I Haven’t Had a Good Night’s Sleep Since 2003

We bought our Little Mister a kid-friendly “smart” watch for his birthday, in an effort to help him become more aware of time (and the passage of time, and how 30 minutes on an iPad feels different than 30 minutes of folding laundry), and his daily activity level.

Last night, he asked to wear his watch to bed so he could “track his sleep”. When he emerged from his shower this morning, he popped his watch on the charger.

“So….” I said, eyeing him expectantly, “how did you sleep?”

He deftly hit a few buttons. “Eight hours and forty four minutes!”

Almost nine hours! Oh, to be a kid again. The last time I slept for that long was…probably never? But we have been training Little Mister to be a champion sleeper and apparently it has paid off.

Way back when, as I was gently placing Little Mister into his crib on the last night of my maternity leave, I whispered into his ear, “You need to sleep through the entire night”, then I kissed his head and backed out of his room.

Guess what? He slept through the night from that day forward. I believe it was because I willed it to be true, because I could not even begin to think about waking up for work every day after having been up multiple times during the night.

Up until that point, Little Mister had already been a great sleeper. In his early days, newly home from the hospital, he would sleep in 5 hours stretches of time (which, ironically, sometimes now passes as a full night’s sleep for me).

It’s no wonder that he sometimes clocks 9, 10 or 12 hours of sleep (I have had to wake him up on more than one occasion on a weekend as the clock neared 11am!)

I was never a late sleeper, and Lord knows I’m a morning person and not a night owl. As a child, I would wake up on Saturday mornings WAY before the morning cartoons started, quietly playing in my room until my parents woke up. In high school, I never needed an alarm to wake up for school. In college, well, let’s just I would lie awake on my bottom bunk waiting to hear someone in our house stirring so I could pounce on them to start the day.

I know how important sleep is for my body. Because I can’t sleep late, I try and go to sleep earlier on the front end to get some quality hours in before midnight. Almost every morning, my eyes open close to 5am. (It was 4am a few weeks back when we changed the clocks because apparently I have the sleep patterns of a toddler). Every morning Mr. KK wakes up to see my face lit up by my phone or Kindle, eagerly waiting for someone to talk to.

At this point I’m so used to being away so early. I do some of my best online shopping before the sun comes up.

Since I wasn’t a late sleeprer, I needed to ensure that I was getting quality sleep over quantity. Mr. KK and I were waking up sore every morning. I was crooked when I first would stand up, hobbling to the bathroom until I could stand up straight. We knew it was our mattress.

So a few years ago, Mr. KK and I bought a Sleep Number bed. And it changed our lives. I can control the firmness of my side of the bed with my phone, AND it tracks my sleep for me. Now I wake up (pain free, I might add) and I can see how restless I was, when I was in deep sleep, and when I got out of bed. And while I’m not sleeping any later, I am sleeping better. We have a friendly competition going of who got the better sleep score the night before. We are both tied for best score ever of 95; but for me that was only after traveling 11 straight days for work, sleeping like shit in hotel rooms, and coming home while Mr. KK was traveling and having the bed all to myself (plus 2 dogs). That night I got quality AND quantity.

I am so incredibly jealous of how well my child sleeps. Not only can he sleep late, he can stay up late! On Friday nights we’ll all be on the couch watching TV and before I know it, I’m waking up and it’s 11:34pm and Little Mister is sitting there wide eyed, holding the remote, watching a show.

And now that he is older, he wants to go to bed later. Which is the opposite of me, who wants to go to bed the minute the dinner dishes are in the dishwasher. Especially because I have no problem falling asleep within 3 minutes of climbing into bed. There are nights where Mr. KK and I can’t wait to go to sleep, and we’re ready to hop in bed the minute Little Mister turns out his lights. Those are the nights that LM loses his mind, yelling, “I DON’T WANT TO GO TO BED AT THE SAME TIME!”

To which I reply, “So go to bed earlier.”

When I heard Little Mister slept for almost nine hours, I’m not ashamed to admit that I was a little jealous. What does it feel like to sleep that long? Do you wake up feeling rested? Does your back hurt because you’ve been lying down for so long? I have so many questions.

I average about 6 hours of “good” sleep a night. The other hour I’m in bed is me tossing and turning, trying to get comfortable around the two dogs who are bed hogs, and thinking. Making my mental lists of what appointments need to be made, what we need at the store, what time the holiday concert is, whether or not I need to adjust Little Mister’s dismissal plan. Not to mention what’s for dinner, what’s going into lunches and when was the last time that the little dog Lucy pooped.

All this to say: I’m incredibly jealous of Little Mister’s carefree life that enables him to sleep late. And that it’s barely 9pm right now and I can’t keep my eyes open!

Here’s to the tired Mamas out there. I see you.