My sleep patterns have vastly changed over the past few years. When I was in college I would generally fall asleep at around 2:00 am and then would set my alarm clock for 6:30 am. I knew that if I got to the coffee shop before 7:00 that I would be there by myself for a good 45 minutes before the rest of the college began passing through for their 7:50 classes. That was 45 minutes of uninterrupted study time. Thankfully, as I said before, that study time was in the coffee shop. This meant that I could sip on a coffee or latte with only a small risk of falling asleep over my books (I did take many-a-nap in the coffee shop however - both intentional and unintentional. It is a wonder what a 12 minute power nap can do for you).
When I reached graduate school I lost my magical ability to be able to study at all hours of the day and night. One time while I was in college, I went on a trip just before Thanksgiving break to Chicago, spending very little time studying for the test I had the day after I got back. Not only that, but when I got back from Chicago at dinner time, I went straight to a bridal shower for my roommate that didn't end until late evening. At that point, I had to learn several chapters of Biochemistry including all of the structures and steps of glycolysis and the Krebs cycle before morning. I set myself up in a study room with a white board and set to writing the structures down over and over until I finally learned them all, finally going to bed at about 4 or 5 in the morning (no matter how great my magical power for study was, I still needed 2 or 3 hours of sleep to let all of the information sink in - I never once pulled an all-nighter). Once I got to graduate school, however, I realized that I couldn't study after 10:00 pm! I could still stay up late, no problem, but once the clock struck 10 my little studying brain cells shut themselves off and said, "Go watch a movie, call the boyfriend (the previous name of the hubs), or go to bed."
I left my first graduate program (well, technically my second program, but since I quit Medical school so quickly after starting that one doesn't really count) the same summer that I married the hubs. He was just starting his third year of medical school and I was transitioning from a graduate program in biomedical sciences to one in medical dietetics. It was that summer that I broke my brain even more. I am mostly a night owl. I once read a journal article from Nature that explained that people are hard wired to be either "Night Owls" or "Morning Larks" and that by forcing yourself into being the opposite you can seriously damage your health. This night owl, for the sake of love, decided to try to match the hubs' sleep patterns, since we had been married for less than a month, and become a morning lark. I had the summer off of school, so I had no real reason for being awake or asleep at any given time. My day consisted of steaming ugly wall paper off of the walls of my new home and then painting those walls. Given the ability of man to harness electricity and the invention of the light bulb, I was essentially able to do these tasks at any time. The hubs did not have the same flexibility in his schedule. He was doing his OB/Gyn rotation, which for those who don't know is a surgical rotation. Not only is it a surgical rotation, but the med students have to get in before the attendings and the residents because they have to look up all of the information for their patients and then present that information to those who have already earned the "M.D." This meant the alarm clock was generally set for sometime between 3:30 and 4:00 am and that we would go to sleep at around 7:30 to 8:00 pm. This is a prime morning lark schedule and was not agreeing well with this night owl. However, after the surgical rotation was over and we were once again able to sleep in to a more normal time (5:30 to 6:00 am) I still felt a need to go to sleep between 8:00 and 10:00 pm.
I maintained my approximately 9:00 pm bedtime throughout the last year while I was completing my internship. This worked out well because I would often wake up at about 6:00 am which provided me my perfect 9 hours of sleep each night (my need for sleep doubled in the 4 years since I graduated from college). This worked well until about 8 or 9 weeks ago. Pregnancy hit me like a ton of bricks and, for the most part, I lost my ability to make it through an entire day without taking a nap. This nap can last anywhere from 1-4 hours. Yet, surprisingly, even during a day in which I have taken a 4 hour nap, I am still able to fall asleep anywhere when bed time comes along. Then, when I sleep through the night I usually aim for 9-10 hours. This didn't seem unreasonable until I realized that I am sleeping greater than 50% of the day every third or fourth day. On Sunday night I fell asleep at 8:00 pm and woke up the next morning at 9:00 am. Then I sat down a few hours later to watch a movie with the hubs and I only made it halfway through the movie before drifting off into a peaceful nap. Apparently, even though my baby doesn't want me to eat for two, it does want me to sleep for two. I guess I should be thankful and embrace this now since it won't last after the baby is on the outside.
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