Most of y’all know, mornings are not my finest hours. Snooze is my BFF. I live for Saturday mornings when Jason takes over Z & L from wake up til its breakfast time & I hear a lil Lucy voice come back into our room saying “Wake up, Mommy. Waffles!”
So it shouldn’t be shocking that in the wake of two other Liberating Working Moms posts about loving early mornings & the beauty of going to bed early, I shared today why I love being a night owl. Jump over to Liberating Working Moms & read what I wrote.
Recently, LWM contributors have been chatting about early bedtimes for moms and the love for early mornings. One of the awesome things about the diversity of the LWM writers is all of our differences mean in a weeks’ time, you can read a variety of opinions on one subject, with sleep and carving out me time being big deals to us working moms.
And while I love sleep (oh do I love it!), I’ve also learned in the almost 2.5 years of working motherhood, that there are a few things I’m willing to give up sleep for. At first, it was nursing my babies. I learned to work (somewhat successfully) never getting more than 2-3 hours’ sleep in a row for almost 18 months. Then last March when Z stopped night nursing, I re-discovered my love for sleeping through the night!
But I also discovered then that my body was so used to getting 4-6 hours of sleep, that I just wasn’t tired when my husband (who’s the IMO crazy early bird that gets up at 5:15a for pre-work gym time) went to bed at 10:30pm. My week day alarm goes off at 6:45am, and I’ve realized that six to seven hours of sleep works well for me.
So now, my routine is typically much like Paige’s while the kiddos are awake, then after bedtime is a mix of TV with the husband, laundry, dishes, straightening up and preparing for the following day. But I’ve realized too that the mall are Target are open until at least 9pm which gives me 1.5 hours after L and Z go to bed that I can run solo errands without being confined by a thirty minute lunch time window or having two toddlers in tow. Shopping alone, well it’s what this working mom’s dreams are made of!
Then when that 10pm hour hits and while most people are winding down, I get a second night owl wind – 10pm to midnight is my time. My Suz time. My time to watch girly TV, read a beloved book, catch up on social media or even try to get to that next level of a game on my phone. Those two hours typically fly by as I unwind and let the craziness of the working mom day fall off my shoulders.
Some people use the mornings before the kids wake up to keep in touch with themselves. For me, that happens in the quiet late night hours while much of the world is asleep. And for me, that’s worth losing sleep over.
Are you of the early to bed, early to rise mindset or will you chat online with me at 11:30p?
