The Luxury of Sleep and the Timeline of a Morning Started Too Early

I used to believe that sleep is a necessity, but I’ve come to believe that it is a luxury reserved for the childless, or perhaps the more prepared parent. Yet another night has gone by where my daughter wet the bed in the wee hours of the morning. I fed my son at midnight, when he woke me just minutes after I had dropped off to sleep. Then at 4 AM, my husband jumped out of bed when I daughter woke crying. He came back fifteen minutes later to say that she had soaked through everything to the mattress which was too wet to put her back in bed. So we put in her in bed with us, which I knew was a mistake, but what other choice did we have? At 4:30, the three of us climbed into our bed. Our daughter kept tossing and turning, leading to no sleep for anyone. At 5 AM my son woke up again in need of a diaper change and to nurse. He was also in a rotten tired mood, which I could relate to. After getting him back to sleep I decided to forget getting anymore sleep, which I saw as a lost cause, started a load of laundry and began tidying up the house. My daughter began roaming the house around 5:45, tromping up and down the stairs looking for her library books. At 6:15 my half conscious and very tired husband tried to reason with her. Around that same time I was filled with that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that I always gets when starting a day this early from both lack of food and the knowledge that this is likely to be a long, unproductive and exhausting day. Ahh, the joys of parenthood.