I guess to start you're always dreaming in some form when you're in r.e.m. sleep, and you want r.e.m. sleep every night, so I would not recommend looking for anything to limit your dreams, you just need to improve the general quality of your sleep. I have several tips that I try to follow that should help out, as I have had similar trouble to yourself previously.
- Do not use anything with a backlight 30 minutes before you go to sleep, it is stressful on your eyes, and you're probably doing something requiring a lot of thought, and you want to be winding down as you get ready to go to bed.
- Wake up at the same time every day no matter what, your body will adjust itself so that you are in a light sleep at this time every day.
- Sleep in blocks of 90 minutes. Sleep cycles in approximately 90 minute intervals, so try to sleep in segments of 90 minutes, i.e. 6 hours a night, 7 1/2 hours, 9 hours etc. This is another thing to make sure that you're waking up when you're in light sleep.
- Get a phone app, or a product that wakes you up based on what phase of sleep you're in. Basically, you give it a 30 minute window, and depending on the device, it wakes you up based on data from the night when it thinks you will wake up refreshed. A few products in this category are Zeo (iPhone, Android, or without a phone), Lark (iPhone only), or Wakemate. These are just a few of the products, a more thorough list is here on gizmodo, but a quick google search should bring up a lot of info on these. The Zeo is probably best, as it is a miniature EEG that measures your brainwaves, rather than an accelerometer you wear on your wrist.
I have personally owned the Zeo, and liked it, so I'll give you my experience with it. It is a miniature EEG that records your brainwaves as you sleep, analyzing them in real-time. It records when you're in light, deep, and r.e.m. sleep over the course of the night, as well as when and how many times you wake up, when you fall sleep, how long it takes you to fall asleep etc. Using this it gives you a "sleep score" every night based on other user data, as well as a 50,000 person database developed from several sleep studies. It lets you know how well you're sleeping compared to people in your age bracket, as well as specific suggestions on how to improve your sleep.
On top of all this if you give your Zeo a 30 minute window to wake you up, it will wake you up when you are in the lightest stage of sleep, and will wake up the most refreshed. I only returned it because I was looking to hack it to track nocturnal epileptic seizures, and the version I had didn't output raw data so was useless to me. I would highly recommend this if you're looking to improve your sleep and can spare $99 or whatever it costs now.
I think for you the most important thing of the list above is not using any device with a backlight 30 minutes before going to bed, as it will force you to wind down. Meditation might help as well, but I haven't tried meditation quite yet, and I'm not sure it makes a huge amount of sense right before bed.
There are a huge number of good articles on sleep on Lifehacker, that would be a good place to do some more general research. What I have listed above is probably a good way to start, and isn't too terribly difficult vs. some of the other options. Lifehacker does have some good articles on resetting yourself into a permanent sleep schedule among other things. You won't suffer for lack of information over there.
I hope this isn't too big of a block of text and helps.
