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I wonder if any of you have advice!
My SO and I are having a hard time with our morning routine. She has to get up early for work (of course!), and I usually don't have anything I need to wake up that early for... but I've chosen to get up at the same time as her each day, so that A) we can eat breakfast together, since I then won't be seeing her for about 12 hours; and B) I can make coffee and breakfast, and make/pack her lunch, while she showers and gets ready for work. She has never asked me to do that, but I do it because I want to help her. There's so much stress in her life due to her job that I just can't help her with, but one thing I can do is send her off with nutritious food each day to help her get through it! On the rare mornings where I continue sleeping while she gets ready for work, she's in such a rush to get out the door that she'll either just have coffee for breakfast, or eat something like a banana, and pack maybe nothing but cheese and crackers for her lunch and then come home starving.
SO, the problem is that sometimes it's really, really hard for me to wake up that early in the morning, especially if I'm already short on sleep. It's a damn good thing I'M not a doctor, because I seriously can't function without adequate sleep. I stumble around like an idiot, and if I'm really, REALLY sleep-deprived, I cry. It's pathetic but it is what it is. Before SO and I were living together, my morning strategy was to put an annoyingly-loud and obnoxious alarm clock across the room, so that I had to get out of bed in order to turn it off. Then once I was up, I was up. My SO, however, is the complete opposite - obnoxious and loud alarm clocks really bother her, and she needs to wake up slowly. Thus, she sets her alarm clock to wake her up with a CD of, for instance, gentle piano music. The alarm clock is within arm's reach on the bedside table. So when the gentle, soft piano music turns on, usually it's so NICE AND SOOTHING that we just continue sleeping... or we lie there for another 20-40 minutes drifting in and out of sleep, trying to wake up.
I don't know what to do about this, because we seem to have opposite morning styles and needs - she needs to wake up slowly and gently, and if I keep hitting the snooze button to make my loud alarm clock go off repeatedly and turn on all the bright lights, she gets irritable. I need to wake up and get up quickly, because if I continue to lie there listening to nice piano music in the cozy darkness, I sleep and sleep and sleep and then get so irritable. My feeling is, if the alarm goes off at 5:45 AM but we lie there half-sleeping until 6:20 ANYWAY, I'd much rather just get that solid 35 mins of sleep and SET the alarm for 6:20 and get up immediately when it goes off. That doesn't work for SO. If the alarm went off at 6:20, then she'd stay in bed till 6:40.
I guess the logical solution would be for me to set my alarm across the room for whatever time I want to get out of bed, then get out of bed when it goes off, and let SO continue sleeping/dozing until she's ready to get out of bed. But then we have absolutely no time to snuggle in the mornings, and morning snuggles are important for starting the day off right. We rarely get out of bed without snuggling first, and to do so feels sad. Am I just being a baby?? Do I have to just suck it up and give up the morning snuggle time?? Arrghhhh.
My SO and I are having a hard time with our morning routine. She has to get up early for work (of course!), and I usually don't have anything I need to wake up that early for... but I've chosen to get up at the same time as her each day, so that A) we can eat breakfast together, since I then won't be seeing her for about 12 hours; and B) I can make coffee and breakfast, and make/pack her lunch, while she showers and gets ready for work. She has never asked me to do that, but I do it because I want to help her. There's so much stress in her life due to her job that I just can't help her with, but one thing I can do is send her off with nutritious food each day to help her get through it! On the rare mornings where I continue sleeping while she gets ready for work, she's in such a rush to get out the door that she'll either just have coffee for breakfast, or eat something like a banana, and pack maybe nothing but cheese and crackers for her lunch and then come home starving.
SO, the problem is that sometimes it's really, really hard for me to wake up that early in the morning, especially if I'm already short on sleep. It's a damn good thing I'M not a doctor, because I seriously can't function without adequate sleep. I stumble around like an idiot, and if I'm really, REALLY sleep-deprived, I cry. It's pathetic but it is what it is. Before SO and I were living together, my morning strategy was to put an annoyingly-loud and obnoxious alarm clock across the room, so that I had to get out of bed in order to turn it off. Then once I was up, I was up. My SO, however, is the complete opposite - obnoxious and loud alarm clocks really bother her, and she needs to wake up slowly. Thus, she sets her alarm clock to wake her up with a CD of, for instance, gentle piano music. The alarm clock is within arm's reach on the bedside table. So when the gentle, soft piano music turns on, usually it's so NICE AND SOOTHING that we just continue sleeping... or we lie there for another 20-40 minutes drifting in and out of sleep, trying to wake up.
I don't know what to do about this, because we seem to have opposite morning styles and needs - she needs to wake up slowly and gently, and if I keep hitting the snooze button to make my loud alarm clock go off repeatedly and turn on all the bright lights, she gets irritable. I need to wake up and get up quickly, because if I continue to lie there listening to nice piano music in the cozy darkness, I sleep and sleep and sleep and then get so irritable. My feeling is, if the alarm goes off at 5:45 AM but we lie there half-sleeping until 6:20 ANYWAY, I'd much rather just get that solid 35 mins of sleep and SET the alarm for 6:20 and get up immediately when it goes off. That doesn't work for SO. If the alarm went off at 6:20, then she'd stay in bed till 6:40.
I guess the logical solution would be for me to set my alarm across the room for whatever time I want to get out of bed, then get out of bed when it goes off, and let SO continue sleeping/dozing until she's ready to get out of bed. But then we have absolutely no time to snuggle in the mornings, and morning snuggles are important for starting the day off right. We rarely get out of bed without snuggling first, and to do so feels sad. Am I just being a baby?? Do I have to just suck it up and give up the morning snuggle time?? Arrghhhh.
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