hmm, this may just work

Last night I was tired. I was literally nodding off as I was giving H her bedtime feeding. The sad part of my daily exhaustion is it is more or less self induced. H is a pretty good sleeper-she typically goes to sleep around 9/9:30 pm wakes between 3:30/4 am for a 30 min feeding then sleeps till around 8/8:30. Occasionally, she will sleep strait through and skip the 3:30/4 am feeding, but it is only occasionally. However, for some reason every night I plan on her skipping that feeding and sleeping all the way through. This in turn leads me to staying up till 2 am, falling asleep around 2:30 am, waking up to feed H for the 3:30/4 am feeding. Falling back asleep around 5 am then waking again at 7/7:30 am with big sister L. The night before last there was an added waking up at 6 am because a certain three year old needed to go potty.

The problem isn't that sleep isn't possible, the problem is I am staying up during that sleep possible window. You see, I HAVE TO HAVE ME-TIME and me time for me is blissful alone time. It is a time to exercise, to work on projects, to have devotions, to organize to just regroup and find myself. I have always been a morning me-time person, and L blessed this need greatly with always sleeping in. But H's sleep schedule was just so across the board those first 6 weeks I got use to grabbing some me-time in the evenings when J was still up and could watch her. Once H's sleep patterns became more consistent I just sort of extended the me-time evenings to 2 am. Only problem being 1) I wasn't getting any sleep. I don't need  a lot of sleep but I do need at least 4 hours uninterrupted to function; 6 hours to wake up really refreshed and ready to go. More than 6 and I am just groggy and unhappy. 2) I have been struggling with managing my day. For some reason I just really need that am time alone to get off to a good start and 3) Exercising in the evenings (afternoons too) just works against my bodies natural rhythms.

Anyway, as I was jerking my self awake while feeding H I moaned to myself about once again being to exhausted to get a good workout in. Then it hit me! Why am I not going to sleep around 10 pm and then just get up for the day when she wakes for her early morning feeding? Brilliant! So obvious that I am not sure why I didn't figure it out sooner.

This morning I woke at 4 am when she woke (J gets up at 3 am to go to work-I sleep through it), got her back to sleep by 4:45. Then I emptied the dishwasher; had my morning coffee and listened to NPR; worked out; looked up a craft project for L, created a sample, and got all the supplies ready for hers, now blogging and will be doing devotions shortly. What a perfect morning. I feel better than I have in a really long time!