More than any of these things, I've been living with less and less sleep. In college, I was able to stay up until all hours of the night, but I was also able to sleep in when I wanted to. Overall, I would say I survived college on 6-7 good hours of sleep a night, (45-50 a week) on average.
When I moved to New Jersey, I was still in stay-up-late mode, but I had something for which I needed to awake in the morning. (5-6 hours of good sleep per night, 40-50 a week, on average)
Upon commencement of my teaching career in PA, I slept even less. I was staying at work late and didn't wind down until late, but was still up early in the morning. Through all of this, I wasn't sleeping well because I was worried about money and we were close to having a baby. We'll say 30-40 hours a week of good sleep.
This school year, I was getting up at 4:30 to leave the house by 5:15 and be at work by 6:00. Why do I do this? There is a long answer for another post, but the short answer is that if I don't get my work done before the day starts, it won't get done. I don't stay after (also for the other post) and I'm too distracted during the day, so I get to school when no one is there and do what I need to do before they arrive.
I was still going to bed between 9 and 10 and getting up once a night or so with Harper, or bad dreams, or just general bad sleep.
Once Brynn arrived, she was sleeping in our room so that she wouldn't disturb Harper and so that Sara could feed her in the middle of the night. Brynn is many things, including cute, small and noisy. She was very congested for the first few weeks and so she would squeak, snort and make all manner of loud auditory emanations throughout the night, further complicating my sleep patterns.
Recently, Harper has been waking up in the middle of the night wanting hugs. This is my job and while I'm not happy to be doing so in the middle of the night, I will never complain about my daughter wanting to wrap her arms around my neck and lay her head on my shoulder.
Last night, I didn't get into bed until almost 1 and lay awake listening to the sounds of the house until almost 2:30. Harper was up around 3 yelling for me. At 7, I was UP with no hope of falling back to sleep. I went in to get Harper around 8 so that Sara could sleep some more and found my lovely daughter, naked butt sticking up into the air, splashing in a puddle of her own urine, which, because the mattress is coated in plastic, had managed to pool in the middle of the bed and soak into the stuffed animals.
I'm at about 15-20 hours of good sleep each week.
