The Snoring Cure?

One of my pet peeves is snoring.  I know it's not really the other person's fault if they snore (I guess) but it annoys me all the same and the older I get the harder time I have getting to sleep so if I have to share a room (or a bed) with someone who snores I know that I am going to have a tough time sleeping unless I can get to sleep before that person.  And since my husband snores, and can fall asleep in about 2 seconds flat, you can imagine how often I fall asleep before him.  To be fair, I don't think he was a snorer (is this an actual word?) when we first got married.  I can't pinpoint when the snoring started, nor can I pinpoint when I started sleeping like crap.  But needless to say, here we are, married for almost three years (exactly, on  Feb 28) and I am a crappy sleeper and he is a snorer. 
Now.  He is not the first person in my life who I have encountered as a snorer.  After my freshman year of college started, my parents decided to turn my room back into an office and I had to share a room with my sister whenever I came home from school.  This was before they moved into the house that they now live in (with all the nice extra space and room for everyone).  It was the only time we ever had to share a room and at first I thought, well, that won't be too bad.  Ugh, I was wrong, and only for the fact that she snores and snores loudly.  All.  Night.  Long.  When I wasn't there she kept a huge menagerie of stuffed animals on the second bed (the one that I slept on when I was there)....throughout the night I would throw an animal across the room at her to try and get her to turn over and stop snoring.  I am sure that as the night went on, my light toss turned into a fast pitch style throw straight at her head.  I was more than relieved when my parents bought a new house, complete with my own new room.  And my brother-in-law must sleep like the dead to have been married to her for six and a half years (no offense, Sara!). 
Even my sweet, gorgeous little girl snores like a sailor.  When she was much younger (three months or so) we noticed how loudly she was snoring and brought it up to the doctor.  The fact that we could even hear it over the monitor some times made us wonder if that was normal.  In fact, within a few months, it was the snoring that made us realize that she was skipping some breaths, which led us to the doctor recommending us having the sleep study done for her.  Thankfully everything turned out ok with that...but she still snores quite loudly.  Whenever we stay away from our house and she stays in the same room with us....well, I don't sleep all that well because she isn't a quiet sleeper. 
Michael has mentioned before that he has seen at the dentist that they can make some custom trays or something that can help with snoring....except they are around $400 or something ridiculous like that.  Truthfully if I added up all the hours of sleep I have lost to snoring it probably would be worth it, but that just isn't something we can afford to spend money on and there are so many other things we could do with money like that so it wouldn't make sense.  Ah well, no sleep for me.  He has worn breathe right strips for over a year now, those things don't really do much at all in the way of stopping snoring.  He uses a nettie pot often to try and clear his sinuses, but as far as preventing snoring, none of that really works. 
Finally, a couple months ago, he came upon a site that sold a mouth gaurd called the ZQuiet that you sleep with that supposedly prevents you from snoring.  It was $70, but he found a coupon that would make it $50....so financially this could work.  Michael never buys anything without reading as many reviews as possible so he read as many as he could for this product, sharing some with me.  My main concern was if he would be able to breathe while he was sleeping with it in his mouth...I just didn't want him choking on his spit or something and gagging or worse from the thing.  He didn't really seem to have those concerns, he just wasn't sure if it would really keep him from snoring.  I thought for $50 it was worth a shot, just as long as it was something safe to try.  Even if he hadn't found the coupon I would've been open to trying it!!  So he went ahead and ordered it. 
It took a little bit to get here, not too long, and finally we were able to try it.  I say we, because even though Michael was the one actually trying it out, I was the one who was hoping that it would work so I wouldn't have to hear any more snoring while I tried to sleep.  On the first night....he didn't wear it the whole night, he said it hurt his jaw after a while.  But those few hours that he did wear it....NO SNORING!!!  I could not believe it.  I actually stayed awake to make sure I could hear him breathing normally but everything sounded ok and as usual he fell asleep fast and when the snorning didn't happen....I was actually able to go to sleep myself as well.  At this point (he has had it now for a couple weeks) he can wear it the whole night and if I can't sleep it is not because of him snoring and once I fall asleep there is no snoring that wakes me up in the middle of the night.  It is awesome.
So now I am enjoying snoreless nights, thanks to ZQuiet (yes, they can contact us if they would like to use us in a commercial, haha).  Although not always sleepless nights, I guess snoring isn't the only thing that keeps me awake (there are always the million things that go through my head that need to be done, various worries, reading blogs, etc).  Oh and the people in the condo upstairs stomping around at all hours of the night, the dogs next door barking all the time....just a couple more things that keep me from sleeping.  But hey, now I can at least cross snoring off the list!!