Getting out of bed in the morning

[Laytheblanketontheground]

I am a single parent with two adult working children. We all share the house hold jobs pretty equally. We get up at 6 in the morning weekdays for work. Im a social worker working with families with complex needs. Two days a week im out of the house 13 hours, two I finish at 3 and on Friday I finish at noon. the run to work is about an hour each way for roughly 11 miles (city traffic). I cant think of any job where id be happier, I enjoy it, I put a lot in to it and I get good feed back from clients and bosses. on work mornings I feel too tired to get out of bed and think im not going to be able to do it. at this point I always think I should give in my notice and live on the dole it would be better. its not that im anxious about work, its just I feel so tired I dont think I can get out of bed. I always do get out of bed, have breakfast and cuppa and watch the news. im never late or in a rush. once im out of the house, in the car and then at work im happy and fine. more and more recently though, I feel knackered when I wake up and wonder how I actually get up and ready and out. at weekends I wake up at the same time and have no bother getting up, I dont lie in. If I go to sleep too early I wake up at ridiculous o clock. I dont have alcohol or smoke or eat heavy meals at bed time. its just this thing of hating getting up on work mornings. does anyone have any tips, ideas or advice as to how getting out of bed early in the mornings for work can be made easier?

I do not function without my lumie alarm clock in winter. In summer I’m fine with alarm clocks But in winter I massively struggle.
I wake up naturally and I have the heating set to come on 30 minutes before I wake up so the house is nice and toasty.
As soon as I’m awake I leap out of bed. Straight in the shower. By the time I’ve had a shower and coffee I’m ready to face the day.

I set my alarm 5 minutes early with 2 snooze hits. I get up at the time in meant to but the fact I hit snooze twice makes me feel like I've won a bit of extra. Also I'm not a jump out of bed type, so gives me an adjustment period I think!

I think it is pretty normal - and you are managing very well. My tips are:

1. start taking vitamin D
2. Listen to a really riviting audible book in the car (if you want recommendations I say start with Stephen King's greatest works or Denise Mina's Conviction recently had me rivited). Then you will look forward to getting in your car.

1. Also have the coffee ready to go, your warm dressing gown there and the house warm so when you do get up it is nice and you have a nice cup of coffee to look forward to and maybe a listen of the radio.

We have the lumie clock and it has helped dh a lot.

I'm exactly the same! I only work flipping part time but sleep so badly the night before work, and sometimes contemplate calling in sick in the morning. This is despite me loving my job. Like yours it's demanding but exhilarating.

What helps for me is getting a mega early night the night before, as I wake up naturally. Also having a bit of a ritual on the last day before the weekend. So Thursday night is long bath with all my beauty routine with a glass of wine, an easy meal or takeaway beforehand and an episode of something I've been saving. That little bit of bliss and self care really keeps me going and helps me destress after work and put work stress 'to bed'.

If I wake up too early then I make a coffee and go back to bed with it.

Can you not get your son to bring a steaming mug of something up and leave it outside the door?? That would get me out of bed.

I understand you OP. You do a stellar job BTW.

I used to work in an office 8am to 4pm five days a week. I could not cope with getting up at 06.45am for the short walk and tube journey to my office. Permanently exhausted. No kids either. I note your kids are adults. I got home at 16.45 and would have to lie down for an hour! When I got made redundant I got a night shift job. Just been laid off but the hours were bliss. Manual role but I made 30K a year.

Start work 21.45
Finish 05.45am
Walk home (30 minutes) Arrive home 06.15.
Shower and do the cleaning. Prep dinner. Settle down with a glass of wine in front of Netflix. Go to bed around 9am. Phone off. Two duvets over my head to block out noise.

Wake up between 16:00 and 17:00. No alarm set. I wake up naturally.

Breakfast.

Go shopping or the library or the gym.

Cook and have my main meal around 20:45. Set off back to work at 21:15.

Absolute bliss. I slept like a log in the day. Is there an emergency overnight social worker team you could join?

I'm not sure of your age but I noticed similar sleep problems when I became perimenopausal. Got so bad I woke up each day feeling drugged, having woken numerous times in the night. In the end I went on HRT before I lost my marbles/job.

I worked night shift for years and remember how awful it was setting off at night to go in to work so this is preferable to that, I accept im better off than shift workers. thanks all for making the effort to respond

Are you drinking tea in the evenings? Cut that out...it might be what's making you a bit anxious. It does sound like you're anxious because you say that when you don't have to wake up for work, you sleep fine.

I know what you mean I'm not a morning person at all.

Are you getting enough iron? If not, maybe consider taking a supplement as low iron levels can definitely increase lethargy. I was also advised to take a vitamin D supplement in the winter months. Perhaps that might help too?

When I had my DC my blood tests showed I had low cortisol levels (which is the get up and get going hormone). I had to have steroids at the time to correct it, but Docs haven't prescribed anything long term. Just thought I'd mention it as I think it is genuinely/physiologically more difficult for some people to get up in the morning.

