Thus far, Q4 is . . . unsustainable.
To be fair, I am coming off of vacation and a call week. I know from experience that even one of these things tends to lead to a) a backlog of work/life tasks and b) fatigue, but I just had both along with the school start. (You all know this because I fretted about it a lot, and you know what? I was right. It was really, really hard.)
And, also, I am . . . .concerned. I am not a high sleep needs person. 7ish hours most nights is fine. But other than one blissful Sunday where I did not get paged and slept ~9 hours (amazing!) I have not gotten even 7 since school started. Last night I got 6. I CANNOT function well on 6 hours of sleep. It would be awesome if I could, but no. My brain just doesn’t work well even with extra caffeine. This morning I had the worst run and I am doing dumb things, like I gave a lecture to the EM residents and then left my bag in the room and had to go get it. Writing patient notes feels 3x/as hard. I remember feeling like this — it’s the sleep deprivation feeling that comes with nursing an infant that is up all night, staying up to pump, and getting up early.
But I don’t see any infants around. My body is NOT primed for this and I. AM. TOO. TIRED.
What happened, aside from call and jet lagged children?
a) School drive now has to start ~20 min earlier
b) Kids’ activities are SO MUCH later (really ~2+ hours later than we were used to most nights)
Put those two things together, add an early morning running habit, and you have a recipe for disaster.
I am trying to do damage control. I absolutely cannot live like this. I think there are 3 things I need to adjust:
1- I need to NOT get up so early to run every weekday. This can be changed without reducing running volume by running later (even on treadmill if it gets too hot) on my non-clinical days and maybe moving a weekday run to Sunday. I generally take Sunday off and it feels great to take a rest day after a long run, but maybe a super easy run would be nice. (I could also change to 5x/week but I would rather not do that until after this December marathon!)
2- Josh and I need to divide and conquer the mornings. I need some mornings – maybe even just 1 per week – where I do not need to be home from my run at 6:30 to help the kids get ready and then drive them. It is unclear when that could work, but we will see if there’s a day that works.
3- I need to just go to bed some nights. As the kids get older they need / want me more in the later hours, whether it’s homework help or other things. But taking maybe 2 nights out of 7 to just go to bed early probably would not be a problem. I should have done this last night, and I didn’t.
I keep wanting to fill out my ideal week but I haven’t been able to and perhaps I’m avoiding because I know the pieces really don’t fit right now.
On the plus side, I guess I never realized how RESTED I normally feel!!! I will try not to take that for granted.
38 Comments
Yeah, I was worried about this for you. Your kids’ rhythms are only going to shift later from here on out. I’m sure you will figure it out.
On a similar note, we got a puppy a month ago and he still hasn’t slept through the night. I feel like a zombie! And I’m trying to train for a strenuous Inca Trail hike that starts in 2 weeks. We had wanted to get a dog later this year, or early next year, but the opportunity to get the perfect dog fell in our laps in July, so I felt like we should jump on it. I’m sure everything will be fine – but I won’t look back on these last few weeks with fondness, that’s for sure!
I’ve always been curious as to the why behind these late activities for fairly young children. Is it so that parents have time to get them there after work? Or are the earlier time slots taken up by other practices/teams?
I was up pretty much every 2 hours nursing a baby last night, so I feel the exhaustion in my bones right now too. But, I know (hope) it won’t last forever…
Hi Sarah, I hope you get some rest soon. Feeling tired is the worst. I was in a similar situation a couple of weeks ago – vacation (where I did not sleep well and our schedules were chaotic) – returning to the two busiest weeks of the year at work – school starting – I was exhausted! It took a full 2 weeks to recover and a weekend with not much going on. I also like to remember that when things are new (schedules, routines), they take more time and effort – which is also exhausting!
This is a challenging problem to solve as the kid’s activities are just sooo late which I can’t really understand since your kids are still quite young! The design behind the idea schedule seemed so flawed but hopefully you can figure out a schedule that works. I would definitely go to bed early when you can. You get a lot of other time with your kids, especially since you solo parent often on the weekends when Josh is on call. That overtired feeling is so awful and can really start to impact us cognitively. You get kind of conditioned for it when you have babies but then you sort of lose that tolerance for bad sleep. And then you have some bad nights of sleep and wonder how you possibly survived when you had a newborn.
