I love sleep, I really do, it just doesn’t always love me back.

I’ve had issues sleeping for years. I was infamous in my late teens/early 20’s for being able to exist, on 6 or less of hours a sleep per night, every night. I regularly stayed up until midnight-ish and woke up fine for work at 5-6am.

As I’ve gotten a little older, I’ve improved some of my sleep habits; like going to bed earlier, not watching TV before I go to sleep, doing more relaxing things to help calm my brain down and let me fall asleep easily.

But sleep and I still have issues.

There are nights that I sleep all the way through the night without any issues. But there are other nights that I’m awake in bed for 1-2 hours before I finally fall asleep. There are nights that I’m asleep for a few hours then wake up for an hour or two before being able to fall back to sleep. And every once in awhile, I go to sleep for a few hours and then wake up at like 2-3am and can’t fall back to sleep at all.

And then…because life is hilarious; I marry a man who can fall asleep at the drop of a hat and stay asleep forever. Literally. He can fall asleep as soon as he shuts his eyes and his head hits the pillow. And he can sleep for 8-10 hours without any issues.

And of course he starts snoring the second he falls asleep, so I have to listen to it while I’m falling asleep. Like I’m already not annoyed enough that I can’t fall asleep I get to listen to Devon play me the song of his people at the same time.

Save me.

I’ve tried a lot of things to help me sleep over the years and some things work for awhile and then stop. Then are things that didn’t work at all. And then there are things like melatonin that helped…but gave me the weirdest/creepiest dreams that I would rather not be able to sleep than have those dreams again.

The one thing I haven’t done is take prescription sleep aids; I don’t want to go there. It’s just a personal preference, I don’t want to be reliant on drugs for things. I will admit, though, I have popped a Benadryl every once in awhile, usually out of frustration on nights when it’s like 2 hours after I went to bed and I’m still not asleep. I don’t do it often, but it’s happened.

Being home the way we have for the past month or so has not helped my sleep whatsoever. I definitely fall asleep faster and sleep better after a long or productive day. Being at work, running around my school, dealing with the kids, being in all the crazy; it depletes my energy, so when bedtime hits I’m ready to go and usually fall asleep easier.

While I’m working at home and doing things around the house (and even exercising more), I’m not depleting energy the way I was before, so I’ve been having a harder time sleeping again.

One night a couple weeks ago I was so annoyed at the fact that I was still awake (and Devon had been happily snoring away for almost three hours) that I started researching remedies for insomnia because I was so fed up with all of it.

In my research and Amazon shopping I stumbled across Sleep Headphones/Headband. I’ve always fallen asleep well with some sort of quiet music or calming sounds app, but having earbuds in your ears when you sleep is usually pretty uncomfortable. Plus, they usually fall out and get lost in your sheets, or the cord starts choking you. It’s a whole thing.

So, I found this headband on Amazon. It had great reviews, looked comfortable, and was under $20, so I figured I’d give it a try.

Guys….

I probably use it at least 5 nights a week.

It’s amazing.

It connects to your phone or tablet through Bluetooth connection, so you can play music or whatever calm/soothing sounds apps you want without having to deal with a cord getting all jumbled in the middle of the night. The earbuds are soft so they aren’t uncomfortable to sleep in and they’re adjustable in the headband, so you can move them around to fit comfortably into your ear.

It comes with a USB charger so you can plug it into a computer/USB outlet to charge it and it only takes about 2 hours to reach a full charge. It does only have an 8-10 hour battery life, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but you can set a timer on your phone (right in your clock app if you have an iPhone) to shut off music after a certain amount of time, so if you do that, you could easily have this ready to go for a week or more between charges.

I have my timer set for an hour; though I’m normally asleep long before that. The music shuts off on my phone and I’m just left with an eye mask that blocks out light that can wake me up too early in the morning.

The headband has a power/play/pause button as well as skip and volume buttons on the front, so you can easily skip tracks or turn it on or off without moving.

Basically, you get your own personal sound machine or music player to lull yourself to sleep that won’t bother your partner…and you can tune out their snoring if that’s a thing you deal with. It’s literally a win-win.

And really…a marriage saver, if you think about it.

I know there are a lot of different ambient sound apps that you can download on your phone and have connected to the bluetooth, but if you want a recommendation on soothing music; this “Sleep Tight” playlist from Spotify is my absolute favorite. It’s over 7 hours of light instrumental music; it’s calming and soothing and just lulls me right to sleep every time I play it.

If you can’t sleep, try this. You can always return it if it doesn’t work, but I feel like you might really like it!