![](\"\/helen\/blog\/images\/daily_4\/3630_earplugs.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
One unalloyed benefit of the divorce for me is improved sleep quality. I literally haven’t slept this well in decades.<\/p>\n
Eric snores. Has snored for years, and not done anything about it. I on the other hand have been a light sleeper since Ingrid was born – the gentle click of the bedroom door handle used to be enough to wake me when the kids were toddlers. Probably still is. Instinctually I know that I am needed, so I wake up.<\/p>\n
I used to bulk buy earplugs to try and deal with the snoring. A little bowl for my earplugs was a permanent fixture on the bedside shelf, next to a lamp and an alarm clock. It worked so-so. Inevitably my ears were quite close to the source of the noise. I just got used to the fact that it could take me over an hour to fall into proper sleep.<\/p>\n
No more! I go to bed, and I fall asleep. I wake up in the morning, and I am well rested despite spending fewer hours in bed than ever.<\/p>\n
For a few years, until recently, I didn’t use an alarm – I just woke naturally some time between 7 and 8. Early enough to get to work at a reasonable time. Now I have an alarm set for 7:00 every morning. On weekdays I need to get up to wake Adrian, but I have the alarm on weekends, too. It works well for me to get up at the same time every day. (He is of course absolutely able to get up on his own, but school mornings are dreary enough without having to go through them all alone, so I get up to keep him company.) Ingrid’s hours vary, with work and school, so she manages her own wakings.<\/p>\n
It didn’t take long for Nysse to figure out what the morning alarm means. Breakfast!<\/p>\n
I feel guilty for leaving him alone as long and as often as I do these days, so I keep the bedroom door ajar for him in case he wants company at night. Sometimes he does, and he comes and sleeps next to me or on my legs. That also means that he has access to me in the morning. He used to come and bother me about breakfast – mrouwing in my ear and nosing at my face – at whatever hour he woke, but now he knows that it’s pointless. The moment the alarm goes off, though, he’s in there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One unalloyed benefit of the divorce for me is improved sleep quality. I literally haven’t slept this well in decades. Eric snores. Has snored for years, and not done anything about it. I on the other hand have been a light sleeper since Ingrid was born – the gentle click of the bedroom door handle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,799,778,4,768],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dailies","category-divorce","category-nystagmus","category-observing_the_self","category-photography-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20132"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20139,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20132\/revisions\/20139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toomik.net\/helen\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}