I would probably rip the bandaid off and see what your ideal week looks like. And after this marathon is behind you, you could maybe step back the mileage so you don’t need to be up quite so early! Or plan your marathon training cycles so they don’t coincide with these late night activities (unless they are for the whole school year?? But hopefully not!).
Those measures youve planned sound good. Having a couple of days a week when you go to bed earlier, and a couple when you don’t run first thing sound like they’ll do the trick. Given G is young, perhaps there might also be an alternative class she could do? Or is it only A and C who have the late activities? I’m all for encouraging extracurriculars, but they also have to work with family rhythms.
G is the only one with nothing late 🙂 that would be pretty intense for a 6yo! But it does impact her. Trying to make sure her bedtime doesn’t get derailed like mine has been!
Just to stay, doing an ideal week and then revising it 3 times has been saving back to school for my whole family. I had to be brutal about letting some expectations go. And we are still under rested, the first week back is exhausting even without anything else added on
Thanks for the pretty version for the ideal week!!
That’s tough.
Realistically you are going to have to make a few hard decisions and say no to some thing(s) that are good, fun and positive on their own. Is there any way to lean into help with driving (Uber teen? Hiring a responsible HS student to drive?) and move some of the kids’ activities earlier in the afternoon or to the same nights so that you have fewer late nights? Or maybe each kid needs to pick one fewer activity at a time. Obviously you want to support their interests, but maybe not every interest is equal…?
For running, 50mpw might give you just as good a result as 60mpw but with a little more margin. Of course that would be a question for your coach.
But I sympathize, lol. Sleeping from 10pm to 4am is a recipe for bad moods and stupid mistakes.
As someone who runs early and has kids (16,13,9) let me just say I often go to bed before them. Not every night for sure but it happens regularly. I need my sleep and I don’t have the same circadian rhythm as a teenager. I know your kids are younger but it still might possible if Josh is around.
Could you run during their practices, or drive around with G instead of the older kids (unless it’s an important game)?
Hugs!! This does sound tough. FWIW I feel completely off kilter since school started last Thursday. We did a lot of traveling at the end of the summer and I was totally exhausted from that. I have just given myself permission to skip morning workouts until we settle in a little bit. Hopefully you will feel a LITTLE better after you get used to the routine.
It’s often only when I do or say something silly I realise how much the fatigue is affecting my capacity. Having read this post straight after an early morning call about a new T1D as my infant also woke up to feed I feel this!
I’m sorry. I am really protective about my sleep and my kids’ sleep as well. I realize my family is on the low end for activities, but their schedules just seem like a lot. Can you try to scale back some of the nights they have activities?
I run (but not as much as you!) and weekends really are by far the easiest way to get in longer runs. I really try to prioritize my weekend exercise when I can get out early without impacting our family schedule and my weekday exerciser then is sometimes limited by how much time I have on a given day.
I go to bed earlier than 3/4 of my kids most nights. It is the only sustainable way. I also often need to get up before 5 am. I have a hard and fast 10 p.m. bedtime and some nights I am in bed at 9. Everyone is doing fine without me and my husband is usually up later so he can help with issues that arise or people who need to have a serious late night chat it I can’t.
Like Gillian I go to bed at 8:30 while my daughter goes to bed at 9:30. I need to be rested at my job so it’s non negotiable, but we do take electronics away from her when we go to bed, so… I do think something has to give here. Can you hire morning help? Can you hire a driver? Can you say no to some activities? It’s ok if your kids don’t do every sport they want to. Rest is important too. This is NOT going to get better as they get older unless you draw some boundaries now.
One thought, if I remember your morning routine rightly, but don’t you wake up a full 45 mins to an hour before you head out the door to run? Is it possible to shift around when you do those pre-running things? I realize I might be a freak of nature, but I can be up and out the door 15-20 mins later to run, including eating (though I don’t drink coffee at that time). I know you like to do your planning and whatnot first thing, but would it be possible to move those to later (either during lunch on a clinical day or just later morning on a non-clinical day…yes, maybe you end up planning for the NEXT day this way) so that you could still run and be back by 6:30 but not have to get up QUITE so early? I’m wondering if you could do a 5:10 wakeup, 5:30-6:30 run, rather than 4:30 wakeup…?
