Sleep quality vs quantity

Week 3 is almost done! Can't believe how fast this time has gone!

Yesterday I felt like a zombie the whole day. My son has a bad cough and I was up with him for several hours in the night, trying to settle his coughing. I couldn't get up, when my alarm went at 6 am, so I continued until 7.30. I've used FitBit Flex since last May and I like tracking my sleep with it. 

Do to regular workouts, my sleep quality has improved a lot. I'm not as restless and I get over 7 hours of sleep most of the nights. I've also noticed, that the more I'm restless during the night, the harder it is for me to wake up in time. And vice versa: if I sleep well, even less than seven hours is enough. 

For me, the quality of sleep is more important that the quantity. Even if I sleep 9 hours restlessly, I may feel tired all day, but with deep sleep, even 6 hours may be enough. This was again proved this week. Wednesday morning I woke up at 5.30 without alarm. I though about trying to get some more sleep, but then decided to just get up, put my workout gear on and head to do my workout. I had plenty of time to finish my P90X Shoulders and Arms workout plus the Ab ripper X before rest of the family woke up. Accordingly to my Fitbit, it said I had slept only for 6 h 19 min, but yet I felt energetic whole day. the next night was horrible! I woke up to hear my son coughing very badly and spend the next couple of hours to get him to calm doing, sitting with him outside in the cool air and trying to nap on the couch sitting up with him on my lap. Finally I took him to sleep beside my in our guest room (didn't want to wake the rest of the family up). When I woke up at 7.15 am, the Fitbit said I had slept for 7 hours and 18 minutes. It of course counted as sleep the times I was sitting outside and on the couch awake with my son. But being up that long in the middle of night and missing my deep sleep, made me so tired! I felt that I didn't wake up the whole day! I don't even know how many cups of coffee I had (usually I drink 1-3 cups/day), but I felt that there was not enough coffee in the world, to keep me up. 

There's also studies made of this and they also say, that sleep quality is more important than quantity. I can so relate to them! Here is a short article about one sturdy:
http://hub.jhu.edu/2015/10/30/quality-of-sleep-more-important-than-quantity