If it were completely up to me, I would wake up naturally every morning around 10:00AM and fall asleep sometime between 1:00AM and 2:00AM. I am fairly certain that I proved that particular wake/sleep cycle worked wonderfully with me during my college years, at least when I was able to schedule my courses properly. I could wake up gradually without the use of an alarm clock, and feel fully awake and alert by the time my feet hit the floor. Then I would go through my daily routine and climb back into bed once I felt tired.
When I started teaching, I adjusted my sleep schedule so that I could handle waking up at 4:30AM every day. Granted, I was still up later than I should have been at night, but I managed to catch up on my sleep on the weekends. I was living on my own and in my early twenties, so I did not worry about being tired during the workweek. Sleep and I could ignore each other for a good portion of the week as long as we reconnected for a good long while on Saturdays and Sundays.
Then I got married. My husband was also young and foolish and did not mind getting far too little sleep during the week and attempting to catch up on the zzz's on the weekends. It was a match made in heaven.
Three months later, I was pregnant. Suddenly, sleep seemed to be of paramount importance. I probably would have slept the entire day through had I not still had to get up to go to work five days a week. I would go teach, come home, take a nap for an hour or two, pick up my husband from the train station, nap while he made dinner (gotta love a man who cooks!), correct papers over dinner, and get to sleep as soon as possible afterwards. Little did I know this would be the last solid sleeping hours I would have for a decade or so (and counting).
Naturally, once my darling baby was born, sleep became more of a figment of my imagination than reality. Over the next five years, I popped out two additional children and continually decreased the number of hours that sleep was a possibility. I was unable to sleep in later in the mornings because my children preferred to wake up earlier than I would under normal circumstances, and if I wanted to get a shower at all that day, I had to do so before they woke. (My attempts at showering during the kids' nap times were almost always a failure, since someone would find a pair of scissors or a Sharpie and remind me why they should never, ever be left unsupervised...especially when I could not always hear what they were up to over the noise of the shower and bathroom fan.) I also had to take over the task of cooking meals, much to my chagrin, which cut back on my potential nap times.
Sleeping through the night was a rare occurrence, and staying up late and getting up early became the norm. Forget sleeping in on the weekends! Children are born naturally programmed to wake up earlier on the weekends than they do during the week. I am not entirely sure why this appears to be the case, but I am fairly positive this is because they love to watch their parents twitch. Once school started, our week waking schedule became even more strict, with more and more requirements for tasks that needed completion before we left the house. Sleep and I became merely passing acquaintances who rarely do more than nod in each other's general direction.
Now that all three children are in school five days a week, I can sometimes sneak in a nap during the day to supplement the less-than six or seven nonconsecutive hours of sleep I get during the night. I am still struggling to wake up every day at five o'clock in the morning when I have gone to bed at ten o'clock the previous evening and slept in bursts maybe an hour or so in length. On a related note, there should be a law against waking up to a blaring alarm clock when it is still dark outside.
I love sleep. I love naps. I love feeling well-rested. My husband still delusionally thinks he is in his twenties and can stay up late and get up early and not suffer. He also drinks multiple cups of coffee a day and is not the parent who gets up with any kid-related issues in the middle of the night. For those of us who handle kid-duty at night and whose caffeine of choice is in the form of chocolate that is almost never present in the house, sleep-deprivation suffering is the norm.
I think sleep and I need to meet up on a vacation somewhere away from it all so that we can reconnect. If he's lucky, and if we can find an overnight sitter for the children, I might even let my husband tag along.
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