Here it is Friday night at 7:30pm. My husband is working and my other date is already in bed. Adelle has decided (after weeks of not sleeping well) that 7-7:30 is her bedtime. If she's kept up a minute after 7:30 she transforms into a back-arching screaming puddle of goo.
This is yet another one of those adjustments into parenthood that I'm trying to settle in to. I'm a night owl by nature. No matter how much sleep I get, getting up any time before 8am is against the grain. Of course, a 7pm bedtime means Adelle is usually up between 6-7am so there goes that idea! Naturally, I didn't expect to get lots of sleep-ins with a baby in residence. I'm not that silly. But, I didn't think about the fact that I'd want to get to bed as early as possible to keep my sanity.
One of the things I was most worried about becoming a mother was sleep deprivation. I don't do well without sleep. Everyone says "you just do it" and sure, I can take a night of little sleep. But two? Maybe. Three? Eh. Three weeks? Nah, I start to fray around the edges. So my solution has been to try to move my bedtime up to 9pm at the latest.
BUT, no matter what, I refuse to go to bed before 8pm! I just refuse! Call me crazy for expecting to get any sleep with a 4 month old. Call me crazy for not going to bed at the same time she does if I can't deal....but I need to have some grown up time. Besides, my body clock just doesn't want to sleep before 9pm really. No matter how tired I am, I get into bed and just lay there wide awake.
How about it y'all? How have you dealt with exhaustion? What have you done to keep it together? If you're a night owl like me, does your body clock ever adjust?
2 comments:
Oh man exhaustion and how do I deal with it...hmmm I just do I guess! Lol I have no choice. There are nights where we are up every hour and then at 7am or so when the little one is sleeping hard, the two year old is up and ready for the day! Then there are some days where Dylan will sleep in his crib next to me from 9pm till about 4am, but I am so used to getting up with him now that I keep waking up. This is extremely annoying. Many times he is sleeping with me and man oh man he is a little kicker and squirmer. So yeah...exhaustion. It sucks. Then sometimes I follow up on blogs of kids that are fighting cancer and the words their parents write in extreme pain watching their children suffer and then pass on. I think to myself, they would give ANYTHING in this world to be waking up at night with a healthy baby and so grateful their children are alive in the morning at 7am. So I pitch my pity party and when I look at my baby and give him a big hug, I say I am so blessed you are here with me this morning. It changes my outlook. I am so tired that I drop things, forget things, but I am so so lucky. Wish we saw each other more when you were here.
So interesting you say that Melisa because I have also thought the same. You've probably seen me write about my former therapist's granddaughter with cancer. It is so very frustrating to be woken up so often, and like you, even when she's sleeping I wake up just cuz I'm used to it! But I think of that other little girl and her family, and I think of how I used to be lonely lying in bed crying and it usually helps me get over the frustration. Also similar, in the mornings I say to Adelle "I'm so happy to see you!" and she gives me big smiles. That almost always wipes away the night before!
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