Alarm

I’m a schedule person. I shop on a certain day of the week. I make a menu. I rise at the same time each day. We eat dinner at the table at five in the evening every night. If Justin is more than twenty minutes late getting home from work, I call to see when he’ll be home, so I know how to plan the time until he gets here.

That of course all gets tossed when there is a new baby. You’re up whenever they decide. You feed them if their hungry, even if they just ate an hour ago, because they are going through a growth spurt. You dance your way through the night just so the rest of the household can sleep.

Gabby didn’t sleep through the night until she was eight months old, but now she never requires any one at night, unlike her big sister who will nearly run you ragged some nights. But one flaw with Gabby’s sleep is that she started getting up earlier and earlier. This made getting myself ready before she rose difficult. I never knew when she would wake. Six o’clock? Seven forty-five? Somewhere between? I never knew.

I started setting a time and I wouldn’t go get her before that, but I felt that she couldn’t possibly know that it was a set time. It must have felt random. Some days she’d been awake for thirty minutes and others I came at the first wimper.

We had this trouble with Kate about 18 months ago and a friend suggested an alarm clock. I though it was crazy, but nothing else worked and she was getting up at 5:15! I started with the alarm set at a couple minutes before she woke up, moving it by five minutes or so a day until now Kate gets up at 7:45! Lovely. Plenty of time for me to start my day.

Gabby is younger and doesn’t get it as well as Kate did, but she’s started to figure it out. While she may cry when she wakes, she usually settles back down because she’s learning no matter how loud she yells I’m not going to get her until the alarm goes “beep-beep,” as she says. Now she doesn’t yell at all most days and when she does its short lived. Now she’s even sleeping later. I also let her get up earlier, but it gives me long enough to get a shower and be dressed before I’m responsible for another person.