Getting up early

Yesterday I started my quest to get up early. Early being defined as an hour before baby wakes up. Yesterday that was 6.30 am and baby woke up at 8 am. It was blissful and I made the good intention of doing again today. Unfortunately there was a night of bad sleep ahead of me, but I still dragged myself out of bed at 7 am. Of course that is not really early.
I know people whose normal morning time is 5 am, and when I was just married, I got up with my husband at 6.30 am every morning. He went to the gym, and I made a nice, hot breakfast. Pregnancy took a lot of energy out of me however, and after Joseph was born he kept getting up four to six times a night for the first 8 months. I moved through the days like a zombie and it has taken this long to recover.

Sleep now being valued as the priceless treasure that it is, deciding to give some of it up for the greater good of the household is hard, very hard. When Joseph finally slept through the night (meaning until 5 am at that time) I just slept as long as I could and whenever I could, everything aside from going to bed earlier, because after my cutie was off to bed, I could finally have that ever elusive time to just sit. Between 9 pm and midnight, I had to do part of my work and all of my reading, talking with my husband, playing on the internet, creating and TV watching. We went to bed at 11 pm and then I tried to force myself to put out the light at midnight, not easy when there is so much reading to catch up on....

I have known for a while that I needed to get back into a more normal rhythm but the courage came through a little booklet which is called "shopping for time, how to do it all and not be overwhelmed" It's a nice little book by Christian authors on why it is important to use your time wisely and as a precious resource. It's short, does not really offer much new advice, but something in the tone struck me. Perhaps I like the fact that I admitted that they just didn't like getting up early but did it anyway. Or the fact that they say that they hated the "5 am club" the first hour of the day and were grateful to it throughout the rest. That sounded familiar. When I grew up there was a little sign on the wall saying: "If you lose fifteen minutes in the morning, you will be looking for it all day."

I started my day early yesterday and everything felt much better. I got so much more done, and I did manage to get to the evening without falling asleep. Hopefully with a bit more discipline and especially some consistency, this will become routine and I will have some precious time in the morning, like I had yesterday and today, to pray before I start the day. After all, to use another quote: "A day hemmed in prayer is less likely to unravel."