Girl, Get Some Sleep: How We Ended Our Kids’ 5 AM Wake-Up Calls

Are you sleeping at night? 😴 Like, really sleeping, for 7-9 hours? It feels like nothing else matters when you can’t get any sleep, and our kids, albeit adorable, are one of the biggest reasons we lose or lack sleep. I need 8 hours, every night. Like, that’s it -- a minimum of 8 hours, every night, to feel my best…and anything less than about 6, and shit gets realllll unfun, real fast. Wife, Mom and biz woman, u-n-h-i-n-g-e-d. Here are the two biggest game-changers in our house for making sure the kids sleep, so WE can sleep.

BABY STAGE
Two words, friends – SLEEP. TRAINING. I’m not a baby OR sleep training expert, so before you go all finger wagging, “that’s not my parenting style” on me, let me just say this: I could care less what your parenting style is, but if you sleep style is Not Doing It, then maybe consider some other options, eh?

My only regret with sleep training is that we didn’t have it for Baby #1! We invested in some sleep training education, and it was some of the best money we’ve ever spent. Full disclosure: it was ANYTHING but easy when we started. We def wanted to give up like 238479234 times in that first week or two, but we stuck it out, and I'm so thankful we did, because after getting through that initial phase, he slept through the night, went to sleep easily, and rarely woke in the night. 🙌 

BABY STAGE through LEARNING TO TELL TIME

You’re not going to believe this works, I didn’t either. But after training around this product, our kids —including the baby stage — don't make an effort to get out of bed before 7am. Enter: Hatch Baby light.

Here’s how it basically works: early morning, around the wee-hours when they might wake up and think it was time to get up, it turns red. When they open their peepers around, say, The Butt Crack of Dawn, they see the light is red and know it's not time to get up yet. At 7am, it turns green, which is their invitation to get up. Our oldest actually loves it, and is so excited to show us every morning that, “LOOK, Mom, my light turned green!”

There you have it! Basically, the equivalent of turning water to 🍷...maybe better.

Have any of you tried these?!