There are quite a few blog posts I’d like to take the time to write and reflect on since becoming a mom nearly four years ago, but today I’m sharing a new habit that’s helping me create more margin for myself as a mom of three boys three and under: waking up before my kids.
One of the things I’ve found most challenging in both the transitions from 1-2 and 2-3 children has been the loss of alone time, something I had in spades being self-employed before starting a family and then maintained some of when we had one baby and I was alone during his naptime. By the time we welcomed our second baby, my husband was also working from home, my parents had moved in with us, we had two of my siblings living with us during the pandemic, and we had a newborn and an 18.5-month-old whose inconsistent naptimes rarely overlapped (I think it’s fair to say we all recall this time as having lots of silver linings + lots of complete chaos). By the time we welcomed our third baby, my siblings had moved back to the city and we’d gradually increased our nanny’s hours during the work day, but breastfeeding our third has meant the alone time I do have has been pretty fragmented and divvied up among work tasks, household projects, and the seemingly endless appointments, paperwork, and scheduling that every mom of young kids knows all too well.
I increasingly started to feel like every moment of the day was allocated to something, and even when that something was something I wanted to do, I felt resentful of how little margin there was to just sit in peace and quiet and hear myself think. I’ve found it nearly impossible in these four years since becoming a mom to write the kinds of heartfelt blog posts that I think my readers relate to most, essays like this and this that involved hours of reflecting before I wrote a single word. I’d lost touch with some of the things that made me feel like me, and honestly I didn’t really even know what to do for myself in the moments where I did have free time. Motherhood reminds you there is always something else you “should” or at least could be doing, and the pressure for alone time to be productive or lucrative or life-giving usually meant it was actually none of the above, even on the occasions it did happen.
I think in many ways my third pregnancy and third delivery showed me that something had to give. I never shared Tucker’s birth story in full (because with two toddlers and a newborn, when was I finding the time to process and get all that out?), but I arrived at the hospital with iron levels 1/3 of what they should have been, received two units of blood before giving birth, and still passed out briefly after delivery because my body was just… depleted. I felt like I had nothing in the tank and nothing left to give to others, let alone myself. I knew deep down I needed to start taking better care of myself in order to be the kind of mom I wanted to be — and in order to stop feeling like a very worn down shell of my former self.
It wasn’t the one-time wake-up call it probably should have been. I’ve struggled with consistency in taking vitamins and following through on doctor’s appointments and blood tests for myself. I still struggle with treating meals as a way to actively fuel and nourish my body vs. a box I have to check once I’m already hangry. I’d like to learn to see exercise as a thing I get to do vs. something I feel I probably ought to do. But in the past month or so, I’ve finally made some strides that I’ve been talking about making for a long time, and maybe sharing them will help one or two of you carve out a little more time for yourself too.
The first change I made was to start wearing an Apple watch to understand how much sleep I was getting and how active (if I’m with our kids) or inactive (if I’m sitting at my desk) I was during the day. I don’t live and die by closing the rings every day, but it’s given me helpful data to drive decisions around what time I’d like to wake up (which dictates what time I’d like to be in bed) and gives me reminders to get up and move if I’ve been sedentary for too long. There are days I close every ring by 4 p.m., days where I’m jogging around the kitchen to close them at 9 p.m., and days where I know it’s just not happening and I can try again tomorrow. But I like knowing that my body really wants around 7 hours and 30-45 minutes of sleep every night, which leads me to the second and probably most impactful change I’ve made: waking up before my kids.
On August 1, I started setting an alarm for 5:45 a.m., and for what it’s worth, I’ve found I much prefer being woken up to the gentle vibration of the Apple watch vs. a blaring iPhone alarm that’s more likely to awaken the very children I’m trying to wake up before. If I want to wake up at this time, I know I personally need to be in bed no later than 9:45 p.m., and ideally closer to 9:15 to give myself some cushion if I have a harder time falling asleep one night. An early bedtime doesn’t make for a thrilling social life, but frankly neither does having three kids three and under, so this hasn’t been a huge sacrifice at this stage in our lives. 😉 There are many days I begrudgingly drag myself out of bed in unpleasant shock that 5:45 has come so soon, but it’s gotten gradually less miserable and more rewarding as the weeks have gone by and I’ve somehow stuck with it.
I think the thing that keeps me waking up early is the third change I’ve made: creating a morning routine that I look forward to and that lets me feel in control of my day vs. immediately responsive to the needs of others. Every parent knows the frustration of waking up to a screaming baby or toddler, and my early mornings wouldn’t be any less stressful if I spent them immediately launching into responding to emails or Instagram messages. Instead I’ve allocated this alone time (which can be as little as 10 minutes or as much as an hour, depending on what time our kids wake up on any given day) to developing habits that fill my cup so I actually have a little something to pour into others. For me, that’s meant I brush my teeth, tiptoe downstairs and jot a few lines in a gratitude journal, spend a couple minutes stretching on a blanket on the floor, lift light weights for no more than 10 minutes from a TikTok video I’ve saved to my camera roll (so I don’t start absent-mindedly scrolling), and then read a book on the couch until I can hear our first child waking up. For someone else, this time could be spent meditating, going out for a run, making and enjoying a cup of coffee while it’s still hot — whatever would feel most restorative or revitalizing for you. After any combination or shortened version of the above habits, I feel infinitely more eager to see our kids, sit and eat breakfast with them, and help get their day started.
For years I heard people say the secret to happiness as a parent was waking up before your kids — and, ugh, don’t you hate when “they” are totally right? I don’t think it’s overstating it to say it’s been life-changing in the five or so weeks since I started. Checking in with myself in the morning, getting in some gentle movement, letting myself read something other than a picture book — doing those things for myself first thing has made it so much more possible to show up as the mom I want to be when I first hear the baby cry or one of our toddlers yell, “Mommy! Daddy!” from upstairs.
And look, I don’t know how long this habit will last for me. I know it’s not something I could have pulled off before our children were reliably sleeping through the night most nights, and it’s not something I see myself being able to continue during (hopefully!) a fourth pregnancy someday. So maybe it’s a habit I’ll dip in and out of depending on how much alone time I have for myself in the rest of the day, and I’m sure how I spend that alone time will vary greatly depending on the demands of a given chapter. But giving it a try and sticking with it for this long has been confidence-boosting and life-giving in a way I didn’t totally realize I needed, and it makes me wonder if there might be any other slightly-painful-at-first-but-ultimately-for-the-best changes I might be able to make, even in the universally demanding chapter of motherhood with young kids. I don’t know that I have anything truly tangible to show for the change — it’s not like I’ve used this newfound alone time to write a novel or go viral on TikTok or start restoring all the Facebook Marketplace finds gathering dust in our garage — but I feel a little more in touch with the person I was before I had children and a little more in touch with the version of myself I want to be now that I do — and, well, that feels worth setting an alarm for.
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