Also, is your phone on night mode in the evenings? Blue light from phones/screens can interfere with sleep patterns I think, so maybe check your phone settings (or turn off completely a certain amount of time before bed)

Lumies are brilliant. Along with never having to fumble for work clothes, shoes, keys, lunch, phone, headphones, etc, as I organise it all the night before, the other thing that has helped me is having a bloody easy trip into work - one bus, five minutes from my front door that drops me off one stop after the one for work - where I sit and spent ten mins getting my head together away from people before walking back and nipping in through the back gate.

Once the weather improves, I'll get off another stop along and walk back (downhill) alongside some woodland. The exercise won't hurt.

The main problem I have is waking up in pain. But the pain's still there if I stay in bed, so I might as well get up and get moving, as it usually eases off once I've been up and fully dressed for a while.

I start work stupid early, though, so my 16 minute bus trip is reduced from the 45 it takes people leaving just forty minutes later and my home trip has been known to only take 12 minutes, as I leave after school run and before rush hour. The fact I'm actually travelling in the opposite direction to 99% of other people also helps significantly here, as the maximum traffic faced is usually no more than 3 vehicles at a set of notoriously slow traffic lights.

I get up a bit later, 6.30, but god, I hate it. For me the trick is to get up the second my alarm goes, no snoozing - like pulling off a plaster. I put the kettle on immediately, then go for a wee and start the shower to run, make tea for me and DP (who gets up slightly later) then straight in the shower. Once I’ve had the shower, I generally feel okay.

I use a Fitbit as well as my phone as an alarm - the Fitbit vibrates jut slightly before the alarm, which means the alarm isn’t quite such a horror.

Our cat tends to come in to our bed just before we wake up. She is a total pest, and DP insists he will start locking her in the kitchen at nights - but it’s hard to be fully grumpy with her booping me in the face, and patting my head, purring madly. (I know she just wants fed.)

I really struggle with mornings. The one thing that helps is I take it in turns with Ds1 (depending on schedules) to bring the other a hot drink in bed. I can wake up a lot easier to a person than an alarm clock. I do think I’m a natural night owl though, as I’m terrible at getting to sleep, as well as at waking up, complicated by a chronic fatigue condition on top.

My Amazon Echo Show does the wake up to light alarm thing. Probably a bit cheaper than the proper one.

I'm terrible in the mornings. Hate getting up. Being cold doesn't help. It's hard to get out from under a warm duvet into a cold house.

Yeah I think you have several factors going on here:

If you lean towards the anxious (due to perimenopause or just generally?) then I think anxiety about having to wake up early is part and parcel of that. I've known a lot of worriers who fret and struggle to settle if they are due to get up early the next day. This then has a knock-on effect on their rest which means they don't sleep as deeply and then wake feeling like death the next day, struggling to get up.

Winter in the UK is shit. It really is. It will hopefully get better in summer.

I'd ditto the Vit D but also consider your iron levels as feeling lethargic can sometimes be low iron. Look at your diet and consider a supplement like Spatone. I think it might be a combination of everything above TBH.
I hope it gets easier soon OP.

This is really interesting and some great tips. I have ALWAYS been dreadful at getting up in the morning. Envy people who just get up when alarm goes (like my DH). I snooze alarm at least twice, feel drugged, have to get up gradually and slowly or head feels mashed. In my 50s now but been like this since a teenager. Perhaps I shall get a Lumie!

PLEASE go and get a thyroid level, B 12, iron and ferritin test. If they all come back as almost normal (there is always a range, you want to be close to the normal end of the range) and dont accept the doctors telling you “its normal” ask for the actual values and google them. Then think about alarm clocks and caffeine etc.

I've hated getting up since I was a kid. I am a total night owl and left to my own devices, I would probably sleep from 2am til 11am.
I've never found an answer to it yet 😔

I hear you! I do as others have said and look out clothes etc the night before so my mornings are as stress free as possible. I try and have yummy breakfasts to entice me from my bed.

MissGuernsey I think I could happy work those hours.

Or something in between like midday until 8 or 9 pm

Could you wear earplugs so your son doesn't wake you at 6? I'd be gutted to miss an extra hour of sleep because of that. It would be the difference between feeling exhausted or being refreshed.

@Sea. I did have thyroid levels done and was told normal but didn't ask for the levels, I did have thyroid scan which showed thyroid nodules but was told thats normal..thanks for that, will be a bit more pushy and get levels done again as it was a good while ago

@Rhubarb...how did you guess? last period was 13 months ago now. haven't really had many symptoms other than feeling anxious and knackered but I can see now it has certainly affected my sleep

really great tips thankyou, will keep coming back to this to see if any more have been added, better than any advice from websites and more comprehensive than anything from a professional

Nobody likes getting out of bed in the mornings, OP. Its completely normal and you are being a bit ridiculous acting like something is wrong. Can't believe you would consider wasting tax payers money by quitting the job, going on the dole just so you can get a lie in