Snoring

Does anyone else have a partner who regularly snores like a water buffalo with sinus problems?

Every winter—even these balmy Brisbane winters, where it rarely drops below 10 degrees, if it gets that cold—Nick starts snoring. He doesn’t snore in summer, but it’s become a winter ritual.

And it drives me insane.

Literally.

I don’t really like to think about some of the things I’ve probably said at 3 a. m., when I’ve been woken for the sixth time by enthusiastic snoring. And I know my poking gets more and more vicious as the night goes on.

But, honestly, it’s nerve-wracking knowing that there’s not much point even trying to fall asleep, because you’re only going to be woken in fifteen minutes by what sounds like a jack-hammer.

Or dealing in the small hours of the morning with a partner who’s bewildered and a bit hurt because, after all, they’re asleep, and don’t really know how much confusion and distress they’re causing.

Or eventually snapping and kicking them out, when you haven’t slept in three hours because the snoring episodes are coming one on the tail of another, only to have your partner stumble out of the room, dragging their blanket behind them like Linus, mumbling that they don’t know what they were doing, they were only sleeping, they weren’t doing anything, really—so you relent, and then spend the next three hours with every nerve and sinew in your body screwed up in anticipation of the next snore.

And then!

Then, sometimes, you get the snoring episodes with the pauses. The pauses are the worst.

Because the pauses make you think that the snoring has actually stopped. That this time there won’t be another snore. So you lie there, counting under your breath, and feeling your mind expand with a new sense of hope and freedom . . . and then the snoring starts again.

That’s usually when the nasty comments come out.

I don’t think there’s any answer to the problems, really.

We’ve tried those strange nasal strips that I think athletes wear to enhance their breathing; I’m convinced that those just give the snores more room to move.

We’ve tried sprays to open the nasal passages: same problem, really.

I’ve heard that a small, round object sewn into the pajamas will work, since it stops the snorer sleeping on their back—but Nick doesn’t need to sleep on his back to snore. According to his frequent response to poking—“But I’m awake!”—he doesn’t even need to sleep.

I think the end result can only be the winter ritual we’ve slipped into over the past few years: three or fours days of midnight rib-cage poking and nasty comments, followed by a night where I sleep like the dead out of sheer exhaustion.

At least I’m not teaching again until the end of July.

I can always sleep in a little.