My Early Risers
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Before my babies came along I always looked forward to weekends because it meant my husband and I could sleep in. We would usually stay up late on Friday night watching movies or going out, and then when Saturday morning rolled around we would rouse ourselves out of bed sometime around 10:00. There was no hurry…it was the weekend!
Then came my daughter. She apparently didn’t inherit the “sleeping-in gene” from us because she would usually wake up around 6:00 every morning. Since that wasn’t too far off from when we usually woke up to go to work it wasn’t such a big deal, but when the weekends rolled around we did miss our previously lazy ways.
Then came my son. If you ever wanted to define the term “Early Riser” then you would only have to look as far as my son. Ever since he was a newborn he preferred to go to bed early and wake up early. How early? Ridiculously early. I spent around five or six months waking up every day around four in the morning. Nothing we did would get him to sleep any later, and believe me when I say we did try. Here is what I learned: keeping a baby up later at night in an attempt to get him to sleep later in the morning only results in a really tired and grumpy – yet awake – baby when four in the morning rolls around.
All we could do was embrace his early-bird-gets-the-worm tendencies. We set up the downstairs room to where he could play relatively safely while I dozed in and out on the couch. I couldn’t ever sleep very soundly knowing he was playing, though, so I spent many months sleep deprived and convinced that I would spend the next eighteen years waking up at four in the morning.
We’re lucky that the kids outgrew the desire to wake up absurdly early, although both of them still like to wake up around 5:30 or 6:00 most of the time. I try not to let it bother me, though, because at least it isn’t 4:00 anymore.
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