Nothing is wrong with the machine. What has happened is that you have been asked to learn a new way of falling asleep, at the age you are, with a device on your face, and nobody scheduled any time for that.
The things that are normal
All of these are common in week one and none of them means the therapy has failed you.
- Swallowed air and a bloated stomach in the morning — aerophagia, and it often eases as you stop bracing against the pressure.
- A mark across the bridge of your nose.
- A dry mouth, sometimes dry enough to wake you.
- The pressure feeling like too much to breathe out against.
- Waking up to find you have taken the mask off in your sleep and have no memory of doing it.
The quick fixes
Dry mouth — turn the humidifier up, and check whether you are leaking through your mouth. A chin strap or a full-face mask solves the second one.
The mark on your nose — the mask is too tight, or the wrong size. Loosen it. A leak is fixed by fit, not by force, and the tightening reflex is the one to unlearn first.
Too much pressure on the exhale — most machines have an exhale-relief setting that drops the pressure slightly when you breathe out. Ask your clinician about yours.
Bloating — usually settles as you relax into it. Mention it at your follow-up if it does not.
The tearing-it-off-at-three problem
This is not weakness of will, because you were asleep. It is a sleeping brain removing an irritant, and the irritant is nearly always a leak or a mask cranked too tight — something waking you just far enough to grab it and not far enough to remember.
Fix the seal and it usually stops. And in the meantime: wear the mask for an hour while you are awake, reading or watching something, with the machine running. An hour of that trains the adjustment considerably faster than going cold into a full night and losing the night.
Why the first week carries so much weight
Beyond how you feel: most insurers keep covering the machine only if you use it at least four hours on roughly seventy per cent of nights within an early window — commonly the first ninety days. The early habit is partly about sleep and partly about keeping the equipment.
Nightshift shows your nights against that bar, flags a leak before it becomes a four-in-the-morning wake-up, and names the one thing to change tonight. Ten seconds a morning, for the stretch where ten seconds is all anyone has.
Educational, not medical advice — your sleep clinician sets your pressure and your settings.