Waking up early is changing my life.
Not really.
But haven’t you seen that headline everywhere lately? It seems to be a hot new trend, even though the concept is as old as sleep. I never thought it would work for me though.
The people who post about the life-changing magic of sleeping less all seem to have something in common: They don’t have babies.
Every time a productivity hack includes the phrase “wake up before your kids” I have to laugh. Because it’s my daughter (now 15 months old) who wakes me up most mornings, and usually earlier than I’d like.
But she is getting older, and her sleep patterns are getting more regular. In fact, she’s been sleeping reliably through the night (from 8 to 6ish) since 11 months old.
We’re really lucky.
So I decided to take on the challenge to wake up an hour earlier every day.
I picked a day to start doing it. (Monday, obviously) and planned all the things I would start doing with my extra hour of time.
I set my alarm and made a point to go to bed promptly on Sunday night.
And wouldn’t you know it?
Monday morning was the day our perfect little sleeper decided to wake up at 4:00 AM, screaming for comfort.
That morning, it was more important for me to be a mommy.
As I sat rocking with my little girl, who’s getting bigger, heavier, and more independent before my eyes, I regretfully pushed aside all the thoughts and ideas I had been planning to focus on that morning. My job then was simply to hold my daughter and comfort her.
In my hectic life as a working mom of a toddler, it can often seem so difficult to find a quiet moment to breathe, and here she was offering me one, and demanding that I take it instead of focusing on “being productive”.
I didn’t get my extra hour of productivity out of my Monday.
(But hey, I did get a blog post idea out of it!)
