It’s 3 a.m. and I’m Not Lonely

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It's 3 a.m. and I'm Not Lonely | Columbia SC Moms Blog

Dear Child of Mine:

Your father is here in bed too, wake him.

Love,

Your very overtired mother

It’s 3 a.m. and contrary to the song by Matchbox 20, I am not lonely. In fact, I am very much passed out, “enjoying” the small amount of space that your sister offers me (since she joined us at midnight).

Child of mine, I love you dearly, but you need to take your blinders off and see that your father, the one who you cry for when he is not around because mommy never seems to be good enough, is laying right next to me and is just as capable of walking you back upstairs to bed.

After years of wake up calls, dating back to the day we moved our oldest into a big boy bed at one and half years old, I am assuming that one night while mommy was gone, daddy was able to train all of you to avoid his side of the bed and only visit mine. He trained you to creepily stand next to the bed and stare at me until that “someone is staring at me” feeling kicks in and I wake out of a dead sleep to see you standing three feet from the edge of my bed, eyes locked and not blinking. Frankly, I am equally parts impressed and frustrated. Your dedication to your craft is admirable. If only you could care this much when I asked you to clean up, told you it was time for bed, or time to leave a favorite location.

While playing sleep twister (any co-sleeping parent knows this game well) a few days back it clicked. My side of the bed is lined up with the bedroom door. Of course! It is out of ease that I am woken. If only I could have seen that years later I’d be the victim of 3 a.m. wake-up calls, I would have made a different choice. I would have picked the other side.

How different would things be today had I picked the other side? Would I be well-rested? Would the dark circles under my eyes hold off on appearing for another few years as I aged? Would I wake up early at my own will to go to the gym?

No. None of these things would matter, because the mom radar would activate and my kids would take the extra 20 steps that were far too many to take to wake their father, to find me on the other side of the bed. (And let’s be real, I never woke up early to go to the gym before kids either…)

Are you the recipient of a 3 a.m. wake-up call?

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Katie Stevens
A transplant from the frigid winters of New Hampshire, Katie and her family moved to the ‘Famously Hot’ Columbia in Fall 2015. She is married to her high school sweetheart Richard, and together they have three little humans; Maddox (5), Thatcher (3) and Chloe (10m), and a dog, Cabela. Katie spends her week days at her 9-5 in at USC School of Medicine, rushing her oldest to soccer practice, and letting the kids have cereal for dinner, cause ‘ain’t nobody got time for that’. The weekends (which she lives for), are spent at the state park, the zoo, or a magnitude of other fun places. As a fan of calligraphy, hand lettering, and DIY projects that all require hours of free time and buckets of money, you can find Katie scrolling Pinterest during late night feeding sessions, filling her boards with beautiful projects she’ll never have the time to do. Katie also enjoys spending her ‘spare’ time running her blog From North to South.

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