how do *you* get any sleep?

hi everyone! well, i've hit my first bump in the road as a married woman: sleep. or i should say lack of! how do you wives and husbands sleep? our nightly schedule is. . .go to bed by 10:30, awful alarm rings at 4:00am, husband wakes up and leaves, i go back to sleep until normal morning hours! the 4:00am alarm is killing me - i end up getting enough sleep but it is in 2 parts which i don't think is healthy! any suggestions? what do you all do???

silly problem!

[houseelf]

Claudia,



I'm glad that you brought this up. My hubby will be taking more home call as he advances in his program. While I'm VERY excited that he will be home more often, I don't know how well I'll deal with the pager going off at all hours of the night. (I know, very selfish, but I am a wildcat in the morning if I don't get my sleep.) What DO you guys do?



Kelly

This is not a silly problem actually, Claudia....We have been particularly bothered by the whole middle of the night pager thing. My dh can fall right back to sleep, but I'm usually up for 15-30 minutes....I just have trouble falling asleep again and I end up feeling exhausted all day long.



Once school starts, we'll be up at 6am getting everyone ready, so I guess I'm no help in the get up early dept...although 4am is a tad on the crazy side!!! How does your husband deal with getting up that early?



I don't know what the solution is either...the best that I can offer is to go to bed as early as you can, to take naps if possible, and to sleep in on the weekends



Kris

[Meenah]

I'm lucky, I can sleep through anything. I don't even hear if he gets paged, gets up and goes to the hospital.

Luanne

[mommax3]

After 4 years of an OB residency, I can certainly identify with the early alarm clock, and now that my husband is done, I am having to learn to deal with nighttime pages. (He never took call from home during residency -- it was all in-house, which was bad but at least I didn't have to hear his pager!) My experience was that I learned to "disregard" his alarm, but I do remember that we had to have some discussions about the volume of it and how long he let it go off -- pushing the snooze button was definitely not allowed! Good luck -- hopefully it won't be long until you are getting an unbroken night's sleep!



Sally

[Phoebe]

Not pushing snooze is a good idea. I wish I could enforce that in my house. Unfortunately, my husband has trained himself to hear pages and nothing else. It is true because he doesn't even stir when the alarm goes off. He jokes that when our baby comes in a couple weeks, she is going to have to page him otherwise he won't hear her in the middle of the night. I am a light sleeper so everything wakes me up.



Our differing morning schedules disrupt my sleep and I am usually more tired during the day because of it. Luckily, this last month we have been on the same time frame.



Jennifer

I just thought I'd add an interesting twist to this....now that I am having to get up around 5.45/6am, Thomas is sleeping in the KIDs room...and letting the kids sleep with ME...so we don't disturb HIS sleep!!!! I got the "hey, I want to sleep until 7.00" routine! Spoken like a man who has already put the early hours of residency behind him and has adjusted quite nicely to walking in to work between 8 and 8.15, eh?



Kris

[Amiens]

Matt is in a pretty tough IM internship, so during call months I see him maybe an hour or two a night. SO I was going to bed at 930pm and getting up with him at 5-530 am to spend some extra time with him. Thank goodness he has an out-patient this month, but sadly he goes back to call months (3 in a row) starting the 9/23.



Right now I see it as good practice for when our little one arrives in Jan.



Crystal

It is always so hard to go back to those 1:3 after an outpatient month! Does the program that he is in have more outpatient months each consecutive year? I know that Thomas had 1 month his internship year, 2 his PGY and 3 in PGY 3! It sure made a difference....



January is getting closer and closer, isn't it! Just a few more months!! Jenn just has 9 more days (give or take a few )...and automnlou has possibly even already had hers.....



kris

[Amiens]

Well Matt is doing anesthesia, so he is doing one year of internal medicine to fulfill his intern year. So he only gets one month of outpatient, BUT in January he will be doing a month of ER, so it will be shift work, and he will be home somewhat to help with the little.



January is just around the corner, I just started my seventh month, and we bought our infant carrier and stroller. I asked Matt if it was becoming more real to him, and he said "It becomes more real every time I look at your belly."



Crystal