Weekend Assignment #199: When Do You Sleep?

Weekend Assignment #199: What is your usual sleep schedule on weeknights? Are you an "early to bed, early to rise" sort of person, or do you stay awake far into the night (voluntarily or otherwise), and get up as late as your work schedule permits? Do you give priority to getting adequate sleep? If so, how is that working out for you?

Extra Credit: If you had no work or family scheduling obligations, would your sleeping pattern change substantially?


Schedule? What's that? In this house it's "sleep when ever the opportunity arises." Sadly, the opportunities for sleep seem to be in short supply. I am NOT a morning person, but in a cruel twist of fate, my children seem to be. Lately (after waking up multiple times through the night), Max wakes for the day between 7 and 7:30am. Tyler needs to be up for school by 7am, but he wakes on his own most days in the 6am hour. Bed time for Tyler is somewhat fixed at 8pm (with a 7:30pm "prep" time). Max's bedtime depends on his variable nap schedule during the day but seems to fall in the 7-8:30 time frame, most days.

John and I both require some adult unwinding time in the evening. Given the choice, we are both night owls. Given the choice, we are also great sleepers who will sack out for 10 hours or more. Are we given the choice? Nope. Not very often. And no, we give hardly any priority to adequate sleep. During the week we try to get the minimal amount of sleep required to function and not have the desire to beat our children. On the weekends, we each take turns sleeping in. Then we hope to store up sleep like a camel does water in order to survive the next sleep deprived week of working and parenting.

Extra Credit: With no obligations, would our sleep patterns change? Heck yes! We'd sleep until we woke. The clock would be tossed out a window and all accepted norms of day/night would be ignored. I see us falling into a totally new pattern of sleeping for 10 hours, playing for 10 and then sleeping again, possibly with naps in between. No more 24 hour days. Maybe someday when we win the lottery...

Comments

Anonymous said…
I am a night owl..my sleep pattern has always been odd.
I have thought of having a sleep study done.
Anonymous said…
I must say that now that i have my own business and no children at home my sleep patterns have changed. Sometimes it's early to bed, other times late. It all depends on when I get tired and ready to sleep and I wake up when I please.

I hear you! Sorry, I'll shut up not. :-P

My youngest liked getting up at 5 am and he would come sit on my bed yaking away and DEMANDING that I converse with him! I'd mumble unknown things to him. To this day, he can pretty much understand any of my mumblings.

Monica
http://journals.aol.com/monicasmemoirs/midnight-conversations/
Anonymous said…
"During the week we try to get the minimal amount of sleep required to function and not have the desire to beat our children."

That made me chuckle :o)

I never realised the value of sleep until I became a Mummy!

Sara xxx
Chris said…
I go on a 1am to 7am schedule for weeks on end then have a crash day where I sleep a kajillion hours in one day. Healthy? Probably not.
Kiva said…
I definitely can identify with your sleep scheduling problem -- I had it when the kids were little. There was a bit of a respite when we had an "empty nest," but now that there are grandkids -- it's baaaaack!
Heck, you didn't need to keep those brain cells functioning adequately, did you? Yeah, me neither, and I don't have kids to interfere with such things!

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