It is hard to face the day when you wake at the slightest sound | 4 minute read
Charlotte is a working mum of three boys aged between four and nine. Her husband works for an airline company and so it’s a busy life. Charlotte used to work in air traffic, until the need for a career that fitted around the boys’ schooling inspired her to open her own business. She now runs a ‘paint your own’ pottery business from home. It means a cut in income but it wraps itself around the demands of home life, as well as being fun and sociable.
A house move some months back added to their family numbers, with a daily quota of builders and tradesman banging, crashing and raising dust. While the renovations are almost complete now, the effects of the disruption lingered with Charlotte until recently.
She has always been a light sleeper: ‘I would wake up loads in the night. Somebody only had to walk by on the street!’ She got used to lying awake until 2 or 3 a.m. This fragile sleep state, which was her normality, is what Charlotte describes as ‘resting with my eyes closed.’
She’d really struggle the next day, kranky and edgy, with a demanding job to face. When the boys were born, and they kept her up at night, sleep loss became even more embedded. As they began to sleep through the night, she was still locked in that light, ready-to-wake-at-anything state.
And then she saw a TV ad featuring an intriguing sleep device. She thinks it was an ad, though she can’t be sure as it flashed past her consciousness and afterwards, she couldn’t remember the name. By happy coincidence, her husband saw the same ad a few days later and he mentioned it. He sleeps like a log but was intensely sympathetic towards Charlotte.
They went online and found the Zeez website.
‘We ordered a Zeez Sleep Pebble in November, under the Christmas deal,’ Charlotte recalls. She was reassured by her ability to return it should it not work, for a 75% refund. ‘I don’t buy gimmicks or gadgets,’ she says, ‘and it felt expensive.’ The prospect of something that might re-pattern her sleep after so many years was irresistible, however. The Zeez Pebble duly arrived for Christmas. She’d done her homework and knew that it could take up to a month to work. She tried it right away. And the result?
‘Within three or four days, that was me gone!’ The luxury of a night’s proper sleep was hers. Almost too good to be true. ‘I was aware it might be a psychosomatic effect of using a new device,’ she says. A placebo, perhaps, reflecting a psychological need. But the days following continued the dramatic improvement. A few months on, Charlotte still relishes the novelty of waking up from sleep, rather than just “resting with my eyes shut”. The “half passed-out feeling” that passed for sleep is now the real thing. She has more energy, physically and mentally.
She took her Zeez skiing with her in February. ‘Often for the first two nights on holiday, I won’t sleep.’ This time, it was a different story. The friends they went with, who know her well, found the change in her ‘jaw-dropping’. She intends to lend her Zeez Pebble to a friend, a policeman, who has sleep issues owing to his shift patterns. Charlotte takes her Zeez to bed with her every night, and on the occasions she finds it’s run out of charge, her brain still knows how to shut down. She’s recommending the Zeez Pebble to everyone she knows who suffers insomnia.
The final proof of a good night’s sleep? Charlotte has a smartwatch which she wore in bed in the early days of using the Zeez, and it recorded a noticeable increase in her REM sleep. REM sleep matters and if you’d like to know more about it, click here.
And if you’d like to learn more about Charlotte’s paint-your-own pottery business, and fancy a day of colourful fun, go to Charlie@completelypotty.org.uk