I started sleeping on my back with a pillow under my knees a couple weeks ago. I started with the big down pillow I used to have under my head going under my knees, and a smaller, squishier pillow just for neck support with my head otherwise flat on the bed. But the down pillow was both too much and too little. It was bulky, and feathers would poke out at my legs, but it would also collapse over the course of the night.
My next try was my foam roller, since that looks like a bolster. But it absolutely is not a bolster. It was way too hard for me to keep under my knees. I couldn’t even fall asleep because I could feel my heartbeat in my knees.
So then I got creative. I rolled up some foam sheets that had been part of a package delivery and shoved them into a pillow case. This kind of worked. The foam collapses a bit, but retains enough shape and is quite soft. But the weird thing with that was that I started waking up with sweat all up and down my back.
I’d get up to pee in the middle of the night and freeze on my way to the bathroom because of the sheen of sweat from the top of my head all the way down to my calves. I thought this might have something to do with the foam I was using, because I had not been experiencing this with the down pillow under my legs. So I switched it up to a towel stuffed into a pillow case last night, but I still woke up with all of that sweat.
I’ve now got two hypotheses for why I would be so sweaty overnight. First, I’m not used to sleeping on my back all night. I would rarely fall asleep in that position, preferring my right side or face down to fall asleep. And when I did fall asleep on my back, I wouldn’t stay there all night. I have a tendency for restless sleeping, moving all around. So, if I am suddenly spending the whole night in one position, I think it makes sense that I’d build up heat between my body and the bed. I think, if that one holds true, that the sweats will ease as I adjust to this new sleeping position. A few weeks, or a few months and it should pass.
The second hypothesis is that this is part of the start of perimenopause, as night sweats are a symptom of that. Though, I don’t think what I’m experiencing is quite at the level of medical night sweats. I’m not soaking the sheets so much that they need to be changed each night, though the sweat is passing through my clothes and onto the sheets a bit.
Now, one other factor is that I sleep with a heating pad. It helps me fall asleep despite tummy pains, and it automatically turns off after 2 hours, which usually means about 1 hour to 90 minutes after I get into bed, because I like to turn it on before I do my pre-bed bathroom rituals. This would normally be a suspect for my sweating in bed, but I’ve been using that heating pad for years now, and until I started sleeping on my back, sweating at night was a rare occurrence.
The sweating is interesting. If that were the only impact of sleeping on my back, I’d likely go back to my comfort zone. But it’s not. I’m feeling body impacts in two areas. First, my shoulders are no longer being pulled out of good alignment from side sleeping. I can now feel how the way I would lie on my side messes with the myriad muscles of the shoulder area. The other impact is my right hip. I’ve been trying to loosen it up since I realized how tight it was, but it’s only been loosening since I started sleeping on my back AND doing the Head and Neck program with Move U. I’m not sure which is helping it more, but I’ll be continuing to do both.
I’m still going to be trying different under leg pillow arrangements. I haven’t found one that I really like yet. It should be small, but firm. Though not too firm. Hold its shape, and not be too warm. I may or may not break down and purchase a special pillow just for this. I do like coming up with my own ways to do things.