To be horrified I used to wake at this time every day?

The four levels of your house can’t be helping. Can you move? It would be much easier possibly. I remember the early starts with my toddlers and lying on the play rug. I’m already on the train these days!

You are very weird and stalker like. Are you always like this? So we had a difficult Christmas as I have sporty kids. My best friend died. They are seriously great teens but didn’t like cp?! And?

@Lostinmusic22 there is absolutely no resting on the sofa! I mean the fact you think that's what happens is probably the crux why you misunderstand why I'm so drained. He can't walk but he wants me to hold his hands whilst he goes up and down all of the stairs. I live in a four storey town house. Dear god. If I shut the lounge door he sits and screams. It's all he wants to do between 5-7am before everyone else gets up. Yes it's just a phase but my god it cannot pass fast enough.

I haven’t started a thread about teens. My teens don’t drink and are very sensible but they have a life and lovely friends and I’m very pleased that they do. Between them all it can be tiring. Tweens and young teens are not comparable as you haven’t reached the stage of parties yet.

The point is I do not know a single friend of mine that is ‘well rested’ with young or older/teen children. It’s an illusion.

Teenagers are a whole new ballgame if they are healthy and well rounded. At least you know your child is safe in their cot at a younger age and can rest on the sofa at 5am! Honestly I look back and realise an early night was all that was needed to manage a decent nights sleep - be awake multiple times a night at nearly 50 is totally different. Some of my friend are broken women tbh. My dc are at least considerate and are not into drinking etc.A simple early start sounds blissful.

What if someone started screaming in your face at 2am and you had to get up though. No choice, no yoga, no peace. Just cold hard chaos. Because that's what 5am feels like to me with a one year old!

@Lostinmusic22 I'm sorry your life is stressful now. That must be hard for you, especially with the menopause symptoms.
But I think you're looking back at the kids being young with rose tinted glasses. I have one 3 year old son who sleeps 12 hours a night no issue. He gets up at 7:30am, and some mornings before my second son was born, I'd almost be late for work because we hadn't had enough time in the mornings. My second son (who is one) does not have the same sleep pattern at all. It is crushingly exhausting.
Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honour. We need sleep to stay physically well and mentally sane. To promote the idea that we should just get on with it is damaging.
Once my son is old enough to play by himself for an hour or two in the mornings, that is what he will be doing, because I cannot and will not go on like this!
Perhaps you'd have more sympathy if you were better rested...? What do I know

I love it, I get to read or do yoga and drink all the tea in peace! It's the only time I am by myself. I get up early on work days anyway so I'm just used to it. I do fall asleep at about 9.30pm though

If you include the pregnancies and the first 3-4 years of each child, and then you hit the peri menopause stage by which time your children are growing into teens and start going out - yes it is decades I am sorry to say. There may have been a very small patch in the middle where everyone slept, but it was so short I don’t remember it.

Now I am menopausal with teenagers that thankfully have a social life, I actually look back wistfully when they were small and I actually knew they were safe and could solve my sleep problems by simply having an early night! They now look to me like the golden days op. Last night one was out at a party and needed collecting at midnight. The other is back at uni and I was checking they were home at 2am. At 3am I was wide awake with the menopause. I have tried HRT it made no difference apart from hair loss.
At 5am sh gets up for work. At 6am I get up for work. Yes it is hard going, but you get used to being tired.

Think this is me in Peri as I just can't lie in

This. Except I start my day anytime from 3.45am onwards. It makes for a very long day!

Well if your toddlers/babies are wide awake and no amount of anything will tell them it’s not morning what can you actually do? Listen to them cry for hours?

For me it’s easier to go for a 5am cuppa than start my day stressed to death.

I work shifts so wake up at around 2.15am, I struggle so much because I don't nap when I come home, I have young kids to look after. It's always a near 20hr day, and then the same the following day. This shift pattern works for family life so I don't see myself changing it any time soon 😭

Some of us get up for work at 5am and get home at 7 or 8pm and then make dinner for the DC. Notwithstanding the peri which gets me up at similar times on weekends. My reflux babies never slept properly for years. I barely recollect their first 3 years through exhaustion let alone the first 18 months!

Me too. Wide awake from 3.00am this morning and still on holiday too so could have slept later! Alarm usually goes off at 5.30am anyway. On the bright side, early mornings no longer phase you post children and menopause!

Poor you OP - glad your second DC is easier....

I was so lucky my DTs slept through after a couple of months, and never woke me before the 8 am feed.....😀! Even as toddlers and pre schoolers they always slept well and never went for silly early starts. Obviously illness etc - but I was so grateful.....

Not trying to be smug - but I am so awful without sleep, and am a natural night owl so with regular 5am starts I would have been a zombie! (I remember the 4 hourly feeds from birth - better than lots get I know but I wasn't really sure what planet I was on for the first 6 weeks or so. It's so hard to function on poor sleep .....)

Had lots of other challenges along the way - additional needs etc - so I didn't have it easy. But the one thing I was so grateful for was sleep.

Enjoy your LOs. Mine are late teens now - where did the time go...??

It doesn't seem fair does it... pregnancy = needing a wee every few hours through the night, plus my dc were all early risers and bad sleepers, so I went for at least 8 years without being woken at least once, and my dc waking at 6am. Then when they got older I finally got some sleep. After a few years (I had dc later in life), menopause hit! I now wake up at 3am EVERY SINGLE DAY! Not to mention needing the loo, general insomnia and waking up due to hot sweats, anxiety etc. As a teen and in my 20s I'd consider it a bad nights sleep if I woke once in the night, now I'd be glad to wake only once.

Gosh when my twins were 18 months they were 5.30am wakers. You’ve made it all come screaming back! Dealing with 2 toddlers at that time was the worst. I’ve never been a natural early waker and can’t function until midday. Now they wake at 7.30 it’s bliss in comparison!

Wut?? I lived in Europe when dc were small. They started school at 7am so waking up early was the absolute norm!

@iusedto

To be fair, I did have a short period with my first born of this. My mum came to visit and basically told me to stop and it couldn't carry on, as I was expecting number 2.
We just consistently put them to bed later for about 2 weeks and they started waking up between 7- 9:30 depending on how busy we'd been in the day. We live in Europe and no kids wake up at the crack of dawn... it's an English parent thing!
But I'm glad you don't have this problem with your second child