The clock change and small kids don’t mix. At all.

Since having kids, I’ve really struggled with the whole clock change ‘thing’. ‘Oh you get an extra hour in bed tonight’, everyone says gleefully, with great plans of either sleeping that hour or having too many cocktails and going dancing through the night instead.

The main trouble is that our eldest went through a dreadful phase of waking up between 4 and 4.30am. For the day. So all we needed was an autumnal clock change on top of that and BINGO, it was 3 to 3:30! I can’t tell you how much I disliked that phase. I am dire in the mornings at the best of times. I prefer to come round naturally (who doesn’t) and not talk (ideally for about 1-2 hours). Well this just doesn’t happen at all ever when you have young kids does it?

When they wake there is either a sudden scream, a series of impatient raspberries, a door slamming, or hushed shouting. Having been awake for a couple of hours in the night with motherly insomnia, I find this usually occurs approximately 17 minutes after I’ve finally got back to sleep. I wake with my heart pounding and that feeling of doom that hits when instead of another 2 hours of sleep, you hear a crash followed by crying and then ‘MUUUUUUUUUUM I didn’t DO anything!”

So, we hatched a plan. The clocks go back the next morning instead and we just move meal times around and all sorted. Right?

Well sort of. You absolutely MUST remember to change your clocks before the kids swimming lesson and not afterwards.

Note to self.