Aligning Sleep Schedules

One difficult thing about having three kids is aligning everyone’s sleep schedules. The newborn is obviously unpredictable. My 3 year old son is a morning person and loves waking up around 7 AM every day. My 5 year old daughter is like me. She loves to sleep in late and wakes up at around 8:30 to 9:30 AM every day. This obviously jumbles around the morning routine that was worried about.

I don’t necessarily think that juggling three sleep schedules is that big of a deal but my 3 year old son loves to run around really loud and wake up everyone in the house. He is a bundle of energy and needs to unleash it as loudly as possible the second his eyes open and doesn’t stop until his eyes are closed. This morning, he woke up and started running around the house waking everyone up around the house. Luckily, my wife had a decent enough sleep (if you count 2 hours as decent sleep with choppy sleep afterwards) and took the bundle of energy in her room to try and let everyone else sleep.

Once I wake up, I now have trouble falling asleep again. Call it sleep anxiety. Call it high cortisol levels. Whatever it is, I’m groggy and tired, and eventually dragged myself out of bed to help out. We at least had a decent enough morning until my 5 year old daughter woke up and the fussing started. That was a sign to get everyone fed and out of the house to daycare early.

As a microcosm, this wouldn’t be a big deal. Unfortunately, this is an every other day thing and we will need to continue juggling sleep schedules with the morning routines to get things in a more manageable space. My wife did say she will run the morning routine when I return back to work, so that’s a weight lifted off of me. I will just be with the baby for 30 to 60 minutes in the morning while trying to work until she returns. Not the worst way to spend the morning!