(feel free to shoot this down; I realize not everyone can bounce out of bed and go run! and/or maybe I’m mis-remembering your morning routine)
Also, just, solidarity. My kiddo’s travel soccer practice schedule started this week (6:15pm, 5pm, 5pm), we are still waitlisted for before/aftercare for school next week, I can’t find an after school babysitter despite significant effort, and I do not know how I will actually find time in the day to do my full-time job without working until midnight. Which leads to the sleep deprivation that is the subject of this post =)
I wish I could be one of those people who can pop out of bed and instantly run, but certain degree of digestion/caffeine intake has to happen or I would have a very miserable run. lol.
Totally get it! I am a weirdo in that regard – it’s like my body knows what is required and complies =) You have tons of great suggestions here. You’ll find something that works!!
Here to add another comment filled with ideas, solidarity, and compassion! You had said going into Q4 that you didn’t know how it would work out, but that you would figure it out. So, good! You were expecting it, and now it’s time to figure it out.
You’ve shared in other posts that the late night activities are 1) year round and 2) something you support for the children involved, meaning that they are part of this year’s landscape.
You also know that you need more sleep. (And frankly, you probably need more than your minimum sleep while marathon training! You do not want an injury from running when too tired and missing a curb, etc).
If those points ring true, here are some options:
1. Your bedtime stays the same as last year. Can you shift your nanny’s hours later to cover this, or at least on days when Josh can’t do it?
2. Your wake up time moves later than last year.
2.a. On clinical days, you could run for half an hour vs. an hour. Maybe those days, you also do your strength training in the evenings. This will be fewer miles, but at least it will be regular miles.
2.b. Can you shift your long run to be on Monday (or the other work for yourself day), so your rest day is naturally Tuesdays? Then only 2 clinical days would need shorter runs? This may necessitate moving some BLP/course content work to the weekend, though. (Perhaps in the time on Saturday when you would previously have been running and/or napping?)
2.c. Can you outsource some of children drop offs so you can leave at the same time as you did last year? The extra 20 minutes could be huge. (Again: Josh/nanny? Maybe 2nd nanny who solely handles kids out the door and to school each day?)
2.d. Can you run in the evenings while children are at activities? (this would not work for me, but it’s an option.)
Or finally….
2.e. You look at this season of life for this academic year and reevaluate if you actually have the bandwidth to work full time split over two jobs, support your children’s activities within the confines of time, AND train the same way for a marathon. (I’m assuming this is not something you want to consider, but again, it’s an option.)
I feel so much solidarity with you. My kids did swim team this summer; meets were twice a week, week nights, and went til 9:30-10 pm. The next mornings, I felt hungover from the exhaustion (without drinking!) Late night activities throw things out of whack.
Hang in there, Sarah! In time and with some finagling, I know you’ll come to a solution that works for you and your family. We’re here for you!
This was such a helpful, well thought reply. And yes- solidarity, Sarah! These things are hard and a lot to manage.
Super super helpful response (especially 2e, at least for myself!). I bet many of us are looking at this and getting ideas!
Amazing reply! Sending more solidarity!
You always have such amazing ideas! Thank you! I was able to do an ideal week this morning and it helped a ton. I think I need to try not to make every day the same – i can do earlier bedtimes some nights, later wakeups some nights, etc . I also counted up hours and our nanny’s hours are low enough (under 30 many weeks) that there is more help I could get with certain driving pieces. Josh is going to do his too so i think that will be super useful as well as we see how we can tag team. I had the same hangover comment recently – 0 alcohol consumed and that was exactly what I felt like. No matter what, I am not going to go around sleep deprived for months. I do think i was at a low point (post pacific time trip, post a week of call, and even some other things that are not blogworthy that ate into sleep!)
