One night's sleep in pictures
April 1, 2023 12:23 PM Subscribe
Would you let your dog in your bed? Your children? Your partner? The Guardian set up cameras in nine bedrooms, taking a picture every 30 seconds for 12 hours, to tell the tale of a single night’s sleep. The bedrooms are used by a range of couples and single people, including one couple who sleeps apart and another who share their bed, on occasion, with a third person. Old people, younger parents, children, and pets make an appearance if sometimes briefly.
People who don’t let their dogs in bed baffle me. Sadly, we’re between dogs at the moment, and I miss furry cuddles so much, I’m actually about to start crying while typing this.
posted by hwyengr at 12:53 PM on April 1, 2023 [17 favorites]
posted by hwyengr at 12:53 PM on April 1, 2023 [17 favorites]
hwyengr - not catching that the poor dog had walked through their 3am diarrhea, resulting in 3am laundry and bed changing has resulted in a very strong no dogs in the bed rule. See also - poop dingle berries stuck to butt fur.
posted by Dynex at 1:00 PM on April 1, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by Dynex at 1:00 PM on April 1, 2023 [8 favorites]
I wish they had asked each group to evaluate how good their sleep was.
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:04 PM on April 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by tiny frying pan at 1:04 PM on April 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm disappointed they didn't interview the children (or dogs)
posted by arrmatie at 1:09 PM on April 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by arrmatie at 1:09 PM on April 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
That would have been smart, tiny frying pan. At least one couple kind of admitted their sleep was not that great. After I separated from my husband a decade-plus ago, I was not able to sleep well with another person in my bed. Honestly, I don't think I was sleeping that well with my husband. Since then, I have made it clear that sleeping in the same bed is a deal-breaker for me. I made an exception for an especially charming lover and got almost no sleep. That was super disappointing but my attitude is that we can cuddle all we want in bed, have sex, banter, etc. But when I am ready to sleep, one of us exits and heads to another bed.
That people often sleep better separately is not news. Architectural Digest even claims that separate bedrooms are in demand. When I was an exchange student in Sweden, I was baffled that couples at the time usually slept in single beds that were pushed together. These days it is more common to have a one big bed. If it works for you, awesome! It just doesn't work for me. Which makes me a wee bit wistful. But I prefer that to being majorly cranky, which is how I am when sleep-deprived.
posted by Bella Donna at 1:16 PM on April 1, 2023 [6 favorites]
That people often sleep better separately is not news. Architectural Digest even claims that separate bedrooms are in demand. When I was an exchange student in Sweden, I was baffled that couples at the time usually slept in single beds that were pushed together. These days it is more common to have a one big bed. If it works for you, awesome! It just doesn't work for me. Which makes me a wee bit wistful. But I prefer that to being majorly cranky, which is how I am when sleep-deprived.
posted by Bella Donna at 1:16 PM on April 1, 2023 [6 favorites]
Sleep ...wistful sigh.
(The baby is three and a half months outgrowing the thing we put him in after the swaddle, but not happy sleeping in a sack or just PJs either. Kind of wish we'd never done the swaddle and just bit this bullet earlier but what can you do.)
posted by subdee at 3:38 PM on April 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
(The baby is three and a half months outgrowing the thing we put him in after the swaddle, but not happy sleeping in a sack or just PJs either. Kind of wish we'd never done the swaddle and just bit this bullet earlier but what can you do.)
posted by subdee at 3:38 PM on April 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
My partner would happily sleep in bed every night with our three kids and labradoodle. He lives to snuggle. I would happily spend every night in a sensory deprivation chamber. Dude snores like a lumber mill.
posted by potrzebie at 3:56 PM on April 1, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by potrzebie at 3:56 PM on April 1, 2023 [8 favorites]
Thank you for sharing this, Bella Donna.
I have a vague memory of seeing similar pictures in a National Geographic about thirty years ago. I remember talking with my partner of the time about what that would be like, to see what we looked like as we slept.
So - this reminded me of that and took me on a pleasant wind down memory lane 😊❤️
posted by hilaryjade at 4:11 PM on April 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
I have a vague memory of seeing similar pictures in a National Geographic about thirty years ago. I remember talking with my partner of the time about what that would be like, to see what we looked like as we slept.
