When a full night of sleep is rare…

We all lose sleep. As college students, a good night of sleep is rare because you’re choosing to party. For most of us, a full night of sleep isn’t rare because we make the right choices day to day. We go to bed early or we try to sleep in. We change our schedule to make sure we get our full eight hours of sleep. If deep sleep is rare at this point in life it’s all about the choices we decided to make. It’s on us. We can’t blame anyone else. Sure, there can be extenuating circumstances that may cause a situation where a good night of sleep is rare, but for the most part, it’s on us.

As I write these words, more than four hours of sleep is rare. Yes, it’s because of the choices we made. More specifically the choice we made was to have another child. This is one of the best choices we’ve ever made. However, what do you do when you’ve been up twice in the middle of the night to feed your newborn? One of the answers is a take a cold shower in the morning but I’ve already written about how great that is. That’s not for everyone. Friends, family, clients all ask me, how do you get by when a good night of sleep is so rare?

What’s the answer? Sorry, there is no simple answer. You just figure it out as a parent. You know that this little human being is a gift from above and every exhausting minute is completely worth it.  I know you wanted something more tangible than that but the truth is we just figure it out. Sometimes even all the coffee in the world doesn’t help because you’re so tired. The crazy thing is once you hold those little nuggets or get a hug from your son when you first get home, the exhaustion doesn’t matter. That elusive and rare eight hours of sleep that you wish you were getting doesn’t matter. The only thing in the world that matters is that hug. The love from your children really does wash away all the pain and frustration from your day. Parents get it.