I think you are entering a new phase of life and you will have to make some choices here. My oldest is younger than A so I am not going to give you advice but what I see from friends who have older kids seems to be 1) kids sports/activities drive everything and at least one parent is always just dealing with that or 2) the kids do only lower level/rec type activities around their parents schedule. Right now we are at 2 and who knows if we will stay (my daughter is REALLY into dance) but it’s just a lot to fit into every week.
I just wanted to bring up how the schedule probably impacts A/C and their energy levels as well. While they are not up as early as you during the week, arguably they have higher sleep needs at their age and so they may still have similar struggles to you with the current schedule. However they are unlikely to have the self knowledge to express that they are being difficult because they are fatigued (not just because they are pre-teens/teens).
Thus this is something you will need to assist them with managing. At some point you will need to guide them into the trade offs we all have to make between all the activities we could do vs what is sustainable for family dynamics and their personal energy (which may be different for each child).
I’d also suggest that you need to protect the rest of their time as best you can at the moment, they need some downtime as they adjust to the increased commitments. This may mean adjusting your own expectations of the ideal week e.g. there may be more screen time than you would like. This could be another aspect you can guide them on, how do they find those activities that genuinely restore them e.g. you’ve moved away from social media as you found that didn’t restore you.
that is such a good point – YES. A noted she knows she needs to go to bed early Weds (no activities that night) and I’m actually thankful that one of her late practice nights is Friday because she can sleep until whenever on Sat AM. They both each have 2 late “school nights” per week. I agree need to keep their sleep needs into consideration. And yes, really cannot add in anything else at this juncture! I think A in particular is already noting there are tradeoffs (cannot try out for school play or school dance team bc interferes with gym. Right now she feels this is worth it but will have to continually re-eval.)
I was coming on here to say the same thing! When I listened to BOBW (I think it was last week’s episode – the back-to-school one) and realized what time you have to leave in the morning with the kids, the evening schedule seemed even less manageable to me just in terms of your kids’ sleep needs, let alone all the other factors.
I think the biggest thing you can try to set up to make things easier is a routine that ensures that only the child who has the late activity is the one out of the house on those nights. I know this is hard because Josh is not consistently around in the evenings, but I think protecting the bedtime/downtime/sleep needs of the other two kids is going to be essential. And, for your own sake, the adult going with the child ideally should more often than not, not be you. Maybe this looks like more hours for your nanny in the evenings (and less daytime housework/prep help from her?), maybe it looks like an evening babysitter/driver most nights (this could be a sweet gig for a college student – take kid to practice, have a couple of hours to do schoolwork, drive them home again), maybe there’s a lot of carpooling going on with kids who are also on the same teams, I don’t know – it might take a while to hit upon a workable solution.
I understand that you want to support your kids and it is exciting they are moving up the levels and reaching a stage where they can be competitive in their chosen activities, but it will also be important that you teach them from the outset about the importance of rest and good sleep hygiene. You don’t want them to internalize that ‘sleep is what you cut out when you’re busy’ attitude that seems so prevalent in our western culture.
Best of luck juggling it all – I know there is no way this kind of schedule could work for my family. I hope you can figure out a way to make it work for yours!
Ugh, this is tough. It’s especially hard because you had such a perfect schedule worked out last year. I remember that, feeling like I had everything worked out and then one of the kids would switch schools, which meant a new start time, and it would screw everything up.
It’s probably the hardest thing about having kids- your time is not really your own. Of course, kids are worth it- but it can be frustrating.
Could you possibly sleep a little later, but then get out for your run shortly after waking up? I remember your old morning routine was to do some planning, reading and meditation before heading out for your run. I hate to suggest giving up those things- could they possibly be done a little later in the morning? (I’m guessing the answer is no.) Well- you’ll figure it out. I’ll be very interested to hear how you decide to work this!
I think the parents should band together and revolt against these late practice time slots. This is impacting all the kids. We wouldn’t expect college athletes or professional athletes to sacrifice sleep. It would affect their performance. Yall need a parents union.
I totally hear you, but at the same time, I don’t think it’s always “intentional” that activities schedule the practices so late. Many times there’s a real issue with SPACE and trying to accommodate larger and larger numbers of kids who want to participate in these activities.
