To start out with, I'm sorry last week's blog post went missing! It was the pictures from our week in Utah, but I am not seeing it anymore. I will upload them again into this post and hope it sticks.
Now onto the disappearing snorts and warts. A bit of a TMI post, but if you have snoring or wart problems in your life perhaps it might help. (If not, you may as well skip to the pictures.) Jared has had a persistent case of the snores over the past 5 or 6 years--around the time Jack was born and Jared started residency. For a while it was easy to blame "stress," since nothing else had really changed. But the snoring got progressively louder and worse, even after residency ended a few years ago. It got so bad that my sleep was really taking a hit, since the snoring would begin immediately upon Jared falling asleep, and he tends to fall asleep, well, immediately after we turn the lights out. We tried all the easy fixes--different sleep positions, nasal strips, etc. Nothing helped much. The research I started doing on snoring indicated that if the snoring is every night no matter what, and is nonstop, it's probably a good idea to do a sleep study to rule out potentially dangerous conditions. Jared was not a fan of this idea at all, so he assured me it was probably just related to a little weight gain, and he would prove it by getting the weight off. Which he did for a while, but the snoring continued.
Fast forward to 2024. The snoring is worse than ever. It's some of the worst snoring you've ever heard. The only worse snoring there is comes from his dad, which indicates to me that this problem probably won't just get better on its own. My sleep is suffering deeply unless we sleep in separate rooms, which I know lots of couples with a snoring situation make work, but I just would rather not if possible. My quality time with Jared is too limited in this stage of parenthood as it is. And even if earplugs did help me, which they don't much, I can't hear the baby waking up if I have earplugs in. So in sum, it's been a bit of a dilemma. Thought I'd share what so far seems to be a welcome solution in case there's anyone else out there in this predicament.
First, the strategy. Whenever I suggested a sleep study, Jared would get defensive. "I'm too young to have sleep apnea. A study is annoying. It's expensive and will just show that nothing's wrong. Some people just snore!" And since he's a doctor, it's tough to change his mind on anything medically related, even if I'm coming at it with research of my own to back me up. But again, my quality of life was suffering. So I played the birthday card. "All I want for my birthday is for you to do a sleep study. Please don't get me anything else. All I want is to sleep soundly in the same room as my lovey dovey." (All the heart eyes and flattery.) He still got defensive, which I think is pretty silly because my issue here wasn't about him snoring, it was about me, the love of his life, losing sleep every night. I told him I was letting him know a month in advance so he could try whatever other ideas he might have to get rid of the snoring, but if it wasn't gone by my birthday then this was indeed the birthday request I would ask of him. This finally lit the necessary fire under his bum and he ordered all sorts of devices to try to prove a sleep study would not be necessary. I will be honest and say I didn't expect any of them to work.
But alas! On night one of Jared's personal project snore-be-gone, he tried a snore nasal spray that helped substantially. It cut the snore volume fully in half--maybe more. Pretty great! I honestly would have taken that as a win enough and let him off the hook, but he still had two new tricks he wanted to try. On night two, there was a funny-looking chin strap. This did very little--possibly even less than the snore strips he's used nightly for the past 3 years. But on night 3 he pulled out the big guns. "Snore RX" the package read, and inside was a monstrous mouth guard that he boiled and then fitted into his jaw with a flourish. He seemed very optimistic about this one. And with good reason! It finally happened. I fell asleep next to my husband to the sound of (for the first time in years) absolutely nothing! Praise be! I poked him a few times to make sure he was really asleep, but sure enough he was out and silent. I woke up the next morning feeling something new. It was a feeling called . . . refreshed? The first time I've slept through the night uninterrupted in quite a while--except for the stint when Jared was sick/contagious and I made him sleep in the guest bedroom. The next night, last night, was another Snore RX success story. I think the snores have disappeared for good (knock really hard on wood)! It is very strange to turn my light off at night and feel something other than dread that the snores will arrive in my ear holes at any moment. Anyway, this post isn't a Snore RX advertisement. It's a "play the birthday card on your snoring spouse sooner than I did" advertisement. The solution will be different for everyone. For my snoring brother it was having his tonsils and adenoids removed as an adult. For my snoring dad it was getting on a C-pap machine. For some the snore strips you can grab at any drugstore do the trick. For others, ear plugs or sleeping in separate bedrooms might be the right solution. And for us, for now, Snore RX! I'm so happy. Happy almost birthday to me. And thank you Jared. You truly are the medical genius of this century😏
Can't end this post without exposing my own unflattering secret. Warts. Plantar warts. All over my big toe. For years and years. Gross. Probably as many years as Jared's been snoring. Took those warts to a doctor to have them frozen off a few times. They always grew back, and were starting to spread to the next toe over and cause me pain. So a month ago I started attacking them with apple cider vinegar on a cotton swab taped over the warts every night. It's taken a full month and been kinda painful, but they are mostly gone. I tried this method a year ago and they turned black (gross) but I never cut or filed them down, and they just ended up coming back. This time I'm attacking them much harder and they will be destroyed completely forever. You'll see. You'll all see. Our 30s are looking very glamorous on us haha.
And now on a more wholesome note, some pictures from Utah! I will have to be sparse with the captions because it is well past my bedtime. Busy day.
