Why do I have to sleep so long in order to recall my dreams?
I have noticed that while preparing for exams (and thus have been home from school for the past couple weeks) and have been able to sleep much more than usual that my dream recall has been excellent. In fact, the first two LDs that I've had in recent time were two nights in a row during this period. But when I actually had to get up to meet early in the day for the past few days, my dream recall was quite poor, even though I slept for about 8 hours. I've noticed this is recurring, so it seems to be a pattern. Some days I barely had anything to note down at all, perhaps two small dream fragments. But when I sleep for 9-10 hours I can remember 5-6 dreams on a good night, and my two recent LDs were both around the early morning after the sun had come up.
The few dreams I do remember during the earlier part of the night are almost always very dull and don't seem to last very long at all. When I fall asleep sometimes I see dream fragments coming together in my head, but they almost always vanish entirely when I fall asleep and the first memorable dreams come at least 3-5 hours later. But if I can sleep 9-10 hours and occasionally more, then when I've reached the 9-10 hour mark I can just start dreaming and keep dreaming over and over again, and thus have many dreams in succession, some even connected with the previous ones. During the night I am very often just awake and then I go out like a light, without any warning. I often "drop asleep" rather than "fall asleep", if that makes sense.
Is there anything I can do about this to improve my situation? Or will I just have to accept that this is how my sleep pattern is and so I probably only can LD when I have the luxury of sleeping for 9-10 hours or more?