For example, my son is a swimmer on a club swim team. There is simply limited pool time available! In the fall and winter, the high school pools are in use until at least 6 pm with the high school teams (obviously they get first dibs). This means the club team can’t get in there to use the pool until at least that time. But then there are like, SIX different age groups of kids who need to practice! Thankfully our town now has a second high school (2 pools now) so they can split up, but if you figure each practice is at least 1 hour (and needs to be at least 1.5 hours for the older kids, to stay competitive with what other teams are doing…), there’s no way around getting some later practices. They schedule the littlest kids (the 6-8 year olds) in the earlier time slots and then the older 11+ kids can end up in those 7:15-8:45 slots. (Or like, 5:30 a.m…..). It’s so hard. The coach has sought pool time in neighboring towns, other areas, etc but all the neighboring towns and clubs have the same issue!
I’d suspect this is also an issue for things like gymnastics. You can only have so many kids on the equipment at the same time! And of course if they said there were going to be 40 kids in the class, well, no one would like that…. (Especially in swimming, you literally cannot safely/logistically have more than about 4-5 kids per lane…). But we also wouldn’t like it if they “cut” dramatically from the clubs/teams to limit numbers, because then so many kids would miss out on opportunity to participate…. it’s a real conundrum!
Another issue too is that if there IS availability and they can schedule practices at like, 4 pm, well then you get a bunch of other parents complaining that it’s too EARLY bc they don’t get out of work until 5, and how the heck are they supposed to get their kids to 4 pm practice, etc. etc…..Not everyone can afford a nanny/driver. Majority of kids in our area are in daycare/after care until parents are done with work.
Anyway, it’s such a complicated issue! 😩
THIS! Yes. I agree with both of you in that 1) I do not want my kids to have late practices because my kids need to go to bed early and so do my husband and I; and 2) logistically it just isn’t going to be feasible short of really strictly limiting what activities they do.
Also wanted to put out here an amazing resource for this topic: Emily Oster’s book THE FAMILY FIRM. The TL;DR from what I remember is basically it can be really helpful in cases like this to pull back from the specific issue and make decisions based on the framework of your family values. Like: your family may value each person getting to select 1-2 pursuits that are important to them, so you support that. Or, perhaps a higher family value is everyone is in bed by 8 nightly, so you make decisions based on that. Or, maybe family dinners are your top priority as a means of connections, so any activity that is 5-7 daily would be out.
Sometimes it’s too hard to know what your priorities are and then time just gets so FILLED with things, and it can be helpful to step back and look at the big picture of “what kind of life do I want for myself, my kids, and our family as a unit” and try to go from there.
Also, I think this post really resonates with so many of us because either we’re in the weeds of it or anticipating it, and part of that is because there are SO MANY GOOD CHOICES. But with all choices, there are trade offs, and so a yes to one thing means no to many other things, like it or not. I’m reminded of Oliver Burkeman’s 4000 WEEKS. It stinks that there are not enough hours in the day for all the amazing things we could do in a day, if only we had the time.
I love the framework in the Family Firm (which I read when it came out long before I started working with her). The best part about it is that you revisit your decisions intentionally and readjust as needed. I think Emily would say this is actually the most important step.
Sorry, meant to include that as Kae points out, there are real time and space constraints meaning that someone has to have late practices or else many fewer kids can participate. Life!!!!
Uff, you pack a lot into your day and I can see how this is unsustainable when sleep is the first thing to go. I need my 7+ hours, too or I’ll be cranky. I am glad to hear you see some things that you could do to help the sleep situation and also fit your runs in (how often do you run right now?).
6x a week for past couple years!
Great post and so many ideas in the comments! If you have space, doing part of your run on a treadmill/home bike might help shorten your morning. Also: cappucino!
Also: I did not grow up with american work ethic, but why not consider a nap on non-clinical days? Life‘s too short to feel sleep deprived – I need way more than 7 hours and I guess I‘m not the only one!
TOTALLY could do a nap on some non-clinical days. Running outside actually take no extra time vs treadmill (if anything it’s fast – I don’t have to find the treadmill key thingy!) bc I leave right from my house, definitely no “destination runs” 🙂 🙂