My Personal Experience with Night Sweats

Angela Holloway

When I started to experience my night sweats, I would wake every single night between 2:30 am and 3 am. (It was like clockwork.) The feeling would come in hot and wet waves. It was similar to the experience of contractions while delivering a baby, except (thankfully) there was no pain. I had absolutely no control over it.

I would wake to find my body extremely hot and sweaty. I felt like I was lying in a pool of hot water. The sweat would be running down my legs, and they would be sliding off each other. Sweat would also be running down from my forehead and into my eyes, which would make them sting. The sweat would continue to run down onto the pillowcase, and I would have to keep moving my face to different parts of the pillow to find a place that was still dry. Sweat would be rolling down my back and all over my arms, even in the creases. My hands would be so wet I didn’t want to close them because they felt so slimy. I would have to keep wiping them on my nightdress, which was already wet. Sometimes there would be a pool of water on my stomach.

Soon after waking, my whole body would start shivering and shaking, because now my sheets and nightie were cold and wet. It was a terrible, uncomfortable feeling. In the end, my nightdress was literally soaking wet! This caused me to be very restless, but I did not want to get out of bed because I was so tired.

Eventually, I would become so uncomfortable I would have to get up, go straight to my bathroom, dry myself off with a towel and change my nightclothes. Then I would change my sheets. After I changed everything and got myself dry, I would then go back to bed and try to get back to sleep.

I would continue to sweat for the rest of the night, and I would toss and turn trying to stay as far away from my husband as possible. My night sweats were not only disturbing me, they were also disturbing his sleep. Neither of us was getting a good night’s sleep. I felt so helpless. Sometimes I would just lay crying, feeling so frustrated and trying not to let my husband hear me, as I knew he was already worrying about me.

I was so exhausted by morning I did not even want to get out of bed. That was not like me, as I had loved going to the gym every morning.

As my night sweats continued, I began to change both physically and emotionally. I became exhausted and depressed. I tried many different things during those months, including many natural products, hoping they would help me. I even bought sleepwear that was supposed to be for menopause, but they made the sweats even worse. They were 80 percent polyester, which actually traps heat and keeps the skin from cooling.

One night after many of months suffering, I decided to wrap towels underneath me and over the top of me to absorb as much sweat as I could. To my amazement, the towels provided some relief. I started to use them every night, and I was able sleep most of the nights after that.