So - this reminded me of that and took me on a pleasant wind down memory lane 😊❤️
posted by hilaryjade at 4:11 PM on April 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
Sleep, it is a gentle thing... and for me, pretty elusive.
My wife and I don’t really have terribly matching sleep schedules:given her druthers, she will typically go to bed quite late and sleep even later. On days when she is not working, she will happily spend twelve or thirteen hours unconscious, while I usually am fine with half that, and when I am not working from home I am often out the door by dawn.
With ill-matched sleep preferences, sharing a bed often results in unsatisfactory sleep and for more than a decade it was thus; one of us tossing and turning (or even reading on a phone) would often wake the other with an occasional shift in position. A year ago she pitched a solution which we adopted: replacing our queen bed with two twin XLs adjoining one another. This is functionally a king-sized with a tiny gap down the middle where the mattresses are a fingersbreadth apart. Voilá: movement by one is isolated from the other partner by the air gap and we both sleep better. I recommend this scheme.
Twenty years or more ago a romantic partner and I went on a lengthy trip and we slept in whatever conformation of bed (shared or separate) that came up where we were. She noted that I did not snore when I shared a bed with her but I did when we were in separate beds. Subsequent partners have confirmed as much (and for what it’s worth, the current arrangement keeps me silent by night).
And finally, for many years my closest friend and I (both cishet, one F, one M) shared a bed regularly. We were never lovers but we slept together perfectly. Unlike virtually anyone else that either of us ever shared a bed with, there was never a conflict with snoring or hogging the blankets or thrashing about. I’m certain it was not until my wife and I had been together for most of a year before I had passed more nights alongside her than I had with my friend.
Would that everyone found a bedfellow as agreeable and pleasing.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:01 PM on April 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
My wife and I don’t really have terribly matching sleep schedules:given her druthers, she will typically go to bed quite late and sleep even later. On days when she is not working, she will happily spend twelve or thirteen hours unconscious, while I usually am fine with half that, and when I am not working from home I am often out the door by dawn.
With ill-matched sleep preferences, sharing a bed often results in unsatisfactory sleep and for more than a decade it was thus; one of us tossing and turning (or even reading on a phone) would often wake the other with an occasional shift in position. A year ago she pitched a solution which we adopted: replacing our queen bed with two twin XLs adjoining one another. This is functionally a king-sized with a tiny gap down the middle where the mattresses are a fingersbreadth apart. Voilá: movement by one is isolated from the other partner by the air gap and we both sleep better. I recommend this scheme.
Twenty years or more ago a romantic partner and I went on a lengthy trip and we slept in whatever conformation of bed (shared or separate) that came up where we were. She noted that I did not snore when I shared a bed with her but I did when we were in separate beds. Subsequent partners have confirmed as much (and for what it’s worth, the current arrangement keeps me silent by night).
And finally, for many years my closest friend and I (both cishet, one F, one M) shared a bed regularly. We were never lovers but we slept together perfectly. Unlike virtually anyone else that either of us ever shared a bed with, there was never a conflict with snoring or hogging the blankets or thrashing about. I’m certain it was not until my wife and I had been together for most of a year before I had passed more nights alongside her than I had with my friend.
Would that everyone found a bedfellow as agreeable and pleasing.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:01 PM on April 1, 2023 [2 favorites]
I recorded time-lapse of myself sleeping one time and determined that, yes, one of the cats really did sleep on my head.
posted by rmd1023 at 7:15 PM on April 1, 2023 [10 favorites]
posted by rmd1023 at 7:15 PM on April 1, 2023 [10 favorites]
Dude snores like a lumber mill.
Encourage him to get help for this, it can be very dangerous to snore.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:34 AM on April 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
Encourage him to get help for this, it can be very dangerous to snore.
posted by tiny frying pan at 6:34 AM on April 2, 2023 [2 favorites]
Everyone's beds are so small! I hate sharing a queen-sized bed with anyone, and I swear some of these people are fitting entire families, including pets, onto a single toddler-sized mattress.
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:07 PM on April 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by The corpse in the library at 1:07 PM on April 10, 2023 [1 favorite]
« Older We've decided to let AI run the network | Can I Offer You An Egg In This Trying Time? Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
posted by aniola at 12:28 PM on April 1, 2023 [2 favorites]