How Is It Thursday And We’re Still Recovering From Sunday?
One late night, one chaotic Monday morning and a reminder that our cycle is never the only thing affecting our energy.
We had a BBQ on Sunday.
Friends over, food, kids playing, everyone having a lovely time. Before I knew it, it was ten o’clock and our guests were only just leaving.
Now, we live in Italy, where children seem to have a completely different operating system when it comes to bedtime. You can walk past a restaurant at half ten at night and there’ll be a five-year-old sitting there eating pasta like it’s two in the afternoon. Mine are not those children. Mine normally go to bed at around eight, so by ten o’clock they were fucked.
Still, it was one night. We’d had a lovely time. I assumed we’d all be a bit tired Monday morning, get an early night and that would be the end of it.
It is now Thursday.
Apparently we’re still recovering.
I don’t normally set an alarm because my body clock wakes me up somewhere between 5.30 and 6.30. Monday morning I opened my eyes, looked at the clock and it was seven. The kids didn’t want to get up, didn’t want to get dressed and mainly wanted to stay in bed hiding under the covers. Suddenly our normally fairly smooth school morning became rushed and chaotic, followed by tears at the school gate.
I thought Monday would be the worst of it. Early night, everyone catches up, Tuesday we’re back to normal. Except overtired children, as it turns out, aren’t particularly good at going to bed. Bedtime was a mess as well, then they didn’t want to get up the next morning, and somehow the tiredness just kept rolling into the next day.
Now it’s Thursday and my four-year-old is home with me because he woke up tired, didn’t want to go to school and, quite frankly, I couldn’t be bothered to argue with him. He’s four. I wasn’t dragging him through the school gates crying just to prove a point.
The funny thing is, I’ve actually been fine.
This is normally one of my better-energy weeks and it has been. I’ve been getting loads done, my workouts have been happening, I’ve had ideas, I’ve been productive and, thankfully, I’ve had the patience to deal with two very tired children.
Note to future self: plan social events during high-energy phases.
Completely impractical, obviously. But noted.
Because I have wondered how differently this week would have felt if Sunday had landed at another point in my month. If I’d already been tired, my patience was lower and I was in those few days where I naturally want to do less anyway, would Monday morning have just felt like a chaotic Monday morning? Or would it have felt like everything was going wrong?
That’s probably the most interesting thing about this week for me.
I’ve spent the last couple of years getting to know my cycle really well. I know there are parts of the month where I generally have more energy. I know the last five days before my period are usually much lower. I know my period itself isn’t necessarily my lowest point, despite what a textbook diagram might suggest. Knowing that has genuinely changed the way I plan things.
But if I’d only looked at my cycle going into this week, I’d have thought, high-energy week, lovely, let’s go.
And technically I would have been right. I have had good energy. But that hasn’t meant I’ve had the week I thought I was going to have.
I can sleep perfectly well myself and still spend Monday morning dealing with two knackered children who don’t want to get out of bed. I can wake up ready to get loads done and then have a four-year-old decide he’s absolutely not going to school on Thursday. My energy hasn’t necessarily changed, but where I need to use it has.
And this week has been a pretty good example of why I stopped looking at my cycle as the answer to everything.
It was the first thing that taught me to pay attention to my energy, but these days I’m much more interested in the whole picture. Where I am in my cycle matters, but so does how I’ve slept, what’s happening with the kids, how much I’ve taken on and what life generally looks like that week.
This week, my cycle has probably helped. I’ve had the energy and patience to deal with everything else that’s been thrown at me. Had this happened during my lower-energy days, I suspect the exact same week would have felt very different.
And that’s useful enough for me. I don’t need to work out which thing gets the credit or the blame every time I feel different. Sometimes it’s probably a mixture of all of it.
What I have learnt is that I picked a very good week to have a late Sunday night.
Although note to future self: if we’re staying up late, weekends and holidays only. I’m not spending another four days recovering from one night when nobody even got to drink.
School nights? Everyone’s going to bed at eight.
Leanne
What’s influencing your energy today?
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