The Benefit of Being Up at 4am

As I've mentioned before, we've had ten babies in the last five years from foster care. The biggest drawback to taking in only babies, is getting up in the middle of the night. I hate being woken up because one, I never know what it'll take to get a baby back to sleep. Sometimes it's just sticking the pacifier back in, and others I quickly realize he doesn't want a bottle and it's time for a middle-of-the-night guessing game. Secondly, I have a very hard time falling back to sleep. I take 1.5 mg of melatonin every night just to help me doze off, otherwise I'd be awake tossing and turning all night. No matter how exhausted my body is, my mind doesn't shut off without the melatonin.

Anyway, I was up again at 4am this morning with the baby. Luckily he drank a bottle and went back to sleep. I, however, did not fall back to sleep so quickly. Instead of getting frustrated or taking more melatonin (which I've learned not to do at 4am because it only makes it harder for me to get up at 7), I started thinking about writing. I have to say, being in that in between dream state does absolute wonders for my writing. I just wish I had someone there to record everything I come up with. Most of it is garbage, but once in a while I hit on some good ideas.

This morning I started thinking about a certain comedy show that I love. Little by little I started to piece together my own version of an episode of it. I was fortunate that when I woke up at 8am, I still remembered my ideas (rare) and after feeding the kids, cleaning the house, starting laundry and doing homeschooling, I was able to sit down and write out an outline of an episode. I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but it felt really good to have a beginning, middle and end come to me so clearly. I haven't written a tv/movie script in a few years, but I might give this a shot and see what happens.