Okay, so I’m not *really* allergic to mornings – I just don’t want to see them before 8am. And mornings wouldn’t be so bad if there wasn’t E running around full of endless energy and her many demands.
I was fully aware that one of the down sides of having a baby is sleep deprivation. Before E was born I used to have to get up for work, which was normally around 7.30-8am, acceptable hours and at weekends my husband and I would lie in, some days not getting out of bed till at least 10.30. Looking back at those pre child days everything was so relaxed and unscheduled.
I have never been one for schedules and have always been quite flexible on plans. So when E came along all of that went out the window. The lack of planning and the sleep! I cannot really complain about the early days, when E was three weeks old she dropped her 2am feed and she slept through from 10pm till 6am, even then after her morning feed he would go back to sleep till 8am, so I was getting plenty of sleep and with a newborn baby.
E is an amazing sleeper, she goes to bed at 7pm and only wakes at night if she is poorly or needs something, however the toddler years, well particularly the last year the early mornings have started, some days she will sleep till half seven which is great but other days 6am, today was 5.45am. This time of morning is not acceptable, one because it is still dark, secondly I do not function on little sleep. I left her in bed talking away with the slight glimmer of hope that she might go back to sleep. But alas! no, my day started then and boy! have I struggled.
And I’m not going all drama diva on you or anything here – I actually have a physical reaction to not getting enough sleep. I call it “lack of sleep hangover” (clever, right?) – and you know exactly what I mean when I say it.
If I get less than 7 hours of GOOD sleep, I can expect a morning filled with nausea, throbbing head, burning eyes, constantly dropping things and If the sleep is interrupted more than once or sum total is less than 6 I get the really fun “room spins” as well. JUST like a hangover, but without the benefit of a fun night of drinking. And if that happens more than once in a week – I actually suffer cold-like symptoms for a couple of days. It is CRAZY
What my neurologist has told me regarding all of this was the same thing my body has been telling me all my life. I function optimally on 9 hours of sleep. Yes, NINE. I know, “8 is the average.” Well, I need more. And it’s an actual NEED – not just a “I want to sleep all day” kind of thing (however that would be nice novelty)
So when I say I am allergic to mornings – it all depends on what time I’ve gone to bed, how long I stayed there, and how long before the alarm I woke up. Today it was way too early.
