Sleep habits and internal alarm clocks

As I shake off the sleep from a little nap I took while putting the little man to bad, I started thinking about my sleep habits lately, and how they contrast to my sleep habits of the past.

All my life I've used some sort of alarm clock. When I was younger, it was my dad tapping me upside the head with one of my stuffed animals to get me out of bed. When I started college and my working life, I used real alarm clocks-- and hit the snooze alarm so often that I had to set the alarm nearly an hour before the actual time to get up. Even my dad came with a snooze alarm-- I'd brush him off, and he'd be back in my room within 10 minutes, whopping me with the stuffed animals more insistently each time. Every once in a while I'd actually awaken a little before my alarm went off, and I felt a bit more refreshed. More often, however, the alarm would jolt me out of a deep sleep, and you know how that feels.

Two years ago, however, I stopped using alarm clocks. First, I got laid off and had no reason to be up at a certain hour anymore. But when I started working at Citrix, with its flexible schedule, I started relying on the noise of Allan and Todd getting ready for school in the morning, to wake me up. With my earplugs on, it was definitely a much smoother transition into waking up than being jolted by a blaring noise. After a while, when we moved into the larger 1-bedroom apartment, got Todd his own bed, and I started sleeping in the bedroom again, I rarely ever heard the boys getting up in the morning. Instead, I discovered that my own internal alarm clock worked quite well! I could go to sleep, telling myself to wake up at a certain hour, and sure enough, I'd awaken at the determined time. This was great! No more alarm clocks, and even the few times in the past 2 years I've set one *just in case*, I've either already been awake, or just on the surface of awakening, when the alarm went off. As a result, I feel more refreshed when I wake up, being allowed to awaken at my own natural pace/cycle. The only time my internal alarm clock doesn't really work is when I'm dead tired from lack of/poor sleep the night before, and the allotted sleep time is less than 2 hours-- and then I overshoot by 1 hour.

Wait a minute. Less than 2 hours? What's THAT all about!?

That's another thing that's changed with my sleep patterns. Before I had Todd, I'd sleep for long stretches of time. Sure, I'd awaken in the middle of the night, as everyone does, but most of the time I was unaware of it-- or if I *was* aware of it, only hazily so. But when I got pregnant, I found myself getting up more and more in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. After Todd was born, this trend persisted. Now I'd sleep 3-4 hours (sometimes a solid 5, on a good day), awaken, do a bathroom shuffle, check on Todd, and go back to sleep for another 2-3 hours. Lather, rinse, repeat. With the cycle getting shorter (to about 1 hour at a time) as the morning approaches. Even when Todd is not here, and I don't have to worry about checking on him, I've fallen into this pattern. The nights that I get a solid 5-hour chunk before the first awakening aren't so bad. But the nights I sleep in 2-3 hour bursts have more of a negative impact the next day. Even though I slept for 7-8 hours total, it's different when it's in 3 or 4 two-hour chunks, and oftentimes even LESS restful than if I *only* got a solid, uninterrupted 5 hours, nothing more.

At least, I'm lucky that when I *do* wake up, and even get up in the middle of the night, I typically don't have much trouble falling back asleep. So even a series of sequential 2-hour bursts of sleep is much better than tossing and turning and lying awake in the middle of the night after having only slept a couple hours, and then having to get up by the time you start falling back asleep!

As I wrap up this blog post and it approaches midnight, I anticipate going to sleep around 1:00-1:30am, by the time I get my teeth brushed, Todd changed, and myself settled into bed with a bit of reading. With any luck, I'll sleep uninterrupted till 6:00am, put my earplugs and eyeshades on, and settle back into a dream-filled sleep till 8:00-8:30am.

And so, dear readers, I shall bid you a fond good night... even though it will be morning by the time most of you read this, in which case-- good morning! :-)