didn't tell Ron what was under his pillow. He'd have made a joke about coasters.

One Saturday in the third week, he was making coffee, and he said, without turning around: "You're not getting up anymore."

He's right. I'm not.

He noticed before I said a word.

If you want to try what I tried: Spirad has just opened the disc to everyone this fall, and they want new buyers to keep the diary and tell them how it goes. So launch orders of the pair come with this:

• Two discs, "Both Sides of the Bed", one for your pillow and one for his. When you're up at 3, he usually is too.
• The 3am Field Guide, 16 calm pages on everything Denise told me, with the sources.
• The Back-Under Audio, 12 minutes of a slow voice for the moment you wake.
• The 21-night clock diary to print, the same one I kept.
• Free shipping, at your door in 5-7 business days.

The guide and the audio are launch gifts. They end on Sunday.

And the part that made me say yes: the 60-Night Pillow Trial. Sleep on it for 60 nights and keep the diary. If your nights don't change, you send it back and they refund every cent, opened or not. No subscription. The gifts are yours to keep.

I'd spent $378 on things that worked for a week. This one has to work for two months, or it costs you nothing.

What happens when you click:

1. The button opens Spirad's page with the two-disc pair, "Both Sides of the Bed", already selected.
2. Check out. Your launch gifts come by email with your order.
3. Tonight, print the diary and write your first two times tomorrow morning. The discs arrive in 5-7 business days.

Tonight at 3:15 you'll probably be awake. I was, for two years.

You can do the math again, with the clock and the phone and the trying.

Or tonight can be the first line of your diary, and next week the first of sixty nights with a disc under your pillow and your HRT exactly as it is.

If you did everything right and you're still up at 3:15, you're not doing it wrong. Your hormones may be handled. Your 3 a.m. wake is a different problem.

Keep your HRT. Keep your doctor. Add the one thing that doesn't need anything from you.

Everybody wakes at 3. Mine just ends now.