(Matt Villano/ CNN Health) — Sleeping during the Covid-19 pandemic has become a nightmare for Aparna Aswani.
Between cooling off from the stress of the workday and managing her anxiety from reading about the pandemic and politics, she’s lucky to turn in before midnight. Once the 44-year-old marketing executive falls asleep, she usually wakes up two or three times before the alarm rings around 6 a.m.
On good nights, Aswani gets four or five hours of sleep before she must wake up and jump into her roles as mother and virtual learning facilitator for her 5-year-old son. On bad nights, Aswani barely gets any sleep at all.
“I’ve never been a good sleeper, but it’s been 20 times worse since the pandemic started,” she said. “It’s gotten to the point where just thinking about sleep stresses me out.”
Aswani, from San Clemente, California, is one of many people who have experienced some sort of disruption to their usual sleeping routines since the pandemic began this March. For some, the changes are subtle — more restlessness or a poorer quality of sleep. For others, the new reality is flat-out hell: either a chronic lack of sufficient sleep or full-on insomnia. (…)