Daylight Savings

If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you’ll know that I am totally preoccupied with sleep.

Last night was a typical Sunday night. At 11 I gave up, put myself to bed, with J-man crying in
his room. I pleaded with him to let me sleep and threatened to sleep downstairs in the spare
room, abandoning him to be alone on the second floor. Eventually he quieted down. At 4:30 it
was time for a quick pit-stop, then straight back to bed for fear of waking the monster. (Post-
baby, the bladder, for some reason, refuses to let me sleep through the night.) Surprisingly, I
think I fell back to sleep relatively easily.

At 5:30 a.m., I heard the dreaded screech, “MOMMA!” I waited to see if he was just talking in
his sleep. Then came another, some crying, and then even through the pink foam earplugs, I
heard him get up. He’s still in a crib, like a prison cell, because his parents fear they may never
sleep again once he’s freed. I tip toe into his room for a quick hug, I calm him, tuck him back in,
and he drifts back off to sleep. I crawl back to bed, change the alarm from 6:20 to 6:40 a.m. I am
exhausted and know there is no way for me to get back to sleep with any real effectiveness for
less than an hour.

I wake at 6:20 a.m., anyway but as is the normal course on a Monday morning after a disrupted
sleep, I’m still tired. I’m still lying on my back, knees slung over a pillow, when the alarm clicks
on. I leap out of bed and quiet it quickly for fear I will wake the monster. I slip into the shower,
dress in the dark, and creep out of the house in the dark and without breakfast because the
other monster fell asleep on the couch (I suspect he does this sometimes on purpose to avoid
waking the monster upstairs).

Today when I open the front door, however, there is something that brightens my day. As tired
as I am, I can’t help but be lifted. There is daylight. I have not seen daylight when I’ve opened
my door since before September, when I started my new job. Maybe that’s not quite true, but it
certainly seems that way.

Thank you, daylight savings, for a little ray of sunshine to start my day. It really is the small
things in life, isn’t it?

-Sleepwalking Mama