Since becoming a parent, I have come to the conclusion that my daughter is an evil genius.
She can always come up with new, cruel and unusual ways to punish me.
And the best time to try them is when I’m sleeping. She waits for the very moment I finally drop off – and that’s the time for her to wake up and party.
Or she decides 5am is a perfectly respectable time to start the day.
10 Ways My Daughter Wakes Me Up
I’m not too keen on mornings. It’s not easy to get me out of bed, but my daughter has come up with quite a few ingenious ways of forcing me to get up when she wants me to.
Here are 10 of the worst (and best) ways my daughter has woken me up:
Daughter Wakes Me Up #1: By Licking My Eye
Yes, you read that right. From the time she was just a baby, my daughter never quite grasped the social importance of knowing the difference between a lick and a kiss.
Neither has she learned the importance of not kissing people on the eye. And so, one morning I was rudely awakened by my baby daughter shameless licking my eyelid.
Daughter Wakes Me Up #2: By Kicking Me In The Face
Co-sleeping is lovely, honestly it is. If everyone slept normally in the bed, it would be fine. In fact, it would be amazing. But my daughter didn’t get that memo. She would sleep like a starfish, and smack me in the face with her fist every few minutes.
She’d sleep across the bed, and kick me in the boob every hour. Sometimes she’d sleep on my head, and yank on my hair as she dreamed. Or she’d sleep right up against me, and snore in my ear all night.
Meanwhile, I would teeter on the edge, trying not to fall out, with only an inch of my body actually on the mattress. One night, my daughter managed to spin the whole way round and boot me in the nose first thing in the morning. Joyful.
Daughter Wakes Me Up #3: By Spilling A Drink On Me
My daughter has always been fiercely independent. She doesn’t like to be helped, with anything. Ever. She wants to do it all by herself, and has done, ever since she discovered the word ‘no’.
This attitude has its advantages. She will happily scamper downstairs in the morning to find herself a piece of fruit, leaving me to catch some extra shuteye.
There are disadvantages, too. She often wants to do things she’s not quite developmentally ready for. You know, like having a drink without dropping the glass of cold water on her poor, sleeping mother. Yep, rise and shine.
Daughter Wakes Me Up #4: By Calling Me To Wipe Her Bottom
My daughter’s fierce independence disappears when it’s time to wipe her own little bum, and then she’s apparently quite helpless.
I wake up at least a few times a week to the sound of my daughter shouting, “Mummy, please can you come and wipe my bottom?” at the top of her voice. What a beautiful way to start the day. I’m sure our neighbours love us.
Daughter Wakes Me Up #5: By Sitting On My Head
Around the age of two, my daughter went through a phase of taking off her pyjama bottoms during the night. She didn’t like to be restricted by such tight and unforgiving clothes as pyjamas. So she just removed them.
Now I’m not one to fight battles I can’t win, so I just let her sleep bare-bottomed. It didn’t bother me, so why should I even get involved? And it was fine, until one day when it certainly did bother me. It really, really bothered me.
It was the day I woke up to see her bare bottom heading right towards my face. After that incident, we had to have words. She ignored me of course, and continued to wake me up in the same way for a few weeks until she tired of it.
Daughter Wakes Me Up #6: By Bringing Me A Jigsaw
“Mama, jigsaw time!” my two year old cried, thrusting the corner of a jigsaw box into my eye. Realising I wasn’t about to climb out of bed willingly, she upturned the box, sending the jigsaw pieces flying across my bedroom floor.
Reluctantly, I crawled out of bed, collected up the pieces, and walked her back to her room. On the way I explained gently it was still the early hours of the morning, and time to be asleep. I was wrong, obviously. We stayed up until 5am doing jigsaw puzzles.
Daughter Wakes Me Up #7: By Weeing On Me
Co-sleeping is one of the best decisions we’ve made as a family. It means I’m able to get some sleep, I don’t have to stomp around the house in the early hours, and I get to enjoy sleeping close to my baby. Oh yeah, co-sleeping is wonderful.
Till your child wees on you. Then it probably feels like the worst decision ever. If you ever feel the ‘warm glow’ of co-sleeping, watch out. You’ve probably been peed on.
Daughter Wakes Me Up #8: By Telling Me To Go Away
Yep. We were tucked up in our beds, fast asleep. My daughter must have woken up, unbeknownst to me, and decided it was outrageous I wasn’t there to witness it.
So she stomped her way into my room, stood next to my bed and shouted at me to GO AWAY! Worst way to wake up ever. Even worse than being peed on.
Daughter Wakes Me Up #9: By Stroking My Face
When my daughter was about six months old, she had really soft skin. You know that perfectly smooth, silky-soft baby skin? Hmmm, nothing feels as good as that. Except my dry, wrinkly, ‘old lady’ face, apparently, which she often liked to stroke.
For a few weeks she would wake me up every morning by stroking my face. I’m not going to pretend I hated that; I just loved it.
Daughter Wakes Me Up #10: By Sleeping Too Long
This one was a long time ago. It was during those ’new baby days’. My house was filled with washable nappies, abandoned cups of tea, and that addictive new baby smell.
At the time, I was used to my baby waking me up at least every two hours. I won’t say it was totally unbearable, but I quickly had to learn to survive on short bursts of sleep and somehow not to die of exhaustion.
My daughter woke around 7am most days, hungry and demanding to be fed immediately. One day, however, she didn’t. I woke up to sunlight streaming through the blinds, and an odd silence.
I immediately panicked and leaned over the side of the bed to peek into the Moses basket. And then I prodded my daughter to make sure she was alive. She was, of course. But she wasn’t particularly pleased to have been woken up so rudely.
If you liked this article, check out 10 Things I Wish I Could Tell Myself As A New Mother.
