There’s an up-side to NOT sleeping through the night...

The general consensus among sleep experts... 

...is that we should all be getting about 8 consecutive hours of sleep a night. But one expert says that’s not natural. Roger Ekirch, author of “At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past,” says when we look back at how humans used to sleep – that 8 hour stretch would have been rare. He looked at writings and etchings from ancient times to determine their sleep patterns. A typical ancient night’s sleep would start a few hours after dusk, followed by a waking period of a few hours – and then back to sleep. 

Ekirch says people were quite active during that mid-night waking period. They used the bathroom, smoked and visited neighbors – then prayed or “snuggled” before the second sleep. He even found a doctor's manual from 16th Century France that advised couples the best time to conceive was not at the end of a long day's labor - but after the first sleep, “when they have more enjoyment and do it better."