up at 4:30 again...

I am so darn tired and yet, I am awake again. Now, part of it is that my cat Beemer gets up at 4am (sometimes earlier) and begins her day- or rather wants to begin her day with a nice breakfast. This is because the shelter we got her at fed the cats super early each morning (when the volunteers got there I am assuming) and 2 vets told me 'good luck trying to get her out of that habit'. Anyway, I did some research and we are trying a new stuff to break this habit before the baby comes. We have to ignore her attempts to wake us up, not lock her out or yell since that is still giving her attention (and apparently from what I have read that is good enough for her). But once I start waking up I get HUNGRY I have never in my life been a middle of the night eater but now I cannot fall back asleep and I am starving. totally difficult for me to adjust to this lack of sleep. Please don't say 'get used to it' because I am too tired and there is no baby yet.

Lack of sleep is never easy to adjust to Michele. You know I love my sleep too. It is not something you ever really 'get used to' - you just learn to accept it for awhile and know that it is temporary.
And, you just brought back a flood of memories about the hunger. I remember waking in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, and then not getting back to sleep b/c my tummy was growling. It totally stinks, I know....but, you need to feed the baby when he/she is hungry

This morning, I too, am up bright and early b/c I could not get comfortable enough for my back to stop hurting, so I know how you feel. Sorry about Beemer - I don't have any advice on that.

Michele - how old is Beemer?

I got my cats in college. They are 10 and 9 now. I may be completely a terrible cat mommy, but I always left food down for them...dry or wet, depending on what they were eating at the time. Now they always have a bowl of dry and they just go to it when they are hungry! NOT saying it's the 'right'way, but they have never been overweight, sick, anything. They don't overeat...and if they run out and I am not around, they knock their bag and get more out! We have gone away for 3 days at a time and just left a big bowl of food (and of course plenty of water) and have never had a problem. I have never once been woken by my cats, unless they are jumping into bed to snuggle....

Cats in general 'start early'. I always thought they got up when they started to hear birds - remember they sleep most of the day. I don't know of cats that can be trained on schedules the way dogs can. When they want up - that is it!

Good luck!

michele .... this has been such a problem for me too! I can usually fall asleep ok, but then I have to use the bathroom .... always right around 2AM! Then, b/c its such a process to get out of the bed (ie body pillow, achy legs, etc) ... the baby wakes up & thinks its playtime! Took me almost 2 hours to fall back asleep the other night .

Last night, I didn't actually fall asleep until almost 3am. Talk about sleep deprived. When Vinnie said, ' Its good practice for when the baby comes ....' I almost killed him!

So tonight, when I'm getting out of bed at 2AM, I'll be thinking of you!

I'm thinking of you guys and remembering what that was like - and now I myself sat up at 4:30 this morning for an hour trying to feed a very hungry but very congested little pumpkin boy...it's hard to eat when your nose is stuffy! Maybe we can conference call to keep ourselves company?!?! At least thinking about you guys makes me realize that even though it FEELS like I am the only person on earth awake at 1 am (and then again at 4:30) - all us MOMS are in this together!!

My cat used to wake me up every morning to be fed...around 7:00 though. To add insult to injury, she always woke me up and not DH! I pretty much did what you are trying. I ignored her and fed her at all different times in the morning, so that she wouldn't have a schedule to stick too. This has seemed to help, but it did take a little while.
It's not even that she's hungry. My cats always have dry food. She just likes the action/attention of being fed. Sometimes she doesn't even eat it!! My second cat could care less, so I guess it depends on the cat. Stick with it, she'll/he'll adjust.

I work from home now so I usually fall back asleep around 6:30am and wake up about 9:30am, then start my day.
Beemer has dry food down ALL the time, and gets 2 cans of Fancy Feast- one morning, one night. I think our 'just ignore' method might just work. She was starting to get the idea and was not getting into as much mischief as usual. It was just that I was awake so I got out of bed. My fingers are crossed that Beemer will learn this new routine and maybe if she doesn't wake me up, I will stay asleep a lot longer.