So, Tabitha is starting a bucket list of her own-- the fad in question happens to be "101 things to accomplish in 1001 days". Much too ambitious for me-- by the time I could come up with 101 things to do, I'd be halfway through my 1001 days ;-P
But I have decided that there is one thing that I would like to start getting in the habit of doing (and no, it's not blogging more often-- I think I've beaten that one to death, and hey-- so far, not so bad. Not quite everyday, but maybe I'll get there. And even a constant few times per week isn't too awful, is it?)
Go to bed earlier.
I hear my fellow internet-addicts laughing out there.
Now, the thing is-- I normally don't go to bed till around midnight. And that means getting settled INTO bed at midnight, reading a book for a little while and then conking out, usually at 1:00am. The main reason for this is Todd. It's a twofold reason:
1. He isn't dry at night yet. So he wears diapers to bed. But he urinates enough during the night that he'd fill up a regular diaper to overflowing if left on for the entire 10 hours he's in bed. So, about 1/3 of the way through the night I have to change him. Since I typically put him to bed around 8:30pm, this means changing him around midnight. You get the drift-- change him any earlier than that and it does no good, as the diaper is still fairly empty, and whatever I put on him will be the one to overflow.
2. Todd never gets enough to drink at school, and this is compounded by the fact that he's away from us from 8am to 5pm everyday. By evening he is clearly dehydrated. So the only times we can really make sure he gets enough to drink is in the evening. Well, if he goes to bed by 8pm, that really only leaves 2-3 hours within which to pump him full of his daily allotment of liquids. Which, going back to #1, means a fuller diaper at night because we can't always get him to drink it all early enough before bedtime that he would be able to let it all out in the toilet before going to bed.
Anyway... it makes it really hard to go to bed much earlier than midnight.
But now Todd is starting to get by on less sleep, so I can put him to bed an hour later than I usually do. This helps us regulate his "catch-up" drinking in the now-longer evening. Plus, I normally wake up about 3-4 hours after falling asleep, anyway. I shuffle to the bathroom, get a drink of water, and check on the boy, who has usually kicked off his covers by then. Now this "midnight shuffle", as I call it, can coincide with the time I normally have to change Todd's diaper. Which means I can get to bed earlier.
Nothing drastic, mind you. I'd be happy with going to bed just one hour earlier, say, by 11pm, and winding down with a book and falling asleep just around midnight. That's a whole extra hour of sleep, and that can make all the difference in the world!
So... let this be my "1 for the rest of my life" little drop in the bucket list-- to get to bed early each night.
It's 10pm now. Most of the evening chores are done. I can even relax a little, provided I pry myself away from the computer ASAP! Let's see if I can keep up this trend! And let's see how that translates to my overall health and productivity during the day! :-)
I know that one of my oldest friends, Andrea, used to be an "early to bed, early to rise" type of person. Then she met and married a man with 3 kids from his first marriage, and then they had one of their own. Her bedtime went from 9 p.m. to approximately 1 or 2 a.m. in a matter of days once that baby came. She vowed that she would start going to bed earlier once he was older, but after her body had become accustomed to getting less sleep, she found it very difficult. I myself go to bed around 11 each night and rise at 5 a.m. for work. I have thought about going to bed earlier as well, to get a "better" nights sleep. You know what happens though? If I sleep much more OR much less than those 6 hours on any given night, I am exhausted for a huge portion of the next day. Guess our bodies know what they need and don't need sleep wise, and going to bed earlier or later doesn't really do anything but hinder the next days progress.
ReplyDeleteStill, good luck to you, I hope once Todd gets a little older that you are able to get yourself to a more routine sleeping pattern! :)
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ReplyDeleteYeah, I agree that our bodies know best. I've been finding that I've been able to make do with a little less sleep lately. You know what they say-- as you get older, you can subsist on less sleep. Before, I couldn't function with less than 8 hours of sleep, now I am just fine with 7. I think ultimately the most important thing for our bodies is the routine. Same hour to bed, same hour to rise every day does a body good :)