I’m writing this at 11:15 at night, big cup of coffee at my side, fully aware that in less than six or seven hours I’ll be crawling out of bed and starting another full day of writing, cleaning, and chasing my two kiddos around. I know I should be asleep, but hey…a mom’s gotta do what a mom’s gotta do.

This isn’t uncommon for me unfortunately, so I was quite interested when I came across an article posted by the Nursing Online Education Database: 50 Ways to Boost Your Energy Without Caffeine. My first reaction to the the title was this: “Yeah, right.” Upon reading it, though, it became apparent that they had some good points. I am trying to give up caffeine, so maybe I should try some of their suggestions. Here were some of my favorites:

1. Get more sleep. Well, yeah.
2. Exercise.
3. Get massages.
4. Get sunlight during the day.
5. Avoid people who drain you.
6. Watch your attitude.
7. Try to keep a sleep schedule.

A lot of the other tips were good suggestions for overall health, but I guess that there is a direct correlation between health, contentedness, and energy levels. Nobody knows that better than an exhausted, over-worked mom.

Perhaps tomorrow night I’ll get to bed at a decent hour.

My grandmother was none-to-thrilled when she found out that I was co-sleeping with my first baby. I hadn’t planned on co-sleeping, but it turned out to be the only way I could ever get any consistent sleep. To my grandmother, co-sleeping was bizarre and dangerous. I think this type of thing was relatively unheard of back when she had babies…she told me a story about a friend of hers who came home from the hospital, put her baby in a crib in the living room, and then went to her bedroom to get a full night’s sleep. That wouldn’t fly nowadays.

I justified the co-sleeping in a few ways:

1. It guaranteed me a few hours of sleep at a time.

2. It was a really cool bonding experience.

3. People have been co-sleeping all over the world since humans roamed the world, haven’t they?

Yet another warning has been issued about the dangers of co-sleeping. According to the article, the chances of accidentally smothering your baby is just too great a risk, and instead the baby should sleep in the same room as the mom…but not in the same bed.

Believe me, if I could have figured out a way to get my baby to sleep as soundly in her own crib as she did next to me in bed, I certainly would have. I understand the risks associated with co-sleeping, but I also understand the desperate need for some sleep during those exhausting first couple of weeks (or months).

If you don’t want to co-sleep then my advice to you is to never try it to begin with, even for a quick nap. If you get a glimpse of how well a co-sleeping baby can snooze, you may have a hard time not trying it again.

I remember when I was pregnant with my daughter — how the tiredness hit me so suddenly in my first trimester. It was as if someone stuck a straw in my belly button and sucked out every ounce of energy in my body, leaving one tired vessel behind.

Over the next few weeks, I managed to find a few quick and easy solutions to the extreme tiredness I was feeling. When I was not able to fit a nap into an already over-scheduled day, or I had already taken one, I found that taking a quick stroll around the block helped to clear and refresh my head. Going outside and enjoying a change of scenery helped to energize me for the rest of the day.

Sipping a cold glass of water also helped me to feel less fatigued. Mild dehydration is actually a quite common (and often overlooked) cause of fatigue. Dehydration can reduce blood volume and reduce blood flow to your organs, which ends up slowing down your brain, and thus, slowing you down. Be sure to drink about 8 glasses of water per day, and don’t wait until you feel thirsty – by then you are already becoming dehydrated. Try squeezing some lemon or lime juice in your water for some extra flavoring or to make it more palatable.

I also made sure to eat healthy as often as I could. I found that when I ate a protein rich lunch I had more energy to get me through the afternoon. Also, protein containing snacks combined with carbs, such as cheese or peanut butter and crackers, or a handful of nuts helped to keep me energized as well.

Pregnancy can certainly bring on a feeling of fatigue like you’ve never known, but I learned that there are a few easy things I could do throughout the day to stave off the groggy feeling and get through my day. What are some of your tips for pregnancy fatigue?

I’m a little groggy as I write this because my daughter was up most of the night with a bad cough. She has seasonal allergies and last night a huge wind rolled in, so voila! She coughed through most of the night and was so upset about it that she kept calling out to me and working herself into a frenzy. As most parents do, I did what I could to make sure she was as comfortable as possible. My overwhelming urge for a good night’s sleep was minuscule in comparison to my desire to help my daughter feel better.

That’s one of the crazy things about parenthood. Basic needs of parents such as sleep, food, and even going to the bathroom sometimes have to take a momentary back seat to the immediate needs of the kids. Before I had my first baby I never imagined there would be a person in this world who could force me into a sleep deprived, zombie-like state without me feeling resentment. So even though a few grumbles may have escaped my mouth when I was climbing out of bed for the umpteenth time last night to go soothe my daughter, on a higher level I knew I would stay up as long as she needed me to because I’m a parent and it’s what I do. No wonder young kids think the world of their parents…we’re superheroes. Our super ability is to stare into the face of sleep deprivation and laugh heartily (or cry heartily, depending on how sleep deprived we are).

The truth of the matter is that there aren’t many people in this world who love sleep as much as I do, but willingly give it up when necessary for the sake of my kids. Luckily it doesn’t happen as often as it used to when the kids were newborns, but it’s still relatively common for me to get woken up in the middle of the night by one of my darlings. Sleep deprivation may make me a little groggy and sometimes a little grumpy, but I’ll still leap out of my bed and to my kids’ bedside as long as they need me.

Let me tell you about my husband. He’s a generous, responsible man who loves his kids and has always changed diapers like a champ. He can also sleep through a baby crying with the best of them.

It doesn’t matter if the baby is merely whimpering or instead screaming bloody murder. My husband has the uncanny ability to completely ignore it and sleep peacefully while I attend to the situation. Seriously, he doesn’t even budge. I’m mystified by this ability, because sometimes I’ll jolt awake from the tiniest cough or sigh from one of my kids.

I’ve read some research on this phenomenon, and there are a few different theories. One theory is that women are simply programmed to wake at the smallest of sounds from a baby while men aren’t wired that way. Another study claims that the person who sleeps closest to the bedroom door is the one who will awaken when a child cries out in the middle of the night. For the record, I don’t buy that one because we switched positions and I was still the one getting up at night, I just had further to walk.

A friend of mine admitted to me that he doesn’t get up when the baby cries at night because he knows his wife will do it. Of course, he didn’t admit this to his wife (probably a smart move) but that makes a lot of sense to me. On the rare occasions when I am ‘off the clock’ at night – such as when I take medication that makes me sleepy and my husband has to respond to the kids if they wake up at night – then he does a relatively good job of getting up and attending to them. Every other night, though, he snoozes right through it all.

There is one exception to this rule. Ninety-nine percent of the time the kids will yell ‘Mommy!’ when they wake up in the middle of the night, but if one of them yells ‘Daddy!’ then my husband bolts out of bed and makes a mad dash to see what the matter is. Now I just need to figure out how to teach my kids to call to him first, and I’d probably get a lot more sleep.