Why are We Curious About the Time in the Middle of the Night?

I don't look every time I wake but I do look on ocassions just to see if it is late enough for me to stop up lol

Usually it is because it is the middle of the night and you expect it to be about seven in the morning. You want to know what time it is so you can figure how much time before you are supposed to wake up, a necessary item when you are told that you have to get at least seven hours of sleep and if you get less, your weight goes up. At least that is why I think so. I do not keep track of how many times I woke up unless it is how many times I had to go to the bathroom and then I am probably wondering, if I have to get up at midnight and two in the morning, why do I have to go to the bathroom every two hours during the day? But I do notice, that my throat is awfully dry so it is good thing I only get up twice, although now it is down to once around three in the morning.

I certainly do want to know what time it is because is it so early that should try to go back to sleep or late enough that I might as well get up.

I wake up a lot in the middle of the night. I am always looking to see what time it is. If it is still early I roll over and try to go back to sleep.Most of the time I cant get back to sleep so I just lay there watching the clock. I want to make sure I dont get up to late and be late for work.

When I had to get up to go to work and I would wake in the middle of the night, I would check the clock to see if it was worth going back to sleep. If I still had a few hours then I would go back to sleep but if it was only like 1 1/2 hours I would probably get up. It didn't take me much time to get ready for work. I just didn't want to fall into such a deep sleep that I might be to tired during the day. I hope that made sense.

i am constantly waking up in the middle of the nite ever since i had my first baby,i must look at the clock like 10 times and then next you know its time for me to actually get up and get my babies out of their cribs.i think i do this because i get so worried about them and its just in my head that something wrong is gonna happen but it doesnt.every little noise i hear from my babies or outside i always pop up,im a lite sleeper when i do get to sleep.pattie

I wake several times most nights, and I do want to know the time, in fact I try and guess what the time is, and about half the time I'm within 5 minutes, the other half, nowhere near it. No specific reason, unless its just that I want to know how long I've got before I get up.

I know it probably doesn't matter what time it is when I wake up during the night. I still look at the clock though. LOL I think it's just habit. I guess maybe I look at the clock to see how much longer I get to sleep before I have to get up to get ready to work.

I wake up multiple times during the night, I look at the clock, if in an hour I can't get back to sleep, I get up and do something or go somewhere else to try and sleep. Also, if I have to get up in 30 minutes or something..no point in staying in bed and trying to sleep. What I hate is ...when you wake up 2 hours or something after you get to bed and feel wide awake like you slept for 12 hours..then can't fall back to sleep and spend the whole day dragging.

Hi ElusiveButterfly, This is an interesting question. I 'sometimes' wake in the middle of the night, and yes, I always look at my digital clock on the nightstand. When I do awaken, I can't just roll over and go back to sleep, without checking to see how many more hours of shut-eye I can grab.

Hi mom...I stopped having a real clock OR alarm clock in my room, after I would wake up in the middle of the night just as you described here. There was a little alarm clock (I think you guys may have given it to Jess) and I kept hearing it "tick, tock, tick, tock." It would take me forever to get any sleep because of that thing! Now, I just use my phone as an alarm clock, and that seems to work well enough. I still wake up a lot in the middle of the night, but mainly to go to the bathroom, and that's it! No looking at the clock for me!

If I wake up in the night to use the bathroom I will look at the time. That way I know how much longer I have until the alarm goes off. If I just wake up and roll over I dont look at the clock at all.

I think, Elusive, that it only becomes an issue when repeatedly waking through the night is out of the ordinary routine. It would bother me if I suddenly started waking at intervals throughout the night. I rarely do this, so it would be a cause for concern were it to start happening. For some people, I understand it is normal.

That is my instinct first thing. If I wake up in the middle of the night, then I look at my clock. It's strange because I don't have to do anything, or go any where, but looking at the clock I know I have a few more hours of sleep or something. I will feel weird if there is no clock in my bedroom. I wake up at least two times a night, look at my clock and curse :)

That is a very good question about why we worry about what time we get up during the night. When people noticed that I am very tired, I will tell them I kept waking up during the night but usually do not keep track of time of when I got up, just the fact that I did get up.

Well, one thing is work, and another thing is being awaken back into reality. When you are asleep, you are dreaming or having a nightmare, so you have no concept of time, but when you are awake, you just have to know. Work and school can also be factored into this, when a person has work and/or school, they have to get up at certain times, they want to know how much uninterrupted sleep they are getting, or how much time they have left until they really have to wake up. Another thing is, an natural human beings, we ask questions nearly all of the time, so this is just something that we naturally do.

For me, it is irritation that "I'm up again" and wanting to be able to tell hubby tomorrow how many times I was up and also to check out how much time I have left to actually try to get some sleep!

I always want to know how long I've been asleep...often, I wake thinking I've been asleep for ages and it must be nearly time to get up and it's only an hour since I went to bed! Sometimes too, I want to see how long I've slept since I last woke. I woke this morning at about 4:30 and thought I should get up as there is to be a power outage today for most of the day. I decided against it and went back to sleep...next thing I know it was an hour later...that was a surprise. I must really need to sleep. It seems I'm tired and sleepy a lot of the time lately. I used to try and have an afternoon nap but I get very sleepy in the mornings now as well.

I thought about this once, and until now never really knew why. I have read these posts, and think a lot of them are right. The human mind has a natural curiosity of time. As well as needing to know how many hours of sleep you have left before you will have to wake up and face the day ahead. I personally think that this is one of the reasons I need to know in the middle of the night what time it is, so I know how long I have to sleep. I also think that I set a mental timer and I think that helps me wake up when I hear the alarm go off. Thank you for helping me work my brain today.

I hate to admit it, but I wake up almost every night. I hate waking up in the middle of the night, but I do, because once I wake up and my bladder is full, I can't get back to sleep until I use the bathroom (or I fall asleep, but with dreams of toilets and Niagara Falls, and such - resulting in waking up again). I tend to be curious about the time because I want to see the pattern. I do wake up at often 4-5 in the morning, a couple of hours before I wake up for the day. So it's not too bad.