When Mr. Strawberry and I
started spending the night together, he gave me a warning;
“I might punch you in the
face when I’m asleep”
Sure you will, I replied, I’d
like to see you try.
It didn’t take long for me
to realise what made him think he might but it was an exaggeration of the truth
and almost ten years later, I can honesty say he has never punched me.
He’s not 100% sure what
happens at night, and personally I think his mean ex was the person who hyped it
up in his head and told him he’d punched her. I personally don’t trust her
opinion but in my experience, although we tend to sleep bottom to bottom so his
fists are nowhere near me anyway, it’s more of a judder than a lashing out, so I
don’t see how that could have happened. Sometimes his legs jolt, but even they’ve
never kicked me.
It turns out Mr. Strawberry
suffers from a mild case of sleep myoclonus, which means that as he drifts off every
night, he has involuntary twitches, particularly in his arms and legs. The only
pattern I’ve been able to notice is that the more stressed he is in his day to
day life, the more violent the twitching and this can delay his sleep
transition. A really strong judder will wake him up so the poor bloke has to
start all over again in trying to get to sleep.
I’ve also noticed is that if
I gently stroke him, he never judders. Unfortunately, although I am sometimes the
last person to fall asleep, I can’t seem to do it until he’s actually in deep
sleep, my arm gets tired or I enter the deeper doze state of falling asleep.
After doing some research, I
think most of us suffer with some form of myoclonus without even noticing.
Hiccups are the most common type but also that feeling of when you are just
falling asleep and you feel like you ‘catch’ yourself, often from a brief
falling dream and jolt yourself awake.
Myoclonus is a symptom not a
diagnosis and can be related to more serious issues, but because he is healthy
and has no other symptoms, I honestly don’t think its anything to worry about,
except that maybe he should take it easier and relax more but you try telling
him that. Mild sleep myoclonus, which only happens during the sleep transition
stage is very common and from what I’ve read, often unexplainable.
So, it looks like I’ll have
to put up with it. My only real complaint is that I can’t cuddle him because
his jolts stop me from settling. If it gets worse, affects him during the day
or starts happening at other times, I’ll whip him off to the doctors.
Sleep well my dearies x
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