My time is not my own

One thing I would not have predicted missing quite so much after having a baby is being able to choose when I get up. I knew I would have to get up when the baby got up and so forth, but I think I had a naive idea in my head that babies slept 12 or 13 hours a night, and so if Malcolm went to bed at 7 PM, he would sleep until 7 or 8 AM and I could get up before him and have a little time to myself. Ha ha ha. Silly Hope.

Anyway, Malcolm currently sleeps about 10 hours a night, on a good night, which means he is getting up around 6 AM most days. (And this is, I might add, an enormous improvement over the summer, when he was getting up between 4:30 and 5 AM many days, even with a blackout curtain and extended cuddling). Since I rarely ever slept past 7 AM, even on weekends, and usually got up no later than 5:30 on weekdays, 6 AM is generally an OK time to get up. No, it isn't really sleeping in that I miss; it is being able to wake up on my own terms. Yes, I used to wake up with an alarm clock, but I controlled that alarm clock. I set the alarm myself before bed, and if, in the morning, I changed my mind and wanted to sleep in, I could turn it off. Or I could lie in bed and listen to the news for 5 minutes, or 15. (OK, now I am being a little selective in my memories, because in reality, I got up at least an hour before Benjamin most days, so I never actually let the radio just play. I usually hopped out of bed and either turned it off and got out of bed, or turned it off and went back to sleep. None of this lying there waking up slowly business). On weekends, I woke up when I woke up and got out of bed when I was good and ready.

Now, I wake up when Malcolm wakes up. I get up when he is ready to get up, be it 4 AM (as it was over Christmas when we were in Seattle, and two hours behind his internal clock), or 6:15, or 7. I never know when I will have to get up; I can't just hit snooze and go back to sleep. When he is ready to be up, he is ready, no stopping him. Someday, someday I will be able to get up when I want to. But by then I will probably be waking up at 4 AM myself.