'I've started getting up over an hour before my 3 kids. It's absolutely saved my sanity.'

As a mother, your time is rarely your own. But before we unpack that, I’m going to be honest. 

If you’d asked me between the years of 2012-2019 to rise before the sun, I would have laughed in the slightly hysterical way of the very sleep deprived. 

As a mother-of-three, the years between 2012 until relatively recently are a blur of sleeplessness and bodily fluids (so many bodily fluids). 

There wasn’t any ‘waking up’, it was more being dragged from unconsciousness for the 35th time and realising it was light outside. 

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I would often read about optimal ways to start your day and the importance of a morning routine and wonder if the person writing them was a) on drugs or b) ever stepped foot inside your average household with young children. 

The thought of being able to wake before the tiny sleep thieves who dominated my life was laughable. I needed every single second of sleep available to me. I sometimes thought that the best sleep I got was in the approximately 22 minutes between my husband taking the kids downstairs and leaving for work. Those minutes were sacred and there was no chance of relinquishing them.  

The thing is life changes. 

Tiny babies become little kids who then become bigger kids. Until one glorious day, you realise that you’re sleeping most of the night. Sure, the five-year-old still visits roughly three nights out of seven and the 11-year-old enjoys switching on every light in the house for his 3am bathroom trip but, overall, you become reacquainted with the glorious phenomenon of good quality sleep. 

But as is the way with the motherhood pendulum, while you find yourself being needed less overnight, you often find that you’re needed more during daylight hours. You return to work (or increase your work hours), school, sport and other extra-curricular activities dominate afternoons and weekend hours. Your children have social lives that require an entirely separate calendar. Time is still an issue. And so you wonder where you might carve out a little pocket. And things that maniacally scoffed at years before suddenly seem not only viable but quite a good idea.

Things like getting up before your children and establishing a morning routine. Impossible with a baby, toddler and five-year-old, more possible with a five, nine, and 11-year-old. 

The golden hour (and a bit) between 5am (well 5.20am, If I’m honest) and 6.45am is my little pocket. A time when I’m not ‘mum’ or Mrs Foxall (I’m a teacher when I’m not writing), but just me.

Getting up early has given me the chance to re-connect with parts of myself that I shelved when I was deep within the trenches of parenting young children. The parts which that season of motherhood could not sustain. 

The first time I set the alarm for 5.20am and laid out my gym gear I wasn’t even sure I’d go through with it.

Sacrificing something that had been so lacking still felt strange. But I did it anyway. 

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It still felt like a novelty for a little while. Slipping out of the house while everyone slept. Listening to my choice of music or podcast while driving to the gym or walking the dog. 

Feeling a sense of accomplishment at having followed through and done something that I knew benefitted both my physical and mental health. 

Soon, it became a habit. And that is what it is today; a habit purely built out of consistency and the burning desire to have some time to myself. 

I’m often asked how I stay motivated to get up early or exercise when I do but it’s got nothing to do with motivation. Motivation comes and goes. Solid habits tend to stick around.

I don’t go to the gym or head out for a walk to punish myself or because I feel like I have to. It’s something I want to do. To honour my own health and wellness, something which took a battering in the years of sleep deprivation, postnatal depression and anxiety. 

I now actively seek little pockets of time, like my early starts when and where I can. 

Whether it’s escaping for a bath on a Saturday afternoon when the kids are busy and I know I’ve got 30 minutes, or treating myself to a coffee and a scroll on Instagram when I’m waiting for karate, dancing and art class to finish, instead of opening my laptop and working through my to-do list. 

Sometimes I even have a little sleep in on a Sunday. Because 5.20am starts may have changed my life for the better, but sometimes nothing beats some extra snooze time.

Naomi Cotterill is a mum of three, teacher and freelance content creator.

Feature Image: Supplied.