Before I had my son, I was a complete night owl. I would stay up till four or five in the morning, and the hours between midnight and when I went to sleep were my peak hours. Those hours were the ones that I worked the best, the ones where I was most aware, the ones that I got the most done.
When I had my son, I got sleep whenever I possibly could, just like any woman who has just had a baby. For the first two year, Jonathan could and would sleep anywhere at any time. Shortly after he hit two, he decided regular naps just weren’t for him. Every once in a while he would take a nap, but that didn’t happen often. Slowly, his schedule began to coincide with mine. I honestly don’t care when he sleeps, as long as he gets enough. The only problem with his schedule coinciding with mine was that from ten at night to six in the morning, he had to be quiet. He couldn’t go outside and play, so he didn’t wake up the neighbors. He couldn’t run around and be crazy in the house either, so he didn’t wake up anyone else.
That’s when I realized that his sleep schedule needed to be changed. Because I’m a single parent, and his sleep was coinciding with mine, that meant mine had to be changed as well. Had I known how difficult it would be to do this for either one of us, I would have changed mine slowly while I was pregnant with him, and kept it that way so I wouldn’t have to actually change it. It honestly took my at least 2 years to actually change the schedule. It was hard on both him and me. We did do it though, and I am proud of that.
Now, he has literally all day to go outside and play, all day to be loud, all day to turn up the music and dance all he wants. I have to say, as a whole, we both like this schedule much better than the old one. We are awake when most other people are awake. We are awake when he can go to the park and meet other kids. We are awake when every place is open, so we can do what we want, when we want to do it.
I do miss my old sleep schedule sometimes, because I liked being awake when everyone else was asleep. There are a lot of advantages to doing that. It was so quiet and peaceful during these hours. I could seriously get two to three times as much done, because I didn’t have anyone else in the way. The tranquility of it allowed me to think clearly. I still haven’t found any hours during the day where I could get as much done as I could during the middle of the night. I have decided that it is ok though, because due to my hours at work, I still have a lot of time to get a lot of things done. This is just one of the many changes that I went through when I became a single parent.
Read Everyone is on a Different Clock to find out how Kori handles living in a house where everyones sleep schedule is different