My husband has three distinct kinds of twitches in addition to the typical falling-asleep lurch that seems to be very common. I have observed and catalogued them and developed defenses against two of them but can’t do anything about the third. They all disturb my sleep but not his. The first has always been there, and the other two have come on in later years.
1. Tickling fingers. His fingers twitch in a kind of grasping wiggle. When they happen to be extended in my direction, it is exactly like a tickling motion. Suddenly getting that in the middle of your back or your stomach when you are sound asleep can really raise you up. A small “travel” pillow correctly positioned takes care of it.
2. Raptor claw. One foot comes out to the side, sweeps an arc, and then goes back. He will get into this one and it will happen again and again at intervals of one to several minutes over a period of time. The angle and our relative heights are such that this often causes his toenail to rake the sole of my bare foot. Other times he claws my ankle. A good kick usually puts a stop to it, but if not, the travel pillow works here too.
3. Full-body spasm. When it gets going sometime in the middle of the night, this one is violent enough to rock the whole bed. I’ve counted the intervals; it times out at about twice a minute. A few times there has been enough daylight for me to see what’s happening: his shoulder, hunched close to his ear, suddenly opens up and pushes outward (upward, since he is on his side) as if trying to uncramp. It is a strong push and shakes his whole body. He sleeps right through it even when it goes on for an hour. There is no defense against this unless I wake him and get him to turn over. I have learned to go back to sleep with mini-earthquakes shaking the whole bed every thirty seconds.